Some Choose Darkness

by Charlie Donlea

  “The truth is easy to miss, even when it’s right in front of us.”

  Rory’s epiphany had brought her to this place tonight. She was at the precipice of darkness, and her soul felt tainted by it. She was unsure if it was possible to correct this mutation at the core of her existence, but anger drove her to try. She made the final turn of her journey. Her headlamps were the only source of light in the otherwise-black night. Until she turned them off. Then only the moon was present, and it offered little guidance. She pulled her car to the side of the road, crunched over the gravel, and turned off the engine. Two hundred yards ahead was the canopied driveway that led to Thomas Mitchell’s cabin.

  She picked up her phone for the hundredth time, stared at the lit display. She’d had Lane’s number plugged in and ready to connect multiple times throughout the drive to Starved Rock, but had stopped herself from calling. The same for Ron Davidson’s number, which she had also pulled up during the hour drive. To call either of the men in her life would have prevented her from doing what she was about to do. Rory decided that only one man would be part of her life tonight—the one who had played a silent and unknown role in her existence. The man who had, perhaps, formed her character. The one who had taken from her more than she could reclaim tonight.

  As she climbed from her car and eased the door closed, she wondered if extinguishing the source of a fire could stifle the flames that blazed in adjacent structures? The silence of the night overwhelmed her ability to answer her own question as she headed toward the canopied drive. Halfway between her parked car and the cabin’s driveway, Rory found a path that led into the forest. She clicked to life the flashlight on her cell phone and followed the trail. Two hundred yards later, she heard the gentle gurgling of water and knew the river was up ahead. When she came to the clearing, the river bled to either side and reflected the moon off its surface like a mystical snake slithering through the night. She followed the riverbank for another two hundred yards until she found the dock she had seen during her first visit to the cabin with the parole officer, Ezra Parker, and the social worker, Naomi Brown. There was a long stretch of neglected stairs that led from the water’s edge up the steep embankment. She took them cautiously, one at a time, as her sternum began to throb and her head became flush with blood.

  At the top of the stairs, she saw the cabin sitting in the middle of five acres. The square clearing was surrounded by forest. As she slowly set off for the structure, the moon cast a faint shadow next to her. It was her only companion.

  CHAPTER 40

  Starved Rock, Illinois, November 5, 2019

  SHE APPROACHED FROM THE REAR. THE WINDOWS OF THE CABIN WERE dark, the sort of darkness that made Rory think she was looking into a black hole. Rory slowly navigated her way from the edge of the forest and across the long stretch of grass behind the cabin. She crept without the aid of her flashlight. The grass beneath her boots felt level and her steps were unchallenged. But as she came to within fifty yards of the cabin, she took a step but found no earth beneath her. She stumbled forward, falling a full three feet until her feet finally hit the ground. By then, it was too late to right herself. She crashed face-first onto the ground, the damp odor of soil heavy in her nostrils.

  She lay still for a moment, attempting to gain her bearings. She felt for her phone, which was thrown from her hand on impact. When she found it, she turned on the flashlight. As she looked around, it was clear that she was in a freshly dug hole. Above her, a mound of dirt sat in the dark. Climbing to her knees, Rory slowly stood from the pit, the top of which was up to her waist. Her breathing was labored when she looked back to the cabin. It remained dark and quiet.

  She climbed from the hole, shut off her cell phone, and started off again toward the cabin. When she came to the gravel drive that encircled the cottage, she remembered bending her car around its curves two mornings before. She followed it again now to the front of the cabin and reached into the pocket of her coat to feel for the only weapon she thought to bring—the Swiss Army knife Kip had given her.

  She peeled open the blade as she crossed the gravel, her combat boots crunching over the rocks and the red clay that covered the ground. Her first stride onto the stairs caused the porch to creak under her weight. In the dead of night, it may have been a cannon shot. After a moment of pause, Rory continued to the next step, and then the next, until she was standing at the front door of the cabin. To pause now would be to lose her nerve. She grasped the handle and twisted. The door opened without protest, the hinges squeaking softly as the handle floated from her grip. She waited thirty seconds, felt a tremor rattling her fingers. Darkness welcomed her as she stepped inside.

