Dark Room

by Tom Becker

  “Hey!” she said.

  Gabrielle was standing on the step behind her, her hands on her hips and a cold expression on her face. Behind her TJ had wrapped a protective arm around Carmen, whose eyes were red-rimmed with tears. Ryan’s face was pale, his knowing smile extinguished. But if anything, their grief had only made them look even more beautiful, lending an elegant shadow to their perfect faces.

  Sasha stepped quickly in front of Darla.

  “Back off, Gabrielle.”

  “I just want to make sure your little friend heard what the principal said,” said Gabrielle. “She needs to stop talking about Natalie. Have you heard what people have been saying – that Natalie was stabbed with her mom’s tiara? It’s disgusting!”

  “It’s a pretty creepy way to try to make yourself popular, Darla,” added Carmen. “You want to watch yourself.”

  “I didn’t say nothing!” Darla shot back.

  “We know it was you and Frank who found her,” said Gabrielle. “It must have been one of you.”

  “Is that a fact?” Frank retorted. “And what about the cops? You think maybe one of them might have had a few beers and started talking?”

  “Listen, ladies,” said Sasha. “Go shake some pompoms, get a pedicure, buy some shoes – whatever it is you do when you need to calm down. But leave Darla alone.”

  Gabrielle turned angrily to Ryan. “Are you going to let her speak to us like that?”

  He rubbed his face wearily. “I can’t deal with this right now,” he said. “Fight all you want. I’m out of here.”

  Ryan pushed his way through the crowd and down the steps, leaving the rest of the group to hurry after him. As Darla watched the four Perfects leave the hall, her cheeks burning with the injustice of it all, she felt Sasha drape an arm around her shoulder.

  “Don’t let them get to you,” she said. “They’re just looking for someone to blame.”

  “Glad I could help out,” Darla said bitterly. “I’m telling you right now, I ain’t going to Natalie’s funeral. If the Perfects are telling people it was me going around gossiping, everyone there’s going to hate me!”

  “That’s entirely possible,” agreed Sasha. “Which is why we’re not going to be anywhere near it.”

  “You heard the principal,” said Frank. “School is closed. Why waste it going to a funeral?”

  “OK,” Darla said slowly. “So where are we going, then?”

  Sasha grinned.

  Chapter Ten

  The next day, Darla woke to a strange scratching noise coming from below her room. Rubbing sleep from her eyes, she padded down the stairs and into the kitchen to find Hopper scrubbing away at the worktops. He had rolled up his shirtsleeves and put on a pair of bright yellow kitchen gloves, his leather jacket hanging from a peg on the back of the door.

  “There’s coffee in the pot,” he told Darla.

  “Great. How long have you been up?”

  “A while,” replied Hopper. “I wanted to make sure the place was shipshape before Annie came round tonight. Don’t want her thinking we’re hillbillies, do we?”

  “She’s an artist, Daddy,” said Darla, pouring herself a mug of coffee. “She’d probably love it if we were hillbillies. We could be the subjects of her next artwork.”

  Hopper looked up sharply. “Don’t you go spilling anything on my nice clean surfaces now,” he warned.

  Darla hid a smile. Hopper wouldn’t think twice about walking up to a pretty woman in the street and asking for her number, but the prospect of a neighbour coming round for dinner had turned him into a bundle of nerves. She yawned, blowing the steam from the surface of her black coffee.

  “Shouldn’t you be getting ready for school?” Hopper asked her.

  “I told you last night,” she said. “It’s the funeral today. School’s closed.”

  “Oh. Right.” Glancing up at the clock, Hopper peeled off the rubber gloves and rolled his sleeves down. “I’m goin’ to be late, darlin’. Gotta rush.” He kissed the top of her head as he hurried out of the house. “See you tonight!” he called out, as the screen door banged shut behind him.

  Darla finished her coffee in the backyard, wandering barefoot through the tangled grass and listening to the gentle trickle of the creek. By the time she had showered and slipped into a T-shirt and jeans it was well after ten – the funeral would soon be starting. In her bedroom, Darla avoided the blank gaze of the ornate mirror on the wall. It was bad enough that she saw Natalie’s maimed corpse every time she closed her eyes, without worrying that she might be taken back to the sinister dark room and the hateful presence that lived there. Even worse was the gnawing sense of guilt that she should have gone to the cops and tried to tell them that someone was watching the McRae house. Maybe if she had, Natalie would still be alive.

