GARDENS OF NIGHT

by Greg F. Gifune

  It wasn’t until she came through the door and joined him in the kitchen that Marc realized Brooke had had far more to drink than he’d originally thought. She blinked rapidly as her eyes adjusted to the lower light in the house, put a hand up to her forehead like a lookout and said, “Hi. Why is it so dark in here?”

  “Hi. It’s not dark.”

  “Seems dark,” she said, tossing her keys on the table and letting her bag slide from her shoulder onto the back of a kitchen chair. “Think I got a bit of a burn.”

  He watched as she reached up and gently rubbed the back of her neck, and it occurred to him that she still looked so young. In stores teenagers or twenty-somethings often referred to him as sir, which always made Marc feel old. He didn’t feel like a sir, he felt like a contemporary. But they never did that to Brooke. She usually got Miss – despite the wedding band and diamond – or even better, no moniker at all, as if she were still an equal, a member of the in crowd who didn’t need a title or the polite respect reserved for one’s elders. What we see, he’d thought at the time, is not always what’s really there.

  It wasn’t clear to him when or how this had happened. He had no memory of a single event or even a slow slide into such things. Instead it was as if one day the veil had been removed without his knowledge, revealing the truth behind it for the world to see. Unaware, he’d ventured forth, thinking it still in place. What had become of the cool and strength of his youth, the confidence and feelings of indestructibility? He still felt it, maybe even still believed it, but he’d become a paper tiger without even knowing it. He was a middle-aged married man working in an office supply store. Certainly nothing wrong with that, it was honest work for honest pay, but hardly the stuff of cutting edge cool. He was a good man, a good husband, a good worker. Wasn’t he? Brooke wasn’t so different, really. She was a married, middle-aged teacher, for God’s sake, how had she managed to retain her sense of self and convince the world of its continued relevance? He wasn’t jealous, just unable to understand why he’d been so completely severed from those things. Had he done it himself? Had he given them up as a means of survival – necessity – in an environment where such traits couldn’t continue to exist, much less thrive? Or had he been robbed while sleepwalking through life, his essence stolen the way everything else would be stolen in the months to come? And if so, who was the thief?

  Fate… Destiny…

  And then, in an instant, standing in their kitchen, for the first time Marc had begun to wonder if he was losing Brooke too. Her body was one most women half her age would’ve killed for. Her stomach was still flat and tight, sexy, her legs shapely and taut. If anything, she’d improved with age.

  He wasn’t entirely sure what he felt in that moment. A bit of annoyance at how long she’d been gone, the condition she’d come home in and the outfit she’d been gallivanting around in, perhaps. Yet, she looked so sexy and beguiling he couldn’t be angry with anyone but himself for his own weakness when it came to her.

  It was hardly the end of the world or an enormous issue, but he couldn’t help but notice how the white bikini top was still damp and left nothing to the imagination. She may as well have been topless for what little it managed to conceal. Next he focused on the soles of her feet as she strolled across the kitchen to the adjacent bathroom. Black as tar. Odd, if she’d merely walked from the beach to her car and from her car to the house. He trailed behind, stopped in the open doorway and leaned against the casing as Brooke let her shorts drop to the floor, stepped out of them then peeled down her bikini bottoms and lowered herself onto the toilet. “Had a bit to drink, huh?” he asked, feeling more like her father than her husband.

  As she began to pee she chuckled softly. “You think?”

  “Probably shouldn’t have been driving.”

  “Oh, I’m fine,” she said, waving him off dismissively. “God, lighten up.”

  The wilder, rebellious side of Brooke was one he had seldom seen outside of controlled situations of which he was part. But on that day she’d drifted off into behavior that had apparently awakened her wilder side without him, and that was something new. Still, he’d thought, it was just a day at the beach with some girlfriends, maybe he was overreacting.

  “Noticed you got the lawn mowed,” she said. “Looks nice.”

  “Yeah, thanks, I – Brooke is everything all right?”

  She wiped, stood up, and rather than pulling her bottoms back on, pushed them the rest of the way off and kicked them aside. “Of course,” she said, yanking back the shower curtain. “Why?”

  He’d never before suspected infidelity, and didn’t feel this warranted such concerns, but clearly something was out of kilter with his wife and he needed to find out what it was. “You just don’t seem like yourself.”

  “I had a bit more to drink than I should have and sat out in the hot sun all day, made me a little goofy. It’s no big deal, Marc.” She turned on the water, pulled the clip from her hair and placed it on the sink. “Let me shower, then we can do dinner. There’s hamburger in the fridge. Feel like firing up the grill?”

