Darkhouse (Experiment in Terror #1)

by Karina Halle

  “Oh. You didn’t know about his medication?” he mused casually. “Olanzapine is a very powerful antipsychotic and typically intensifies when patients partake in smoking.”

  My heart grew cold. Dex was taking antipsychotics. I almost joked to myself on how they didn’t seem to work very well when I realized the reality of it.

  “Antipsychotic?”

  “Primarily used to treat schizophrenia. You don’t know this man very well, do you?”

  “That’s none of your business,” I snapped and stood up. I fought the wooziness that tried to take me over. I walked hunched over to the doors and opened them.

  I was met with the cold night air. The fire was pretty much contained and, except for a few glowing embers here and there and some leftover strands of foundation, the lighthouse was reduced to a black pile of smoldering mush.

  Uncle Al and Dex stood beside each other, facing the ambulance. When they saw me both their faces lit up.

  Al’s was one of fatherly love and concern. But Dex’s face...I had to look at him with new eyes. I stood still at the base of the ambulance wanting to observe him from a distance.

  His shoved his hands in the pockets of his slick, slightly oversized raincoat, which still had particles of sand sticking to it. I noticed now how it was slightly too big for him, making him look shorter than he was. Dirt had splashed across his black Fluevogs and up on to his grey cargo pants. He stared straight at me, head tilted down in the usual fashion, maybe wondering what I was thinking or doing. His cheekbones cast dark shadows down the sides of his face; his long mouth was closed and twitching slightly, snaking across his jaw. His eyes were intense but curious as they stared back at me, hard little dots searching in his deep-set sockets. His black brows inched toward each other and deepened his omnipresent frown line. The rest of his wide forehead contracted as did the freshly bandaged cut. A longish strand of wet black hair had flopped forward and stuck to it.

  Slowly, he opened his mouth and stuck out his tongue. It was about as large as his mouth and lay flat against his chin. His eyes never changed.

  Jesus. Who was this guy?

  My pulse quickened. I started to feel woozy again.

  “What’s wrong, Perry?” Uncle Al asked, coming for me.

  I shook my head and bent over slightly, hands on my knees.

  “She should go to the hospital, just in case,” I heard Jesse say behind me.

  I slowly turned. He stood on the bumper and stared at Dex. Dex looked back at Jesse, slowly put his tongue back into his mouth, and casually extended his middle finger at him.

  “OK, Perry,” Al said putting his arm around me and not noticing the Dex/Jesse scene. “Let’s take you to the hospital.”

  “I’m not fucking going anywhere!” I cried out, the bitterness in my voice surprising me. Everyone looked shocked. Al took his hand off of my shoulder. Dex remained in the background and put his hand back inside his pocket.

  “All right, we are done here,” Jesse said as he rolled his eyes and slammed the door shut. I let out a sigh of relief as he walked to the front of the ambulance and got in.

  I looked at Al apologetically.

  “I’m sorry, Uncle Al,” I said meekly. “I’m fine, really. I just want to go home. I’m sure Mom will be sending me off to the hospital anyway as soon as she sees this war wound on my head.”

  He sighed but nodded. “OK. You’re old enough to make your own choices, I guess.”

  He looked at both Dex and me. “Come on. I’ve got the truck here, if the boys haven’t already left. I’ll take you back and we can all forget that this...disaster...ever happened.”

  Those were the sweetest words I could have ever heard.

  ***

  Back at the house, I packed up as quickly as I could without overexerting myself. Turns out it was midnight; my iPhone died a horrible death in the flood so I hadn’t known the time. Chalk up an electronic expense for me and another reason why the promotion was so important.

  I called my parents and explained that I would most likely be coming home in the middle of the night but to not wait up for me. Of course, I knew they would. And of course, my father was yelling at me over how irresponsible I was. Thankfully, Al got on the phone and calmed his brother down, explaining mostly everything and leaving out the injured part. I figure my dad asked about Dex, too, because Al said, “She seems to be in good hands. Yes, he’s a trustworthy guy.”

