Such Dark Things

by Courtney Evan Tate

  During my childhood and med school, I didn’t have anything. Now I pretty much have everything. And in this place, it’s a stark reminder of the differences between home and here.

  The biggest difference of all is that I’m here, and Jude is not.

  It’s hard to sleep without my husband. In all the years that we’ve been married, we’ve never been apart. We always sleep curled up together, our limbs intertwined. No matter how little we’re able to see each other during the day, we always wear each other like a second skin in the night.

  I wonder if he’s struggling with this as much as I am.

  I’ll ask him on Saturday.

  God, I don’t get to see him until Saturday?

  What day is it now?

  With a start, amid my rambling thoughts, I realize I don’t know.

  I don’t know what fucking day it is.

  How long have I been in here?

  One day?

  Two days?

  Three?

  Four?

  The walls close in on me, getting tighter and tighter, until I squeeze my eyes shut so that I don’t have to see them. The only way to survive this is to just plow right through it. I’ll do what they want me to do, and I’ll breathe, and I’ll talk to them, and I’ll remember, and I’ll get better.

  I count, whispering, the monotony lulling me into sleep.

  One one thousand.

  Two one thousand.

  Three one thousand.

  The last number I remember is one hundred before I drift into the abyss of sleep.

  “Cunt.”

  The hissing whisper wakes me, and my eyes open wide, and I don’t know how long I’ve been sleeping. Minutes? Hours?

  At first, I think I’m dreaming, but then I see the outline of a girl...a woman...in the chair next to my bed.

  It’s dark, so I can’t see her face, but her nail polish glints in the moonlight. It’s chipped around the edges. She chews her nails, and she seems so so familiar.

  “Who are you?” I ask, a pit forming in the base of my stomach.

  “Your worst nightmare.”

  I sit straight up in bed, trying like hell to adjust my eyes to the dark, and in that one split second, she’s gone.

  I scramble out of bed, turn on the lights, and the nurses find me moments later crawling on my hands and knees, searching beneath my bed.

  “What are you looking for?” they ask curiously as they help me up.

  “There was a girl in here...” I tell them, and they look at each other strangely because we’re definitely alone now.

  “What did she look like?” one asks me as I crawl back into bed.

  “I couldn’t see her,” I have to admit. “It was too dark. And her face...it seemed blurry.”

  “Maybe you were dreaming,” one suggests.

  “I wasn’t,” I insist. “I wasn’t alone.”

  But they don’t listen. They turn off my light, and maybe I really am crazy.

  I’m on edge for the rest of the night, watching and waiting for someone to appear, but they never do. My muscles are tight and coiled, ready to lunge out of bed again.

  But I don’t need to.

  She doesn’t come back.

  I’ve got to relax. I’ve got to breathe.

  I count my breaths until I finally fall asleep again.

  The last breath I remember is number five hundred and four.

  At my session in the morning, Dr. Phillips stares at me.

  “Who did you think was in your room last night?” he asks me curiously. “Did you think it was the same person who was with you when you attempted suicide?”

  He stares at me, waiting, and I recognize the look on his face. I’m sure I’ve had it on my own with my own patients at times.

  He’s humoring me.

  “There was someone there,” I insist. “It was a woman.”

  “Did she speak to you again? Was she the one who told you to hurt yourself?”

  I exhale, then exhale again.

  “I’m not schizophrenic,” I tell him firmly. “I’m not hearing voices that aren’t there. No one told me to hurt myself.”

  “But you said you don’t remember doing it in the first place,” he reminds me. “So how can you be sure?”

  I’m silent. He knows I’m not sure about anything.

  “There was a woman in my room last night,” I tell him again, and my words are firm.

  He pauses. “Everyone was accounted for at that hour, though,” he points out. “There couldn’t have been anyone, Corinne.”

  I stare at the wall again.

  “I want to change your medication,” he tells me. “Maybe try clozapine.”

  My head snaps up. “That’s an antipsychotic.”

  Dr. Phillips nods carefully, his expression cloaked. “Yes. It’s just a precaution for the time being, Corinne. Your memories are affecting your cognitive function.”

  “No,” I speak out, and then I pause.

  Can he possibly be right?

  The girl was so real, right next to my bed.

  Was she truly not there?

  “I...” My voice trails off.

  “It’s just for a while, Corinne. We’ll get a handle on this.”

  “Am I going to lose my career?” I ask suddenly, because who will want a crazy doctor?

  Dr. Phillips smiles. “Our goal is to return you to your regular life unscathed, Dr. Cabot. Let’s just focus on the matter at hand, shall we?”

  I’m unsettled and disturbed, because I worked so hard for my life, for my career. All of those sleepless nights in med school...they can’t have been for nothing. The blood, the sweat, the tears. The student loans, the headaches, the time. All of it.

  “Let’s return to All Hallows Lane,” Dr. Phillips instructs. “Close your eyes. Tell me what you see.”

  I sigh and stare into space, because I don’t want to relive that night. Every time we do, a piece of my soul breaks off and falls into an abyss. I’ll never get those pieces back again.