  Her mind pulled up the blueprint of the floor plan from her only other time in the cabin, back when she came here with the social worker and parole officer. Despite the darkness, she knew there were three rooms on the first floor—front room, kitchen, and a porch at the back of the house. The stairs to the left of the front door led to two bedrooms and a hall bath. He would be upstairs. He would be sleeping. Just like Greta had likely been when he entered her room.

  She started up the stairs, the blade vibrating in her grip.

  * * *

  The bedrooms were empty. The beds were bare, absent of sheets or blankets. Rory descended the stairs, clicked on her phone’s flashlight, and splayed it across the front room. On the coffee table were papers scattered in a cluttered mess. She lifted one of the pages and saw his meticulous block penmanship chronicling his years-long search for his wife. An eerie stimulus simmered just below her sternum. Unable to help herself, Rory sat on the couch, placed the Swiss Army knife on the table, and flipped through the pages. It would have been easy for her to become lost in the words, to surrender to the call to reconstruct his path over the years and see how far his research had taken him. And she might have succumbed to this temptation had she not come across the handwritten map.

  Written in his distinct block lettering, the inverted V’s jumped out at her everywhere they appeared. She tried to understand what she was reading. It looked to be a plat of survey for the cabin and the land on which it sat. Architectural renderings of the property and its boundaries. On the formal diagram, rectangular boxes had been drawn by hand. They were organized in a grid formation and covered the open area behind the cabin. In each of the boxes, a name was written. Rory immediately recognized the names as the women who had gone missing in 1979. She dropped the survey to the ground when she realized she was holding a map of a makeshift graveyard, and that she had likely just pulled herself from a freshly dug grave.

  CHAPTER 41

  Starved Rock, Illinois, November 5, 2019

  SHE STOOD IN THE FRONT ROOM OF THE CABIN, THE PLAT OF SURVEY and the graveyard map at her feet, and her body temperature quickly on the rise. She felt the perspiration on the back of her neck, and recognized her inability to inhale. A similar episode had gripped her a few nights before when she struggled to piece together her discoveries about Greta and Angela. And now, here again, she felt the impending doom of a panic attack.

  Rory ripped the beanie hat off her head and fumbled with the buttons of her jacket. As her pulse raced at an unhealthy clip, she felt cool air on her throat when she unclasped the top of her coat. It provided a moment of clarity and an overwhelming urge to get out of the cabin. Her lungs ached badly enough that she finally sucked for air. With her cell phone flashlight still shining, Rory grabbed the Swiss Army knife from the table, hurried across the front room and through the kitchen. She pushed open the door that led to the porch with a plan to cut across the back of the property, find the stairs to the river, and race to her car. But when she stepped onto the porch, all thoughts of leaving this place evaporated. A woman sat slumped in a chair, a nylon noose around her neck and her hands bound behind her back. The subtle tremor that had vibrated Rory’s fingers now rippled through her entire body as she walked closer and realized she was looking at Catherine Blackwell.

  The noose around her neck
was attached to a rope that snaked upward to a large wooden contraption bolted to the porch ceiling. Rory ran her cell phone light over it. The rope slithered around three pulleys—up, down, up, down—before the other end fell to the floor a few feet away from Catherine. The apparatus took on the shape of an M and Rory instantly remembered it from Angela’s drawings. She had discovered a similar tool in her husband’s warehouse.

  Rory pulled the beam of her light down from the ceiling and hurried to Catherine’s side.

  “Catherine, can you hear me?”

  As soon as she spoke the words, Rory knew they were worthless. The woman’s eyes stayed closed, her body was cold. Rory swiped the face of her phone. It took three attempts, her shaking fingers unable to activate the slider. When she finally had the phone open, she hesitated for an instant, contemplating whether to call Ron Davidson or dial 911. During her indecision, she saw the light out in the distance. Through the screen of the porch, out across the back of the property, she spotted a wobbling light. The long beam of the flashlight cut through the darkness and bounced in a rhythmic cadence as the person who carried it made his way toward the cabin.