  Speaking of the “trustworthy” guy, Dex had actually been in the bathroom the whole time I talked on the phone. It would have been weird at any other time but after what Jesse had said, I started to worry.

  Was Dex really psychotic? I mean, they wouldn’t call them antipsychotics if he wasn’t. And if he was, what kind of psychotic was he? Schizophrenic? Did he hear voices? Was he suicidal? Was he…dangerous?

  I quietly scooted down the hall and paused outside the bathroom door. I was about to knock when—

  “I’ll be out in a second,” Dex said behind the door, sensing me.

  “Oh...OK,” I said, feeling kind of embarrassed. I stepped back and leaned against the wall. I would just tell him I really had to go.

  The door swung open. He had changed into new clothes and was carrying his duffel bag in one hand. He raised one eyebrow at me, a wry smile creeping on one corner of his mouth.

  “Checking up on me?”

  “No,” I shook my head, hoping I sounded convincing. “I have to go.”

  “There are two bathrooms,” he said, walking past me. I caught the scent of freshly applied aftershave in the air. His face did look smoother; his ‘stache was neatly trimmed.

  I quickly hopped in the bathroom. Now was as good of a time as ever to examine my own face. It was not pretty. Unless you considered the living dead to be pretty. I can say for certain that I did not. My reflection was ghastly.

  I was so white that I could have been transparent. Even my freckles, which normally stood out across my nose, were almost gone as if they were hiding in fright. The mascara that once covered my eyelashes had migrated beneath my eyes. My eyes lacked their usual sparkle; they looked lifeless and dull.

  And my neck was atrocious. The bruises from the kelp, which did suspiciously look like hand prints, were a horrid mix of blue, purple and yellow. I would have to wear a turtleneck tomorrow...and a hat. And sunglasses. I was going to look like Yoko Ono at my meeting. I hoped Frida wasn’t a Beatles fan.

  I sighed, then caught myself. Here I worried about my job when two hours ago I almost lost my life to things that I couldn’t explain or even let myself think about.

  It just didn’t seem real.

  When I emerged I didn’t look any better, but Dex was in the car, waiting to leave. I gave Uncle Al the biggest hug I could manage and told him how thankful I was for everything he did for me this weekend.

  He walked me to the door and just as I was leaving, put his hand gently on my shoulder.

  “Perry,” he said, briefly looking down as if he wasn’t sure how to continue. “I know there’s more to the story. Of what happened tonight. More than anything I am glad you are OK. But if you ever want to talk about it to someone who understands, I’m just a phone call or a car ride away.”

  I gave him the most gracious smile. “Thank you, Uncle Al.”

  And though I knew I might possibly phone him to discuss what happened, there was no way in hell I would return to the Oregon coast for a very, very long time.

  I walked through the midnight air to Dex’s SUV. It felt like ages ago that we had our heart-to-heart on the side of the road. I say heart-to-heart because it was the most I had really talked to Dex and learned something about him. Now, we had the whole car ride back, and even though I had so many things I wanted to ask him, I didn’t know how.

  I opened the door. Dex sat in the driver’s seat fiddling intently with his camera. I threw my bag in the car and climbed in.

  “Is it OK?” I asked hopefully.

  He sucked in the corner of his mouth. ”I don
’t know. The LCD is cracked, but I’m praying that the memory card will be fine.”

  “That’s the same that happened with my camera last week. Lens cracked, but the memory card worked.”

  He nodded in a way that made me question whether he had actually heard me. He tossed the camera behind him into the backseat as if it was completely worthless, put the car into drive and his foot to the pedal.

  Uncle Al’s house, the wild coast, and the wild nightmares disappeared behind us, swallowed by the darkness.

  We didn’t speak for about ten minutes. I could hear Elton John singing “Someone Saved My Life Tonight” very quietly from the speakers; I found the lyrics to be especially poignant.

  I looked up at Dex, his face lightly aglow from the instrument panel. I could see he knew I was looking at him, but he kept his eyes on the road. His eyes looked sad, or maybe just tired.

  “How are you doing?” I inquired, keeping my voice barely above a whisper.

