Some Choose Darkness

by Charlie Donlea

  “I’m sorry to tell you this way, Rory. I’ve struggled with it ever since Frank died. I even thought about never telling you. And perhaps that would have been the easiest solution, except for this.”

  Celia walked over and pushed the key across the desk. “Your father had a safe-deposit box. He told me that if anything ever happened to him, I was supposed to take what was in the box and keep it to myself.”

  Rory composed herself, picked up the key. “What’s in it?”

  “I have no idea. I think money, but I don’t feel right keeping it. Frank promised that he’d always take care of me . . . you know, financially. But if he left money behind, it belongs to you.”

  Rory picked up the key and ran her fingers over the grooves on the blade. An eerie feeling ran up her sternum and through her neck to cause her ears to ring. The hair follicles on her head tingled. She looked at the stack of papers she had just discovered in her father’s safe and knew it was not money he wanted Celia to hide.

  * * *

  Rory parked her car in the bank’s parking lot just before nine o’clock. Celia sat next to her in the passenger seat. The Dark Lord headache still gripped her temples and her mouth was cotton dry. She was adorned in her protective armor—hat, glasses, gray jacket, and Madden Girl Eloisee combat boots.

  On the ride over from her father’s house, Celia explained that a year after they started dating, Frank had asked her to sign papers that put her on the safe-deposit box as a registered holder. Celia had never asked about the contents of the box; she only knew that it had caused Frank much distress when he asked Celia to watch over them. As they waited in the car, Rory took a quick sideways glance through the edge of her glasses and noticed Celia staring at her. The woman was anxious to talk about her relationship with Rory’s father. Rory was anxious for a Diet Coke and some privacy. Mercifully, a bank employee unlocked the front doors just as the car’s digital clock blinked to 9:00 A.M.

  Rory pointed through the windshield. “Bank’s open.”

  They each climbed from the car and made it across the lot. Inside, they rode the elevator to the bottom floor and approached the reception desk. A woman smiled at them. Rory allowed Celia to take the lead.

  “We need access to Box 411.”

  “Are you both registered holders?” the woman asked.

  “No,” Celia said. “Just me.”

  “Only registered holders are allowed into the vault, but you’re welcome to wait in the reception area just outside.”

  “That’s perfect,” Rory said. “Thank you.”

  Celia handed over her ID and signed a card. The bank employee made a copy, checked Celia’s signature to the one on file, and retrieved the master key from a locked cabinet on the back wall. The woman disappeared briefly as she walked around the corner, then opened the door to where Celia and Rory waited.

  “Right this way,” the woman said.

  They walked to the other side of the floor where thick metal bars separated the reception area from the vault of safe-deposit boxes. The gate had been opened earlier in the morning, as had the vault door beyond. The woman pointed to a waiting area with tall, round tables. Rory walked over and watched Celia walk with the woman past the gates and into the vault. A few minutes later, Celia reappeared with a thin metal box in her hands.

  The woman smiled. “Let me know when you’re finished.”

  Celia placed the box onto the surface of the tall table. “I’ll leave you alone,” she said to Rory.

  Rory nodded, kept her gaze on the box. When she was alone in the room, she lifted the lid and stared at the contents. There were just a few pages inside. She lifted the first packet, which was her father’s last will and testament. She turned the pages slowly, found nothing out of sorts, and placed it to the side. When she examined the next document in the box, the room began spinning. Slowly at first, but faster with each passing moment. She placed her hands on the table to steady herself as she lifted the page and read it.

  The room rotated with such ferocity that Rory reached for her temple as she studied the page, knocking her glasses to the floor. She took the last article from the bottom of the box, another single document, stumbled backward until she collided with the wall. Her beanie hat fell from her sweaty scalp and she sunk to the floor as she read.

  CHICAGO

  November 1981

  “ANGELA WARNED YOU THAT HER HUSBAND WOULD COME LOOKING for her?” Frank asked.

  The woman stayed silent.