  Outside in the lane, a car horn beeped. Hurrying out of the house, Darla saw Sasha’s pick-up parked outside her gate. She ran over and got in the back. Frank and Sasha were dressed somberly – Frank in a dark suit and sunglasses and Sasha in an unusually conservative blouse and knee-length skirt. Darla had a moment of sudden panic. Had they changed their minds? Were they going to the funeral after all?

  “Relax, Darla,” said Sasha. “We had to put the uniforms on to slip past the guards at Castle Haas.”

  “But if you think we’re dressed up, you ain’t seen nothing yet,” Frank said slyly. “Show Darla the picture, Sasha.”

  Sasha passed her phone to Darla. On the screen was Carmen Russo’s Instagram page, the most recent photo showing her sitting at her dressing table. She was wearing a velvet black dress with lace trim and a cardigan, a silver crucifix glinting around her neck and a large pair of dark glasses covering her eyes. Beneath the photo, Carmen had written: ‘#Beautifulgoodbye’ and ‘#SleeptightNataliexxx’.

  “Just when you thought it was safe to go to the cemetery,” Frank boomed, in a dramatic movie-trailer voice. “Along comes the funeral selfie.”

  “Hashtag: Gross,” muttered Sasha.

  Darla handed back the phone and wound down her window, feeling the breeze run its fingers through her hair. At the main strip the pick-up turned right, heading away from the heart of the town and bouncing up a series of dirt tracks into the hills.

  “We’re taking the scenic route, OK?” Frank told Darla, his blue eyes glancing into the rearview mirror. “Don’t want to run into anyone wondering why we’re not at the funeral.”

  No one seemed willing to tell Darla where they were headed, but she knew better than to ask. She was the New Girl – it was her role to follow Frank and Sasha around and to be surprised and amazed by whatever they showed her. So she sat quietly and looked out of the window at the woods and the crisscrossing pony trails. The pick-up rattled past the entrance to the Saffron Hills Country Club, a set of imposing gates barring off a paved driveway. The road grew bumpier.

  Finally Frank parked the pick-up in a patch of scrubland on the edge of the woods. He stretched as he got out, scanning the area through his sunglasses as Sasha kicked off her shoes with a sigh of relief and hopped barefoot into the dirt. They linked arms and headed down the hillside into the trees. Darla followed behind, stepping over snagging roots and skirting around stinging plants. The heat seemed to thicken amongst the pines, sweat trickling down her back. Leaves rustled with unseen creatures. A sudden flap of wings startled Darla; she glanced up to see a bird climbing into the air. The chirrup of the crickets was deafening.

  Ahead of her, a set of rusted railings rose out of the undergrowth. Moving quickly, with the ease of someone who had come this way many times before, Frank cut through the weeds and pushed aside a giant fern, revealing a yawning gap in the railings. He ducked down and slipped through, Darla following closely behind. Sasha, taller than both of them and struggling in her skirt, cursed loudly as she caught her blouse on a rusty railing.

  “I told you to bring a change of clothes,” Frank told her.

  “What are you, my mother?” retorted Sasha. She inspected t
he hole in her sleeve. “If anyone asks, I caught it on one of Carmen’s earrings, OK?”

  Frank snickered in reply.

  The plants were even wilder on this side of the railings, and Darla found herself wading through waist-high grass. Gradually a house emerged from the thick greenery. It was a sprawling, dilapidated building with smashed windows, jagged glass teeth jutting up from the sills. Flies hung in clouds among the rusting ceiling fans and rotten balustrades on the second-floor balcony. Nesting wood pigeons fluttered around the eaves, vanishing through the missing roof tiles into the darkness within. Creepers wrapped sinuous green fingers around the walls, trying to drag them down into the earth. The entire building was shrouded in fading grandeur and dying dreams.