  Remembering her initial view of the cabin from when she had crested the stairs from the riverbank a few minutes earlier, Rory realized the glow of her phone would stand out in the darkness. She quickly doused the light by covering her phone with her hand and pressing it to her chest. Still crouching next to Catherine’s body, she turned her flashlight off and dropped the phone in her pocket. Then she turned and ran back through the door and into the kitchen.

  As she quietly closed the door to the porch, she saw the bouncing flashlight approaching. The distance had been cut in half, he was perhaps thirty seconds from reaching the cabin. In the darkness, Rory fumbled around the kitchen for somewhere to hide. She realized that she had stopped breathing again and was momentarily distressed at the idea of having to remember to inhale. On the wall adjacent to the porch, she felt the handle of the pantry door. She opened it and slipped inside just as she heard the outside door to the porch squeak open.

  “Have you got one more round in you? I’m sure you do.”

  Rory trembled in the pantry as she heard Thomas Mitchell’s voice.

  CHAPTER 42

  Starved Rock, Illinois, November 5, 2019

  RORY WORKED TO CONTROL HER BREATHING AS SHE STOOD IN THE pantry, the door of which she had pulled to her nose like the lid of a casket. Mold and dust filled her nostrils, and tears blurred her vision. A sliver of visibility was available between the door and the frame. Her sternum ached and her ears thundered with the rush of circulation as she watched Thomas Mitchell prepare a meal in the kitchen. He stood just five or six feet from her as he mixed food in a metal bowl and then ate while he stood, clinically separated from the enjoyment of taste, interested only in the need for sustenance.

  He had turned on the lights when he entered the cabin, giving Rory a clear view of the kitchen and porch. As she moved her gaze around, she noticed the red footprints she had tracked across the floor. She looked to the area immediately in front of the pantry and saw the hurried scuff marks she created when she had slid into her hiding spot. Her panic rose, and she concentrated on reviving her lungs and leveling off her breathing. It sounded to her as if she took each breath through a bullhorn, and that any second, Thomas would walk to the pantry, open the door, and discover his prize. She was prepared to scratch and claw, to gouge and punch. She wouldn’t hesitate to bite any piece of anatomy that came close to her if she had to. The only thing she wouldn’t do was die at this man’s hand. Too many other women had. It was why Rory was staring at him now when she could have been racing down the canopied drive and out to her car. It had taken her this long to realize it.

  As usual, her conscious mind took a moment to catch up to the small triggers of her subconscious. But she knew now why she hadn’t run out the front door when she had the chance. Or why she had turned her phone off rather than dial 911. The same way Camille Byrd’s spirit had spoken to her a few hours before, there were others who needed Rory’s help. Others who waited for peace and closure. They were buried behind this cabin, where they had lain in turmoil for forty years. Rory could no more turn her back to those women now than she could to Camille Byrd. Rory didn’t need Lane or Ron or anyone else to help the women who waited for her. The women needed Rory, and Rory needed to answer their calls for help.

  Just as these thoughts materialized in her mind, Thomas placed the metal bowl from which he had been eating onto the kitchen counter and walked toward her. Rory retreated an inch or two, as far as she could in the cramped space, receding farther into the darkness of the pantry. Her lungs became so difficult to fill she was certain her efforts had betrayed her hiding spot. She closed her eyes, waiting for the sliver of light that crept into the pantry to explode as Thomas opened the door. The brightness would be her prompt to attack. To fight like hell. For herself. For Catherine. For the lost souls behind the cabin. Her muscles tensed as she readied to pounce. But instead, music drowned out her heaving breaths.

  Her eyes blinked open and she set her gaze back to the crevice between the door and the frame. She scanned the kitchen, but he was gone. She heard Mozart’s Requiem fill the cabin, soft at first and then louder. And louder. And louder. Finally he appeared. He walked past the pantry and out to the porch.

