Into the Darkness

by Andrews, V. C.

  “Things changed.”

  “But . . . where are you going to stay for a few days? I don’t understand what you mean by staying here.”

  “I fixed up that cabin I told you I found,” he said, nodding to his right. “Come on. We’ll talk there.”

  He started away. When I didn’t move, he paused and looked back.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “Come on.” He held out his hand.

  I started after him and took it. He tightened his grip as if he never wanted to let go.

  “When did you return?” I asked him as we walked.

  “About two hours ago, I think. I can’t be sure.” He smiled at me. “‘Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.’”

  “Never mind all that,” I said with a schoolteacher’s firmness. “Don’t try to distract me. Why are you here and not at home? And what do you mean, you fixed up the cabin? Why? When did you do that?”

  “Questions, questions,” he said. “You’ll have no trouble being a mother.”

  “I won’t keep asking questions if I can get some answers,” I replied, and he laughed but said nothing more.

  We walked on until we came to a small clearing, and there, as he had described, was a small log cabin. Trees and bushes had grown around the sides of it thickly enough to keep it well hidden from anyone coming from any other direction. It didn’t look much larger than someone’s toolshed, but I imagined that when it was built, it was considered at least average.

  “I suspect this is quite old,” he told me. “I’m surprised some local historical society hasn’t laid claim to it. Whoever owns this land surely must be aware of its existence.”

  “The family who owns this land isn’t very interested in preserving history. They’re interested in preserving wealth,” I said, and he laughed and turned to me.

  “I’m really glad you came.”

  “And I will be, too, when I know what’s going on.”

  “Patience, patience,” he said.

  He opened the cabin door and stepped in. The top of the doorway was low, so he had to bend a little. I did the same. He immediately turned on what looked like a battery-powered lantern. It wasn’t very strong but threw enough light for me to see his sleeping bag spread over the old wood-slat floor, a box full of other camping utensils, and what looked to be some canned food. The cabin did look cleaned up, but there wasn’t much to it. It was only one big room. The two windows were boarded up.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked. “Why are you camping out here?”

  He sat beside his sleeping bag and folded his legs before he looked up at me.

  “Sorry there’s no furniture.”

  “Brayden,” I whined.

  “Okay, okay. It’s like this. My mother is going to be there for a while, and it’s better that I don’t visit her every day. I decided not to stay at some Bates Motel near the clinic.”

  “Bates Motel?”

  “Psycho. Remember the movie? You must have seen it.”

  “Yes, my father insisted when he thought I was old enough to be scared half out of my mind, and my mother is still bawling him out for it.”

  He laughed.

  “What about your father? Didn’t he want you to go with him in the meantime?”

  I lowered myself to the floor to sit across from him, hoping that I wasn’t sitting on or near any bugs that could come up through the slats.

  “And do what? Hang out at a better hotel or motel? He works all day, with working dinners and sometimes working even into the night. Time and normal activities get lost in some fog for him and his associates when they’re into theoretical discussions. I accompanied him once and found myself more alone than ever. Half the time, I had to remind him that he had brought me along. No, going with my father was not an option.”

  “Well, I still don’t understand,” I said, looking around. “Why would you rather camp out here than be at your house? I’m sure you have a lot to do there yet while you wait for your mother to get better, and . . .”

  “It’s less lonely for me here,” he said.

  “Less lonely here? It’s not exactly the place to meet people. Besides, I’d spend as much time as I could with you if you were home.”

  “You could do that here, too, if you want. When you’re not working, that is.”

  “But . . .”

  “I guess I take the Thoreau thing more seriously than most people do. I need to feel myself in nature now. It restores me, keeps me wanting to be here.”

  “I understand all that, but . . .”

  “I’ll do fine. Don’t worry. In a few days, I’ll be returning to the clinic, and my mother will be released, and things will return to the way they were.”

  “They weren’t that good,” I said. I was thinking now of my discoveries in his house.

  “No, they weren’t, but they were tolerable before this episode.”

  Something about the way he avoided looking at me when he said that told me that he was saying something he didn’t believe himself.

  “Did you return to your house first?” I asked, wondering if there had been some way for him to discover that I had been in his house. Perhaps I had left a light on or hadn’t closed something.

  “Actually, no,” he said, which really surprised me.

  “You came right here instead of going home?”

  “I didn’t see any reason to do otherwise,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone, as if the reasons were perfectly clear. “I don’t have anything cold to drink, but there’s a bottle of some of that healthy water. You know, the water with electrolytes. My father always wanted my mother to drink it. He thought it would help somehow. Don’t ask me how. Would you like some?”

  “No. I’m fine. But I don’t understand. If you didn’t go to your house first, how did you get the water and all of these other things here?”

  “I stocked the cabin two days ago,” he said.

  “Two days ago, you knew you’d be here? But wasn’t that before your mother got worse?”

  “I anticipated it, and I also wanted to have an alternative to what my father would suggest I do afterward,” he added.