  He nodded; watching as she removed her top and stepped into the shower. Looking back at him, she smiled. Beautiful as it was, there was something different about it, something forced. Like a vampire running from the light and hoping to hide until the metamorphosis was complete, Brooke was slowly returning to her usual self but not quite there yet. Still grinning, she pulled the curtain closed then peeked out at him. “Or you could always get in here with me and we’ll worry about dinner later.”

  Despite his attraction and love for her, what he remembers so clearly is how his body and mind absorbed the pain of that moment. His pain. And hers.

  When he stepped into the shower and wrapped his arms around his wife, he noticed the black staining the bottoms of Brooke’s feet had begun to wash free, swirl and flow to the drain like ink. It was as if some diseased and decayed part of her was escaping, fleeing her body.

  Now, when Marc remembers that day, he knows it was something else. Not a part of her but rather a foreign body, a parasite fleeing the scene and taking with it unspoken fears, the curse of complacency and the shelter of alternate personas from separate realities.

  Are any of us exactly the same when no one, or someone else, is looking?

  Later, after everything had happened, there had been a few brief quiet moments amidst the chaos. One moment in particular comes to him whenever he remembers that summer afternoon: the first time he and Brooke had been alone in the house together since he’d returned from the hospital. It was a remarkably quiet afternoon, bright but cloudy. He’d stood before one of the bedroom windows, watching the street. She remained in the bedroom doorway, wringing her hands and trying, he was sure, to think of something – anything – to say. There had been talk of moving, of course, of how returning there was not healthy for either of them. But they couldn’t simply pick up and leave. They had a mortgage, responsibilities. Brooke had spoken with a real estate agent but nothing had been settled. There were simply parts of the house they no longer went to. Closed doors and sealed areas to be ignored and never spoken of.

  Marc knew the woman from that summer day was dead, murdered right before his eyes. And as phantoms spoke to him, filling his head with things he could not yet comprehend, he was left to guess at what still remained, and to question how much of who they’d been before was real.

  “Were you happy?” he asked.

  When she gave no answer he’d turned from the window. Brooke stood in the doorway, her face unusually drawn and pale.

  “Before,” he pressed, “were you happy?”

  She answered quietly, her voice a whisper. “Weren’t you?”

  * * * *

  The car barrels along the rural road, heading directly into waves of darkness. Within moments night has enveloped them and the rain has evolved into a full-blown storm. Thunder rolls, and in the distance, enormous bolts of lightning crackle and split the sky in brilliant bursts of blue a
nd white.

  “Christ,” Spaulding mutters. He switches the wipers to high but it doesn’t help. “An infestation of locusts and we’ll pretty much have the whole Biblical Apocalyptic weather thing covered.”

  “You don’t believe in any of that,” Brooke reminds him. “Remember?”

  “Thus my amazing wit in relation to the topic.”

  “Slow down a little,” she says, looking back at Marc nervously before returning her attention to what little of the road she can see. “The last thing we need is an accident out there.”

  “I’ve got this,” Spaulding tells her, though he does slow the car a bit.

  Marc remains quiet amidst the storm, huddled in the backseat with his nightmares of Dr. Berry and the hospital. His eyes roll to white.

  Tell me about the strange people you saw the other night, Marc.

  I don’t think they were people.

  As in not human?

  Not sure. They were covered in dark clothing and hoods.

  If they weren’t human what were they?

  I don’t know. They almost looked like… nuns.

  Nuns are human.

  Yes, but they weren’t like any nuns I’ve seen before. Not… exactly...

  Were you dreaming?

  I was wide awake.

  Sometimes we have waking dreams.

  This is something else.

  But you’re not sure what?

  No.

  Had you ever seen them before?

  Never.

  And have you seen them since?

  No.

  Where were you when you did see them?

  The rec room, just before nightfall. They were on the edge of the grounds.

  Did anyone else notice them there?

  Not sure. I don’t… I don’t think so.

  Did they try to communicate with you in any way?

  They didn’t have to.

  What were they doing?

  Just standing there… watching…

  What do you suppose they wanted?

  Me.

  “We don’t want to miss that turn off for the chalet or we’re liable to spend hours on these back roads,” Spaulding says, his voice snatching Marc back. “They all look alike.”

  Marc’s eyes slide open as lightning explodes up ahead, illuminating the night just long enough for him to see the same hooded figures in black standing in the forest on either side of them. He closes his eyes and is met by visions of two plump black spiders tangled together in battle. The violence is instinctual, primal, void of conscience. Pure. Even as they kill each other, Marc hears their messages ringing in his head.