  Frank and Sasha went straight to the nearest window, where Darla saw the glass had been cleared from the sill and a crate had been placed on the ground beneath it. This time Sasha took the lead, using the crate as a stepping stone as she hopped through the window. Darla hesitated, glancing up at the building’s grim façade before climbing up on to the sill and disappearing inside.

  It was like plunging into a dank, chill pond. Darla could almost taste the mould in the air inside the house. Browning wallpaper peeled off the walls like dead skin, white rectangles shining where paintings and photographs had once hung. Plants and weeds poked up through the floor, and as they wandered through the mansion’s gloomy corridors Darla had the eerie sensation that she was moving around inside the trunk of some unimaginably vast tree. She stayed close to Sasha and Frank, carefully skirting the splattered bird droppings and rotten holes in the floorboards. Finally they came into a vast dining room, dominated by a long table that was chipped and covered in knife scars. Sasha collapsed into a seat at the head of the table, draping a leg over the mahogany. She produced a small hip flask from her skirt pocket and took a sip.

  “Sasha, it’s still morning!” said Frank, appalled. “Do I need to take you to a meeting?”

  “TGI Friday, Frank,” she replied, raising her flask in a toast.

  He rolled his eyes.

  When Sasha offered her the flash, Darla shook her head. “No, thanks.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  Darla took a seat at the table, the rotten chair groaning and teetering beneath her weight. She ran her hands over her bare arms, trying to brush away the goosebumps.

  “Welcome to Tall Pines,” Sasha announced grandly, throwing out her arms. “Make yourself at home.”

  Darla shivered. “What is this place?”

  “Once upon a time, it was the most luxurious property in the county,” Frank told her. “It belonged to Allan and Madeline West, the first couple of Saffron Hills. This whole town is founded on West money: the mansions in the hills, the school, the hospital. Allan built it all, and then persuaded a bunch of other rich people to come live here. His son Walter went to the West Academy – he was like the Ryan Cafferty of the mid-1990s: wealthy, popular, good-looking. Everything seemed perfect.” Frank smiled thinly. “Then one day they pulled a girl out of the creek. Her name was Crystal – Miss Saffron, 1995. Her skull had been caved in with a blunt instrument. It turned out that she was a classmate of Walter’s, and that he’d invited her up to Tall Pines to take some pictures of her. Only things had gotten a little out of hand: he beat her to death halfway through the shoot.”

  Darla’s stomach lurched. Once more she was staring through a killer’s eyes at a photograph album filled with screaming faces. “But why? Why did he kill her?”

  “At first no one could figure it out. But when the cops searched Walter’s locker at school they found a diary filled with some pretty sick stuff. He wrote pages about trying to photograph beautiful things, only it turned out that he found a dead beauty queen prettier than a live one. After he killed Crystal, Walter started to call himself the Angel Taker, and drew pictures of wings all over his diary.”

  “A dead beauty queen,” Darla repeated faintly. She looked up at Frank. “Everyone said Natalie was going to be the new Miss Saffron, and now she’s… I mean, it couldn’t be the same guy, could it? Walter couldn’t have come back?”

  “Not from where’s he’s gone,” Frank replied. “The cops were on their way here to question him when Walter’s dad found him dangling from a rope under one of the pines out back – I guess Walter knew he wouldn’t get to photograph any more angels in jail. After his funeral Allan and Madeline became recluses, wouldn’t leave Tall Pines. Then, on the tenth anniversary of Walter’s death, they locked themselves in the garage and turned on the car engine. It was two months before anyone found their bodies.”

  “So as you can see, there is some seriously bad voodoo about this place,” said Sasha, taking another sip from her flask. “Which makes it perfect for us.”

  “But if this Walter guy is dead,” Darla asked, “who killed Natalie?”

  Frank laughed. “Jesus, Darla, how should I know?”

  “Maybe we could hold a séance and ask Natalie herself,” Sasha suggested. “Call up the hotline to hell.”

  The table fell silent.