  “How could you anticipate it?”

  “I’ve gotten so I can read my mother well enough to know when a time like this would come. That’s one advantage of being around someone this ill for so long, not that I want the advantage.” He looked at me with anticipation in his eyes, like someone who was waiting to see if the person he had spoken to believed him. I could accept what he was saying.

  “You’re so much closer to your mother than you are to your father.”

  He shrugged. “It’s not all that unusual, and it works just the opposite for some, I’m sure. Mothers are deserting their children a lot more than they used to. But let’s stop talking about my sad situation and talk about yours.”

  “What do you mean, mine?”

  “I don’t have to be a mind reader to feel that you’re burdened with something. Does it have to do with your date the other night with the boy who you said tried to change you?”

  “Yes. Remember? You shouldn’t be surprised. You were the one who gave me a sort of warning about him.”

  “What happened? When we took that walk, you didn’t go into any real detail except to tell me you had asked him to go for a walk. I take it that wasn’t very exciting for him, but this sounds like a lot more went on.”

  “I thought I could just forget it, but I see now that’s not possible. It’s like headline news around here now.”

  “I don’t have a local newspaper, so just tell me.”

  I described the little to-do between Shayne’s sister and me at Shayne’s house after our boat ride, how Shayne had behaved at dinner, and how he had reacted to my not wanting to go to Mel Quinn’s house party.

  “I had no doubt what that would have led to if I had gone with him,” I said. “He changed dramatically when he saw that I wasn’t going to be talked into it.”

  “Impatient sort, isn’t he?”<
br />
  “Yes, but now that’s not the worst of it,” I said, and described the stories Shayne’s sister was spreading and how other girls in my class were reacting. He nodded, looking very serious. I half-expected he would brush it all off as young-girl nonsense or something.

  “And you’re not sure how to handle it?”

  “Well, it is a little new for me to be the center of everyone’s excitement, especially under these circumstances. However, I think I’m handling it well enough for a novice. I made it very clear to everyone who called that nothing like Wendi described happened between me and Shayne and never will now.”

  He shook his head.

  “What?”

  “Remember, ‘the lady doth protest too much, methinks’?”

  “Hamlet. So?”

  “Guilty people seem to protest more, because innocent people can’t imagine anyone thinking they did it. Anyway, in this particular situation, I would advise you to go the opposite direction.”

  “Opposite direction? What do you mean?”

  “Just hear me out,” he said. “Tell them it’s really all true, only you’re the one who decided to break it up because he was a big disappointment in bed. I’m sure you can get a little descriptive and very convincing if you have to. The more detail you give about the sex or lack of it, the more they will believe you.”

  “What?” I asked, this time smiling. “Why would I do such a thing?”

  “First, from what you’re telling me now, I don’t think this guy could handle it. He’d get his sister off you and run the other way as quickly as he could. Second, your clacking girlfriends would stop treating you as if you were the fool.”

  I started to shake my head.

  “You can do it, Amber.”

  I sat back, my arms behind me, my hands flat on the floor, and thought. Then I laughed, imagining the reactions. “I think I could,” I said.

  “Sure you could. You’ll be surprised how much respect you’ll gain. Death to Prudence Perfect.”

  “Yes.” I paused. “I don’t remember telling you that some of my classmates call me that.”

  “You must have,” he said, but he looked sorry he had said it. Had he been following me without my knowing and overheard Ellie and Charlotte Watts? “Regardless, if you do what I suggest, you’ll be happier.”

  I thought for a moment and shook my head. “No. I think I’d rather my parents heard that I was still Prudence Perfect.”

  “Your parents don’t have to live out there with these nasty creeps. Besides, something tells me your mother will realize what you’re doing.”

  “How can you say that? You’ve never met her.”

  “Yes, I have.”

  “When? How?”

  “Through you,” he said. “You didn’t turn out to be this great all on your own.” I shook my head and smiled at him. Then I looked around the tiny cabin.

  “You can’t stay here, Brayden. You can’t be serious. There’s no running water, for one thing.”

  “I found a spring nearby, and I have a few bottles of that water.”

  “You don’t have any real food.”

  “Thoreau had very little.”

  “It could get cold in the early morning.”

  “The sleeping bag is quite adequate. I’ve done it before and in much more challenging climates.”

  “It’s a little claustrophobic,” I said, looking around.

  “It’s big enough for me. I have a lot of thinking to do, anyway. Good place for it.”

  I looked at him suspiciously.

  “What?”

  “Where’s your cell phone? I never see you carrying one. If you did stay here, wouldn’t you need one in case your father called you?”

  “You’re right.”

  He reached into the box and produced a cell phone.

  “I didn’t see you had that before.”

  “You’re right. I didn’t. I didn’t even want it now, but my father insisted I have it.”

  “I was wondering why you never gave me your cell-phone number. Or your house phone number, for that matter.”