  “Your father had been having an affair with Melanie Gibson,” the doctor reminds me, as if I’d forgotten. “How long had it been going on?”

  “I don’t know,” I admit. “I’d just found out that day.”

  “And you didn’t tell your mother?”

  “No. I didn’t know what to say. And I didn’t have time, anyway.”

  He’d killed Melanie and her husband before I could decide what to do.

  “Did you like Melanie?”

  “Yeah. She was always nice to me.”

  “What was she doing when you arrived at the house?”

  “She was washing dishes. She’d been filling up her candy bucket for trick-or-treaters. Her hands were wet. She was wiping them on a towel when she turned around to greet me.”

  “She and your dad didn’t usually see each other in front of you kids, right?”

  “No, never.” I shake my head.

  “So, what changed that night?”

  “I can’t remember. I was just there to babysit.”

  God, it’s so frustrating.

  My hands clench and unclench, and Dr. Phillips eyes them.

  “Calm down, Corinne. It’s okay. You’re safe here.”

  “I know that,” I snap. “I just... I can’t remember.”

  The memories from that night, the black-edged snippets of time, whirl and twirl around me, and the more they swirl, the more breathless I become. I try to grasp them, to pull them to me, so I can finally look at them, but I can’t.

  The memories distort, come into focus for just a second, then distort again. Mud. Scuffed leather. Frayed laces.

  “I see shoes,” I say, breathless, a whisper. “Black shoes.”

  “Your father’s?” Dr. Phillips ask
s, but I shake my head.

  “No. His were brown.” A feeling comes over me that I can’t describe, terrifying and all-consuming. Something foreboding. I’m covered in sweat and the ceiling is caving in on me and my heart pounds and I suck and suck and suck for air, but it won’t come, and I panic panic panic...

  When I open my eyes again, the psychiatrist is drawing something into a needle, flicking out the air bubbles and walking toward me.

  “No.” I shirk away, the needle long and glinting. “I’m fine. I don’t need that.”

  I try to scramble away, but a nurse is suddenly here, and where did she come from?

  I struggle, but they hold me down, and there’s a sharp prick, then the entire world goes black.

  5

  Twelve days until Halloween

  Corinne

  “Hey, little sis,” I answer my phone midmorning, taking another gulp of coffee out of my favorite mug, the one that says This might be vodka.

  Jackie takes a breath and then launches into a tirade about her husband, her kids, her maxed-out credit card and her sucky boss.

  “Not all of us can be successful like you,” she finishes up, as she always does. While I love her, she does try to play the guilt card often. As though it’s my fault that I took college seriously and she didn’t.

  “Jacks, you are successful,” I tell her, like I do at least twice a month. “You’re a CPA. You take care of people’s money. If that’s not responsible and successful, I don’t know what is.” Never mind the fact that she finished college only last year, and so she’s really just starting her career. Better late than never.

  “You know, last year at this time, we were in Cabo together,” she points out ruefully. I glance at the wall, at the photo that proves it. Me, Jude, Jackie and Teddy are all standing on the beach, our arms wrapped around each other. The sun was on our shoulders and it had been a good day, one filled with the beach, margaritas, churros and hope.

  Teddy and Jude had taken us away from reality to avoid this time of year. God, I wish we could do it again now.

  “That was awesome,” I tell her honestly. “I haven’t had that much fun in forever. And when you lost your passport and gave us all a heart attack, it was so hilarious.”

  I’m facetious and she chuckles. “That’s why having a doctor for a sister is an advantage. You can give everyone CPR.”

  “Or you could just stop losing your passport,” I suggest. Honestly, she’s lost her passport on every trip she’s ever been on.

  “I found it,” she defends herself. “In plenty of time to get on the plane.”

  “You were lucky.” I take another sip of coffee and find that it’s getting cold. There’s nothing worse than that, so I get up to microwave it.

  “Do you want to go with me to see Dad this weekend?”

  Her question is hesitant, and I don’t know why because she knows what I’m going to say. It’s the same thing I always say. She should know—she’s asked every week for the past seventeen years.

  “No.”

  “Co, please. He wants to see you.”

  “I don’t want to see him,” I say as respectfully as I can. “Marion is a three-hour drive from here. I can’t spare three hours, and also, I just don’t want to. That hasn’t changed.”

  “He’s your father,” she reminds me. “That hasn’t changed, either.”

  “He’s a felon,” I answer, and the whole conversation makes me tired. “I don’t want to visit him in prison. I don’t want to remember what he did. I’m sorry that you choose to, but I choose not to.”

  “Mom would want you to,” she points out.

  “I know that, but Mom’s dead. Therefore, she doesn’t get an opinion.”

  God, dealing with life and death every day makes me cold sometimes. I backtrack.

  “I’m sorry, Jacks. I just... I can’t. You don’t know what it was like. I was the one in that house. I was the one he left in the house with dead people. I have to cut myself off from that part of my life. I have to so that I can deal with it. If you were smart, you’d do the same.”

  “He’s our dad. I can’t.”