  “Angela is alive?”

  Margaret looked away from him, out the window and to the vast expanse of land behind the house. “How did you find me?”

  Frank accepted the dodge without pushback. He knew he was on the cusp of a monumental discovery. “You were listed on the Bayer Group’s log as the one who picked Angela up on her eighteenth birthday when she left the psychiatric hospital.”

  “Damn it,” she said. “We thought long and hard about any trail that might lead to me. Anything that might link us to one another. We thought we were safe.”

  She pulled her gaze from the window. “So now I know how you found me. But I need to know why you’re looking. Did he send you?”

  Frank swallowed hard. A sinister sense of dread hung in the room, and his connection to Thomas Mitchell never felt so wrong.

  “There are some people who . . . believe Angela is still alive. That she disappeared to get away from her husband. The police were convinced he killed her, and the district attorney mounted a good-enough case to convict him. But I’m wondering if they were all wrong.”

  “Did he send you?” she asked again.

  He felt a seismic shift in what he was trying to accomplish. His journey had been set to help his client, but now he felt as though he were putting lives at risk. Frank nodded.

  “Yes,” he finally said. “Thomas Mitchell hired me to find his wife.”

  The woman’s eyes widened with fear. “You mustn’t ever tell him what you’ve discovered. Do you understand? He must never find me.”

  “Were they wrong?” Frank asked. “Were the police and the prosecution wrong? Did Thomas Mitchell kill his wife?”

  “No,” Margaret said. “But he killed so many other women.”

  “Where is Angela?”

  “He killed all those women, just like she said. And she told me he would come looking for her. She told me he’d hire people to find her. It took two years, but Angela was correct.”

  Frank kept to himself that he had already discussed this lead with his client, something he now regretted. Some part of him felt that doing so was a grave mistake.

  “Tell me what happened,” he said. “I can help you. If you need help, I promise I’ll find a way.”

  From another room, far off in the farmhouse, there was a squeal. Frank looked out into the hallway when he heard it. It came again and again. Louder and louder. Crying.

  “Come with me,” the woman said.

  She stood from the couch, walked into the foyer, and started up the stairs. Frank noticed the perspiration beading down from his temples. He followed the woman to the base of the stairs. An odd premonition came over him that if he continued up the staircase, his life would never be the same. But the lure of Angela Mitchell, the ghost he had been chasing, was too great to prevent his steps. He heard the floorboards creak under his feet as he followed the woman up the stairs. With each stride, the cries grew louder. More than cries now, they were shrieks.

  At the top of the landing, the gray-haired woman turned and entered a room. Frank paused when he reached the last step, then looked down the long staircase he had just ascended. The wooden railing and the rungs within it blurred in his vision. The foyer below, and the front door, and the dying afternoon sunlight pouring through the window, all swirled together in a distorted image. He still had time. The opportunity was still in front of him. He could race down the stairs and to his car. He could drive away from this farmhouse and never come back. He could tell his client it was a dead end. He could lie
.

  In the end, though, he didn’t run. Instead, he turned and walked to the open doorway through which the woman had disappeared. A baby carriage stood in the corner. The small child standing in the crib, red-faced and angry, was the source of the crying. The screams were so visceral now that Frank had the urge to cover his ears, but curiosity pulled him into the room. When he walked through the threshold, the cries subsided as the gray-haired woman lifted the baby into her arms.

  As Frank entered the room, a strange sensation came over him. It felt as though a thousand sets of eyes were watching him. Then he realized why. Three of the four walls in the nursery contained built-in shelves. Each shelf was lined with antique china dolls in perfect rows, three on each shelf. They looked immaculate as they glowed under the lighting with their unblinking eyes focused on him.

  “He mustn’t ever find her,” the woman said.