  “Great,” was his answer. As usual, I couldn’t tell if he was being facetious or not. Either way, I got the “don’t talk to me” vibe. I smiled weakly and leaned against the window, the reflections from inside the car making the passing darkness seem abstract.

  I must have dozed off for awhile because when I came to, a small puddle of drool had formed on my right shoulder.

  “You snore,” Dex said.

  Sheepishly, I raised my head and wiped the drool off of me.

  “I drool too,” I added. I eyed the clock: two a.m. I had no idea how I was going to survive the coming day. As I mulled over my plan to act normal at work (and my plan to win them over at the meeting and get the promotion, which so far consisted of just acting enthusiastic and agreeing with everything they said), Dex let out a small sigh.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  I eyed him, surprised at his admittance.

  “For everything,” he continued when I didn’t speak. “This wasn’t the way things were supposed to happen. I mean in Wine Babes I’ve never been attacked by killer grapes, as cool as that sounds.”

  I closed my eyes and leaned back. “It’s not your fault.”

  “Yes. It is my fault. I obviously didn’t think this through. I mean, you’re just a young girl with a promising life ahead of her and I drag you off to some haunted lighthouse. I mean, fuck. What the hell was I thinking?”

  I could see flashes of remorse behind his eyes. My heart ached, but just a little.

  “Obviously, my life isn’t all that promising if I agreed to go off to some haunted lighthouse with you,” I reminded him quickly.

  “And you barely know me,” he continued, not hearing me. “You don’t know me, and I don’t know you, and I convinced you this would be a fanfuckingtastic idea. You almost died tonight. You could have died.”

  I straightened up and leaned closer to him. “You almost died too.”

  Dex shook his head. “I just didn’t realize what we were up against. I’m sorry for making you go up those stairs. I know you wanted nothing more than to get out of there, and I should have let you. And then I should have followed you.”

  “If I really wanted to, I could have gotten past you.”

  “I just...fuck. We should have never gone back there.”

  “Well, we did. And we both decided that. Remember?”

  Dex didn’t look convinced but he didn’t protest either. He fell silent and his mouth was firmly set.

  “I’m afraid to ask what happened to you,” he finally said.

  I was afraid to answer. I didn’t want to recall any of it, even though it was very fresh in my head, as well as on my throat. But I couldn’t keep it all inside either. If I did, you could bet I would need Dex’s pills very soon. Which reminded me, I wanted to ask him about that, but how on earth do you bring up something so personal? By the way, rumor has it that you’re a psycho?

  And so I told Dex exactly what happened in full detail. From the rubber boots Old Roddy was wearing to hearing Dex’s voice when I was being hung out the window to what he had said before I leaped out of the building.

  “ ‘She told me you would listen and that you would come. I’ve been waiting for another like you.’ That’s what he said. I don’t know who ‘she’ is but the only thing that makes sense, if you can call it that, is that he was talking about the lady. Creepy Clown Lady.”

  Dex didn’t say anything, so I attempted to lighten the mood. “And then I gave a fantastic one-liner along the lines of ‘The only thing you’re getting is death’.”

  He didn’t even crack a smile. I wondered when I would see that perpetual smirk again. I was starting to prefer that Dex to this gravely serious one.

  “And that’s what happened,” I added, hoping he would say something.

  He chewed on his lip for a second before saying “You say that so casually, like this happens to you every weekend.”

  “Well, it kind of has.”

  He shot me a look that made me shrink back a little. “I’m taking this seriously, Perry. I wish you would too.”

  “Well, I’m sorry I use humor to get through tough situations. This whole fucking situation is absurd, and I don’t even know how I am supposed to process what just happened, let alone feel it. It’s just so impossible. It doesn’t feel real, and in all honesty, how can it be real? It can’t. It just can’t. It can’t, it can’t, it can’t, it can’t, it can’t, it can’t…” I started laughing at the absurdity of it all. A loud, howling laugh that shook my face and caused tears to run down it.