  “As our dad, he should want peace for us. Instead, he constantly tries to guilt us into doing more for him, into trying to appeal, into correcting his decisions. We can’t do that. He did what he did. We can’t change it. He’s guilty. He killed people, Jacks.”

  “I know that.” Her answer is steady and solid. “But you know he wasn’t in his right mind. That’s not who he really is.”

  I think about my father...the father I knew growing up. That father’s eyes always twinkled and that father had mints in his pocket. Yet that same father is a murderer.

  It bends my mind, and I’m silent.

  “If you change your mind,” Jackie tells me gently, “I’m going on Saturday. I can meet you and we can ride together.”

  “I’m not going to change my mind,” I assure her. “Drive safe.”

  “I love you, you know,” she answers. “Do you love me?”

  “Always.”

  It’s what our mother used to always say to us, and Jacqueline and I have kept the tradition alive.

  Tradition is soothing and comfortable. We can all use more of that in our lives.

  For now, though, I need some air and some exercise. I grab a sweater and Artie, and we go for a walk.

  Our neighborhood is quiet, shrouded in trees and forestry, and Artie’s nails click on the sidewalk. “We’ve got to get you a pedicure, girl.”

  She moves slower than she used to, though, and the clicks slow down by the minute.

  I breathe in the fresh fall air, and my boots crunch through the dead leaves. It’s ironic that fall is so beautiful. It’s beautiful only because everything is dying. I watch the withered leaves tumble from the trees, every breeze carrying yet another one to the ground.

  The light is unique this time of year. The sunlight seems as crisp as the air, but yet at the same time, it’s muted. It’s almost as though it knows its days are numbered before winter. I soak it up while I can, ignoring the niggling thoughts in my brain.

  It seems like it did that day.

  The autumn light.

  It’s the same.

  It’s weird how random little things can trigger memories.

  My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I almost ignore it, but can’t. I have to be responsible.

  “Lucy,” I greet my friend, after I see her name. “What’s up? Do not tell me you need me to come in early.”

  “No.” She laughs. “Not this time. I’m coming over to do your nails before work. I saw them yesterday, and they look like something that should be scooping fish out of the lake for food.”

  “As in bird talons?”

  “Now you’re getting it.”

  “Is there any use arguing?” I ask doubtfully, because I already know the answer.

  “No.”

  “Fine. You know the gate code.”

  “I’ll be there in twenty.”

  It’s just long enough for me to finish my walk.

  I’ve also made a pot of hot water for tea and turned the fireplace on by the time the doorbell rings, and Artie is so tired that she doesn’t bother getting up.

  “Hey, Luce.” I open the door. “Come on in.”

  She’s lugging a caddy full of nail paint, and what looks like a tool belt, although it’s hard to tell with her baggy sweater. She always dresses like she’s wearing flour sacks, and they hang from her body in waves.

  “You aren’t going to need industrial equipment,” I mention. “They aren’t that bad.”

  “Ha. I brought an electric sander just in case.”

  “Whatever.”

  After getting tea, we seat ourselves in front of the fire, and Lucy grabs my hand, filing down my nails. I will admit, they’re a b
it ragged from constant washing, but hardly talons.

  “I’ve got to have some music,” Lucy tells me after a few minutes. “I’ve gotta wake up before my shift. Do you mind?”

  “No, go ahead.” I wave toward the sound system. “You know how to work it already.”

  Lucy and I have known each other for a year, but it feels like ten. That’s how it is when you work with someone day in and day out. They become like family. She’s good to me, oftentimes bringing me coffee at home on her way to the hospital. Her heart is as big as Lake Michigan.

  She flips the power switch and fiddles with it as I pick out a nail color. First Bob Marley, then ’80s rock. She sifts through the channels. For a minute, the frame is in slow motion. Artie wags her tail once. A bird chirps outside the window. The clouds move. I pick up a bottle. The label says “Do or Die Red.”

  But then Lucy settles on a station, and the music...when it comes on...freezes my hand, my fingers curled around the curve of the bottle.

  Lyrics to the old song “American Pie” fill the air, swirling around me in a flurry of words.

  A sudden rush of unexplainable terror wells up in me, illogical and too much to bear. The words, the music, all of it... It pounds in my head, and the memories cave in on me, and I’ve been here before, yet I haven’t.

  A sense of familiarity, of déjà vu, of something I can’t place, overwhelms me, and a word whispers over and over in my head, husky and urgent and low, and I’m rooted in place.

  Cunt.

  The word is in my head, as loud as if someone had whispered it. It echoes, and the music and the voice... I know it. But I can’t place it.

  It’s maddening.

  A gate opens, and the emotions of that night unleash and surround me, suffocating me. The scenery around me swirls, and I can’t breathe. My ribs seem to collapse on themselves, one by one, like taut strings snapping, as the intercostal muscles contract and contract.

  I gasp for air, but it won’t come. I hear a roaring noise in my ears, and I’m on my knees and all I can see is Artie. She’s in my face and she’s whining...and I think I might be dying. My heart slams hard harder harder, and my lungs explode.