  PART III

  THE FARMHOUSE

  CHICAGO

  May 1982

  FRANK MOORE TURNED HIS CAR ONTO THE COUNTY ROAD AND ACCELERATED down the long stretch of two-lane highway flanked by freshly planted cornfields. His wife sat next to him in the passenger seat. The sun was behind them this Saturday morning and cast a slanted shadow of their car onto the road in front of them. It had rained for most of the month of April, but so far May was doing a splendid job of ushering spring along, bringing sunshine and flowers. For Frank and Marla Moore, the season brought hope as well.

  “How did you find this family?” Marla asked.

  “It’s a long story,” Frank said. “But I’ve been searching since we heard the wait list was so long. I received a phone call last week.”

  “You met them without me?”

  “Just to make sure it was legitimate. You’ve been through so much already with . . .” Frank’s voice trailed off. He wanted to avoid talking about the miscarriages. They always sent Marla into bouts of depression, and today was meant to be a joyous day, even if it was filled with deceit.

  “I’ve heard stories of people being scammed for money when they don’t go through a formal agency,” Frank said. “I wanted to make sure this was on the up-and-up before I got you excited.”

  “Is it?”

  Frank paused. “Yeah, it’s legit.”

  “You’re sure about this?” she asked.

  Frank looked at his wife. “I’m sure.”

  Frank saw Marla smile for the first time in months. An hour later, they pulled to the edge of the farmhouse. A waist-high, white painted wooden fence surrounded the property and went on for acres.

  “Are you ready?” he asked.

  “Is this real?”

  Frank nodded his head slowly. “It is.”

  He turned into the driveway and coasted along the gravel until he stopped the car in the same spot he always did. Six months had passed since the first time he came to this house. He’d lost count of the number of visits he’d made since he first stumbled onto his discovery. He wished he had more time to figure it all out, but no matter how long he waited, the blueprint to their plan would never be perfect. It would be dangerous. It might even be disastrous. But perfect? Not a chance in hell.

  He’d never kept a secret from Marla in the short few years that they had been married, and he’d gone into his relationship with the idea of never keeping anything from her. But life sometimes delivers unforeseen opportunities. Unexpected callings that make certain transgressions palatable in the grand scheme of it all, when life asks of you more than you ever thought you could give.

  The dogs knew him now. They were playful and relaxed as they hopped next to him as he walked to the porch with his wife’s hand in his own.

  The door opened and the woman smiled.

  “Marla?”

  Frank’s wife swallowed hard and nodded. “Margaret?”

  “Oh, dear, no. No one but my grandmother ever called me Margaret. Please call me Greta.” She pushed the screen door open. “Come on in. I can’t wait for you to meet her.”

  CHAPTER 26

  Chicago, October 30, 2019

  RORY CARRIED THE KESTNER DOLL INTO THE NURSING HOME. SHE found Greta sitting in her chair. It was the first time in weeks, since before her father had died, Rory had seen her out of bed. A strange feeling washed over her when she stared at her aunt. A lifetime of memories flashed in her mind—images of long weekends spent at the farmhouse, passing the days restoring the china dolls with Greta. The satisfaction Rory felt when Greta allowed her to place a finished doll on the shelf in the room upstairs was like nothing else she had ever experienced. An obsessive-compulsive disorder, diagnosed when Rory was six years old, had threatened her childhood. But somehow, in the room upstairs at Aunt Greta’s farmhouse, Rory was able to tend to the needs of her mind.

  Working on the dolls purged all the tenuous demands of her brain. Rory’s habits, and the mandate for perfection, not only went by without judgment or worry when she worked with her aunt, but the time Rory spent in that room upstairs demanded all the redundant and meticulous acts that were an unwanted nuisance during the rest of her life. As soon as Rory discovered this outlet, the rest of her days were untouched by the requests of her mind. In adulthood, Rory began her own collection and applied to it the craft Greta had taught her. When Greta’s health began to fail, she made it clear that the upstairs room in the farmhouse belonged to Rory, and that she alone was in charge of watching over the collection. Those dolls now lined the shelves in Rory’s den.