  A few wires in my brain began to snap. One by one, I could feel my thoughts unraveling as the face of Old Roddy came back, the feeling of my head going through glass, the stickiness of the kelp tentacles, the cold water as it drowned my lungs.

  Snap, snap, snap.

  My emotions were in an out-of-control funnel; my thoughts circled from reality to reality. I kept laughing and laughing and laughing until Dex pulled the car over to the side of the road. He put it in park and flicked on the interior light.

  “Perry?” he said cautiously. He moved his hand over towards my knee.

  I whacked it off impulsively and cackled, “Who’s the crazy one now? You or me?”

  Dex frowned, looking utterly lost. I couldn’t blame him. I had completely lost control.

  “Shhhh, it’s OK,” he whispered and reached for me again. I didn’t hit him this time, though I suddenly had this strong urge to punch him in the face. His eyes widened for a second as if he knew what I was thinking.

  “Perry, calm down.”

  “Calm down?” I spat out. “Calm down? You’re the psychotic one, Dex. Better give me one of your pills then.”

  He pursed his lips, frown line deepening.

  “That’s right!” I exclaimed. “I know what Olanzapine is! When were you going to tell me that I was pairing up with a schizo?”

  I know what I said was mean, but I didn’t care. I laughed away the guilt. I felt this huge surge of energy, like trapped tormenting emotions rising up from my belly. If I stopped laughing, I would probably start screaming.

  He took in what I said without a fuss. It was like he didn’t hear me.

  Instead he turned to face me and moved in closer until his face was right up in mine. I watched him in slow motion. I saw his eyes turn from a flat brown shade to a vivid, sparkling mahogany. His pupils contracted, turning into tiny pricks of black. They turned mean. Very mean.

  “Hey!” he screamed so loudly that my ears felt numb. I could feel tiny droplets of his spit fall on my cheek. The impact of his voice literally stopped my heart. “Get a hold of yourself!”

  I don’t know if you’ve ever had someone scream right in your face, but let me tell you it’s the most terrifying experience. In one action, I felt like I experienced all of the rage that I imagined tore Dex inside. And it was directed at me.

  I stopped laughing. I stopped breathing. I stopped blinking. I stopped moving. Full stop.

  Dex continued to look at me, eyes boring through mine,
with so much power and so much hate it made my stomach queasy. Then he exhaled and looked down. When he looked back up, his eyes were full of apology and remorse again.

  “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I had to.”

  I expected him to move away and give me some breathing room. But he kept his head right there. I assumed he wanted to further torment me, but he looked so...compassionate, such a 180 from two seconds ago, that I knew he was trying to make sure I was all right.

  It reminded me of the film Good Will Hunting when Robin Williams says “It’s not your fault” over and over again to Matt Damon until he snaps and breaks down. I had already snapped. With the tears that started to rush to my eyes, I knew it was time to break down.

  I kept my eyes open and unblinking for as long as I could until they were so full of tears that I had to shut them. Yesterday I was too embarrassed to cry in front of Dex but now I didn’t care at all. And my tears were exactly what he wanted.

  I began to sob and bawl, letting out everything from tonight, everything from last week and probably everything from the last twenty-two years. Dex watched me for a few seconds, then put both arms around my shoulders and gently pulled me into him. I resisted slightly at first, not wanting the fuss, but then just gave up and buried my head into his chest. I was probably getting snot all over him, but I didn’t care.

  He didn’t say anything now to calm me or make me stop crying. He just held me, which was more effective than anything. It made me realize, in the back of my wrecked head, how much I needed affection. That human touch. It’s something you don’t really think about until you’re reminded about how much you are lacking it.

  And now I realized how much I wanted it, needed it, from him. This topsy-turvy medicated man who only entered my life a few days ago. I still didn’t know him but I felt like I didn’t need to. They say people who experience extreme situations together develop an unspoken bond between them. No matter how unsettling it felt to know he was a potential madman, no matter how frustrating it was to deal with him from minute to minute, no matter how much I knew he would go back to Seattle in an hour, there was a line of unseen energy (a bond?) drawing me to him. And selfishly, naively, I hoped he felt it too.