  “What?” Sasha said defensively. “Look, what happened to Natalie was horrible, and I hope they catch the whack-job who did it. Just don’t ask me to start crying and pretending like we were best friends, because we weren’t. Truth was, she thought everyone outside her little circle of friends was some kind of inferior product. You want to know why most of the people in this town are so upset? Because their precious beauty pageant is ruined. Natalie was going to be Miss Saffron just like her mommy before her, and everyone was going to be happy. But it’s not like they can make the contestants wear black swimsuits in mourning, is it?”

  Frank frowned. “Do they even wear swimsuits at pageants now?”

  “Of course not,” she said irritably. “I was trying to make a point. All these pageants are about is putting pretty teenage girls on stage and having a bunch of dirty old men stare at them and judge them. It’s sick.”

  Frank waved dismissively. “You’re no fun sometimes, you know that? It’s harmless! You know what would be fun? You should enter.”

  Sasha stared at him. “Me.”

  “Why not? I think you’d look simply divine in sequins, darling.”

  Darla tried to imagine Sasha standing on stage in a pretty frock, making a speech about world peace. She laughed.

  Sasha gave her a sharp look. “Something funny, Darla?”

  “Not really,” she said. “I just can’t imagine you in a beauty pageant, that’s all.”

  “I’m guessing your family would be experts on girls, wouldn’t they?” said Sasha.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Put it this way: Hopper gave me a pretty thorough inspection when I was waiting outside your house yesterday morning.”

  “You were sunbathing on the hood of your truck!” said Darla. “What was he supposed to do, ignore you? Can we drop it, please?”

  But Sasha didn’t want to drop it. “It seems to me that you’re in denial about your darling daddy,” she said. “Don’t you remember how he talked to me at the record store?”

  “He was just trying to be friendly,” Darla said stubbornly. “He don’t mean nothing by it. You were the one being rude.”

  “It was my fault? He was hitting on me right in front of you!”

  “Stop it! Don’t say that!”

  “He’s a creep!”

  “Go to hell!” shouted Darla.

  Pigeons fluttered up from the rafters in surprise as Darla sprang up from her chair and stormed out of the dining room, her footfalls thudding on the rotting floorboards. She was looking for the window they had climbed through but the labyrinth of corridors confused her – pushing open a door, she found herself at the top of a set of basement steps. Darla went to turn back, only to hear Frank’s voice calling her name from the corridor outside. Closing the door as quietly as possible, Darla crept down the stairs. She needed space, room to think and catch her breath. More than anything, she needed to be where
Sasha wasn’t.

  The basement was wrapped in shadow, a thin ray of sunlight slicing down through a window high up on the wall. Cobwebs gathered in the corners. The room was empty, save for an old desk and a couch in which a family of possums was nesting. Darla flicked the light switch but the bulb stayed dark. There were photographs hanging on the wall near her hand – she brushed the cobwebs away from the frames and found herself staring at a series of eerily beautiful landscapes. Photographs. This must have been Walter West’s old studio. Was this where he had killed Crystal? Almost against her will, Darla’s eyes flicked towards the flagstones, searching for faded bloodstains. She had to remember what Frank had told her – Walter West had been dead for twenty years. But it didn’t make Darla feel any easier about creeping through his old house.

  As she stepped back from the photographs she knocked into a desk, dislodging an object that had been wedged between it and the wall. Crouching down, Darla pulled free a book and wiped the thick layer of dust from the cover. It was a photograph album. Her chest tightened. What if this was like the albums she had seen in her visions, filled with photographs of screaming faces?

  She took a deep breath and opened the album. Her shoulders slumped with relief at the sight of bright teenage faces smiling back at her: in the bleachers at the school football game; sitting on the lawns behind the West Academy; at a pool party in one of Saffron Hills’ mansions. Snapshots of normal, happy lives. But when Darla turned over the page and saw the next photograph, her heart stuttered. A pretty teenage girl in a riding outfit was standing in front of the Saffron Hills Country Club, holding on to a pony’s reins.

  It wasn’t possible. She was imagining it.

  Voices were calling out her name upstairs but the noise was muffled, as though she was underwater. Darla looked at the photograph again. She wasn’t imagining it. She wasn’t confused. She could never confuse this face, with its soft eyes and flowing blond hair. The face of Sidney O’Neill.

  Her mom.

  Chapter Eleven