  CHAPTER 43

  Starved Rock, Illinois, November 5, 2019

  THE MUSIC WAS DEAFENING IN THE CABIN, BUT HERE ON THE PORCH, it was just right. He hoped it was loud enough to stir her, to bring her back. He longed for the lyrical chorus of Mozart’s Requiem to wake her and tell her what was to come. She had barely survived the last round, and he wasn’t sure she was still alive. He refused to check now. He didn’t want to know if she was gone. He’d missed The Rush more than he imagined, and longed for it once more.

  His two leads had run sour. One was too old to offer much, even if he believed she knew the truth. He hadn’t the time to elicit it from her. He thought he’d have more luck with the one in front of him, but she proved to be just as useless to his search for Angela. And when he didn’t know where to go next, he succumbed to his long-subdued urging for The Rush. Now, as the ode to lost souls spilled from the cabin and filled his ears, Thomas stepped up onto the stool six feet from Catherine Blackwell. He slipped the nylon noose around his neck, instantaneously feeling the surge of endorphins fill his body. Tightening the strap, he slowly eased himself off the stool and watched as she levitated from the chair. It was a glorious sight. Coupled with both the charm of the music and The Rush that surged through his body, Thomas Mitchell slipped off to euphoria.

  He closed his eyes for a moment. Despite being out of practice, he reminded himself of the dangers of overindulgence. The Rush was a cryptic practice. It provided the closest thing this world offered to bliss, dangled it on a stick in front of him and begged him to come for it. But Thomas knew The Grim Reaper held that stick, and to abuse The Rush or take too much of it would spell the end. Perhaps that was the lure. Ecstasy and mortality divided by such a fine line.

  He was there now, euphoric as his body shook with The Rush. He slivered his eyes open to take in the sight of the woman floating in front of him. He witnessed her magically hanging in the air. It was magnificent and perfect. Until it wasn’t. Until a flash of something appeared in his peripheral vision. It startled him. He opened his eyes fully, grasping for the noose around his neck and searching with his foot for the stool.

  CHAPTER 44

  Starved Rock, Illinois, November 5, 2019

  RORY WATCHED FROM THE PANTRY AS THOMAS PULLED A STOOL TO the center of the porch. He fidgeted with the noose overhead. Finally he mounted the stool, hooked the nylon around his neck, and slowly lowered himself off the stool while Catherine simultaneously rose into the air across from him, like a magician levitating his subject. The sight stole what little breath Rory had left.

  Through the crack in the pantry door, Rory witnessed the strange scene play
out before her. She had reconstructed cases that dealt with the despicable practice of autoerotic asphyxiation, and had read articles about the perverted individuals who reached sexual gratification from its practice. But the scene unfolding in front of her was something entirely different. It was not sexual in nature, but perverted in another, more disturbing way. The high Thomas Mitchell was reaching came not from any perverse use of sex, but rather from the pleasure of watching another die.

  Rory saw Catherine’s legs dangle limply as she rose, the weight of Thomas’s body on the other side of the pulley system dragging her upward. Rory remembered the dual pulley system Angela had drawn in her notes chronicling what she had discovered in Thomas’s warehouse. He had re-created that system here in his cabin, and across from him now was his wife’s only friend. Someone who he surely believed had helped Angela disappear forty years earlier. How terribly wrong he had it, Rory thought.

  As he lowered himself in a slow, guided movement, he kept one foot on the stool as a fail-safe, placing his weight back onto its surface when the tension became too great and he neared unconsciousness. When he put his weight back on the stool, he rose higher and allowed Catherine to sink back to the ground. Rory watched the eerie seesawing while the classical music blared through the cabin.

  When she saw Thomas take his weight off the stool again and sink downward, coming to a rest twelve inches from the cabin floor, with the noose tight around his neck and his face boiling to a deep crimson, Rory felt the pull in her chest. It was as powerful as when she was a child at Greta’s farmhouse. She quickly pushed open the pantry door, the sounds of her movements camouflaged by Mozart. She reached into the pocket of her coat and retrieved the Dark Lord Swiss Army knife. Unfolding the device, the blade caught the light from the porch. Her movements as she charged through the porch door startled Thomas, who worked frantically to gain leverage on the stool under him. His bloodred face took on another shade, deeper now. Purple.