  But her childhood felt different now. Nothing seemed the same since Rory had opened that safe-deposit box to find a birth certificate listing Greta as her birth mother, and documents showing Frank and Marla Moore as her adoptive parents. Rory understood so little and wanted so many answers.

  “Hey, old lady,” Rory said.

  Greta glanced at Rory before looking back at the muted television.

  “I tried to save you. There was too much blood.”

  Rory took a deep breath, angry with herself for the sudden frustration she felt toward Greta. A moment of pause reminded Rory that Greta could no more control the random thoughts that popped into her mind and were spewed from her mouth than Rory could control a sneeze.

  “He’s coming. You told me. But there’s too much blood.”

  “Okay,” Rory said. “It’s okay.

  “He’ll come for you. But we have to stop the bleeding.”

  Rory closed her eyes briefly. She hadn’t asked anything of Greta for many years. In fact, their roles had been reversed over the course of their lives. Greta, once the caretaker who settled Rory’s anxiety, was now the patient, and it was Rory who calmed her great-aunt during bouts of unrest such as this. The fact that Rory wanted answers tonight that only Greta could provide was not an excuse to abandon her when she was in distress. Rory took a cleansing breath and walked to the side of the chair. She knew the best remedy for Greta’s turmoil. It was the same one that had saved Rory as a child.

  “We’ve got to finish this Kestner,” Rory said. “The owner is getting impatient. You promised me one more coat would do it.”

  Greta blinked at the sight of the doll, as if the Kestner pulled her across the years, away from the tortured memories of the past and back to the present. She gestured for the doll. Rory kept her eyes on the woman she had known as her great-aunt for her entire life. Up until her dead father’s lover had given her a key to a safe-deposit box that told her otherwise. She eventually took Camille Byrd’s Kestner doll out of the box and laid it carefully on Greta’s lap. From the closet, Rory wheeled the art kit she had brought a few nights before, set the pastel paints on the rolling table, and pulled it over to Greta’s side.

  “In sunlight,” Rory said, pointing to the doll’s left cheek, “the hues match perfectly. But incandescent brings out the flaws, and fluorescent bleaches it out.”

  “One more coat,” Greta said. “And I’ll polish the undamaged side to bring it all together.”

  Rory sat on the edge of the bed and watched her work. The sigh
t of Greta restoring a doll transported Rory back to the farmhouse, to the long summer days and quiet nights. She spent every summer of her childhood at Greta’s place. During the school year, if a bout of obsession took hold of her, Rory’s parents would pull her from school early on Friday for a long weekend at the farmhouse. There was no better remedy for her OCD and anxiety than a visit to the country and the restorations that waited there. Now, as Rory sat staring at Greta, the relaxed feelings she usually experienced while restoring a doll were replaced instead with thousands of questions.

  “Are you working?” Greta asked, pulling Rory back from her thoughts.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Tell me.”

  Rory paused. She hadn’t had a meaningful conversation with Greta in weeks. Tonight, though, presented a rare window of lucidity, where her aunt was interactive and coherent.

  “That Kestner. It belongs to a dead girl.”

  The brush in Greta’s hand stopped. She looked at Rory.

  “She was killed last year. Her father asked me to look into it.”

  “What happened to her?”

  Rory blinked several times, aware again of how badly she had neglected the case. A small part of her was concerned that Ron Davidson would be disappointed in her. A bigger part worried about Walter Byrd, who had put his faith in Rory to find justice for his daughter. But mostly, Rory’s heart ached for Camille Byrd, whose spirit waited for Rory to come for it, find it, and help it to a place of proper rest. Take it from its frozen grave in Grant Park and lay it carefully where it belonged so the girl could find peace.

  Rory remembered another dream she’d had about the dead girl. Of walking through Grant Park and trying unsuccessfully to wake her as Rory shook Camille’s cold shoulder as she lay lifeless on the grassy knoll. Rory refocused her eyes, returning from the wandering abyss of her thoughts. Greta was staring at her.