  “We haven’t had a phone installed yet. My mother has a cell phone.”

  “Oh. So?”

  “So what?”

  “What’s your number?”

  “Oh. I forgot. Wait a minute,” he said, and searched the phone. Then he gave me the number. He flipped the phone closed.

  “Don’t you want to know mine?” I asked.

  “Oh, right.”

  I rattled off both my cell and home numbers. He put them in his cell phone and put it in the box.

  “Did you get to see your mother?”

  “Yes. She was under some medication, so it wasn’t much of a visit, and from what I understood, she’ll be relatively out of it for a few days.”

  I sat forward. “What exactly happened that made her decide to check herself in?”

  He stared at me a moment and then turned away. He was silent so long I thought he was unable to speak. I was sorry I had asked.

  “Brayden? Are you all right?”

  “Yes,” he said. He looked at me a moment and then added, “I lied to you. I’m sorry.”

  “Lied? About what?”

  “About my mother.”

  “That’s okay. You’re going through so much. How did you lie?”

  “I’ll tell you, but I don’t want you telling anyone else, not even your parents. I know how close you are with them and how difficult it will be to hold back anything, but for now, I need you to do that.” He fixed his soft, now warm eyes on me. “I think I can trust you more.”

  “Yes, of course you can. My mother and father would understand. They know how important it is to keep someone’s confidence.”

  “Yes, I thought they would,” he said, smiling. “The only thing . . .”

  “What?”

  “I hate bringing you into all of this any deeper than you already are. It’s not fair to lay such a burden on you. You’re struggling with your own personal and important issues right now. You don’t need a new neighbor to unload his troubles on your shoulders, too.”

  “Let me be the judge of what I can bear and what I can’t,” I said. “Don’t you start treating me like someone fragile and weak, too.”

  He smiled again. “I thought you would say something like that. You’re right, of course.”

  “So?”

  I felt myself tighten inside in anticipation. Maybe I was being a little overconfident. Maybe I had been too protected all these years, and now that I was swimming alone in the ocean of human conflicts, especially the more mature ones, I would turn and swim quickly in the opposite direction and rush home to my secure little world. The way his face turned even more serious, his eyes darkening, frightened me a little more than I cared to reveal.

  “She didn’t check herself in, exactly. My father brought her to the clinic.”

  “Your father was here?”

  “Just in time.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “My mother tried to commit suicide,” he said. For me, it was like a clap of thunder in the log cabin.

  “How?” I barely managed to get out.

  “She deliberately took too many sleeping pills.”

  “I didn’t see or hear any ambulance.”

  “There wasn’t any. My father rushed her to the hospital himself. It happened late last night. After she was stabilized, he brought her to the clinic.”

  “And then you returned to get some of her things, and that was when you came over to see me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then this all happened last night after we took a walk?”

  “As I said, late.”

  “Your father was home when we took the walk?”

  He nodded. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you it all as it really happened when I came to see you. I didn’t want to disturb you any more than you were, but I see now that you’re the sort of person who deserves nothing less than the truth. I don’t like being dishonest w
ith you,” he added, his beautiful eyes fixed on mine.

  All of a sudden, I felt terrible about what I had done, sneaking into his house and snooping. If anyone was being dishonest here, it was little old Prudence Perfect. I couldn’t hold his gaze. I looked away.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked. “Did I upset you with this news as I feared I would?”

  I shook my head as the tears came into my eyes. “I did a terrible thing this morning soon after you came to see me.”

  “Oh?”

  “I went over to tell you that I would be happy to go with you to the clinic, even drive you. I knocked and knocked on your front door. I didn’t believe you had gone that quickly. Besides, I didn’t see any car. I guessed you would call for a taxi, but I was hoping you were still home. I thought you might be upstairs, so I tried the front door, and it opened. I shouted for you, and then . . .”

  “And then?”

  “I went into your house.”

  “I see.”

  “I still thought you might be there, upstairs, and perhaps you hadn’t heard me calling.”

  “So, you went upstairs?”

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “I went up to the attic, to your mother’s art studio.”

  “And you saw her painting?”

  “Yes.”

  “I wish you hadn’t.”

  “So do I,” I said. “It was nothing like her artwork on the Internet.”

  “No, it wouldn’t be. I don’t know if she’ll ever paint like that again.”

  “What is it supposed to be? I don’t understand.”

  “It’s the way she sees everything now. Just imagine if your vision was covered by something that distorted anything you looked at. That’s the way it is for her, as it might be for others in her situation, only she has a way of expressing it, her painting, her artistic ability. When therapists ask their clients to interpret something, they’re using the art to get through, to look into their minds and understand the problems.”

  “Will they ask her to paint something where she is?”

  “They might, but I don’t know if she would. She’ll paint something when that something is attacking her to get out. Do you understand?”

  “I think so.”

  “I’m so sorry to bring you into this. It wasn’t right. I should have just left you out there enjoying the scene.”