  Blood consecrates… fire and water, passage…

  His hands clench to fists. Something’s coming. He can feel its fear.

  Suddenly Brooke screams. A large dark blur vaults across the windshield, its form cutting the headlights just long enough to reveal a flash of fur and hooves.

  “Holy shit!” Spaulding jerks the wheel as Brooke screams again, this time bracing her arms against the dash as the car spins out. “What the hell was that?”

  Tires screech above the din of thunder and rain, and the world whirls, an out-of-control carnival ride as the car skids sideways along the pavement, headlights knifing through darkness in arcing slashes.

  Spaulding struggles with the wheel and pins the breaks. He is fast enough to prevent them from slamming into the oncoming trees, but too late to stop the car from falling into a ditch between road and forest, finally jerking to a stop and coming to rest at an angle. The violence of the stop slams his head into the window. As the safety glass cracks and smashes, Brooke ducks away, reflexively shielding her face with her hands. But she too is thrown from her seat and crashes into Spaulding, who flops up into an upright position, his face sprayed with rain and wounds that have already begun to bleed and bruise.

  The last thing Marc sees as he flies across the backseat toward the driver’s side door is his unconscious wife falling back into her seat, her body lifeless as a ragdoll.

  In the murky fog he descends into, Marc sees himself watching the night through the window. Somewhere beyond his range of sight, the deer that ran in front of the car is now safely on the far side of the road and hidden in the dark forest. It stops, looks back at the car. Marc nods to the animal and it turns and lopes away. It has done what was asked of it. Or perhaps, as with so much else, the deer is not at all what it appears to be.

  A single whispered word drifts through the night and finds him.

  Verdandi.

  And then, in stillness, there is only a driving rain assaulting the roof, the sound of labored breath, and the slow approach of several hooded figures, their black robes barely discernible in the darkness.

  Nine

  Although he doesn’t yet fully comprehend why, Marc now realizes getting out of the car was a horrible mistake. “I’m sorry,” he tells the man in his driveway, “what did you say?”

  The man continues to stare at him, his towering form dark, sinister and draped in closing shadows. At closer range he appears to be in his late forties or early fifties. Gray stubble dots his chin and pockmarked face. “Didn’t say a word,” he answers; voice raspy, part whisper, part snarl.

  Marc smiles involuntarily and shuffles about as an excuse to glance behind him at the car. Another man, this one shorter, wider and considerably younger appears, stepping through the shrubbery on the far side of the driveway. There is something in one of his mitt-like hands but Marc cannot see what it is. Heart hammering his chest, for a brief second Marc’s eyes meet Brooke’s, who is turned in her seat and watching him, still unaware that another man has moved in behind them. “Well,” Marc says, stepping back and to the side so he can keep both men in his sights, “what is it I can do for you guys?”

  Brooke, he thinks, lock the door. Lock the door, baby, lock the door.

  “You can gimme that ring of keys for a start,” the big one says.

  It takes Marc a moment to sort through the mounting uneasiness and confusion before he realizes what the man’s talking about. His keys are in his hand but he has no memory of having taken them with him when he got out of the car. Instinctually, and without looking at them, his fingers feel for the longest key they can find. He pushes it to the front, holding it nonchalantly between his knuckles like a weapon. “Look, what’s this all about? Who are you? What do you want?”

  An odd but familiar sound to his left…

  Marc looks quickly. The stout man has opened the car door and is motioning for Brooke to get out. Marc starts toward the car but in his peripheral vision sees the bigger man moving with him. He stops, not wanting these men any closer to them than they already are. The man halts with him and again Marc turns a bit so he can see everyone. “Get away from her,” he snaps, pointing to himself while holding the squat man’s gaze. “Deal with me, leave her out of this. Now what the hell’s going on?”

  The short one steps back from the car so Brooke can get out, motioning at her with the thing in his hand. Is it a gun? She immediately looks to Marc, her confusion giving way to terror. She speaks his name, he’s certain of it, but he barely hears her.

  “It’s OK,” Marc says, unsure if he’s speaking to Brooke, the men, himself or all three. Robbery, he thinks, they’re here to rob us. Yes, but he has no idea what these men have truly come to take. This sort of thing doesn’t happen in their quiet little town. They must be escaped convicts or drug addicts desperate for a fix, something along those lines, he thinks. “What is it you want, the car?”

  The younger man laughs. It is a depraved and unpleasant sound that causes Brooke to take a step away from him, arms folded over her chest, face barely able to contain her fear. As she moves, even though she’s several feet away, he catches a whiff of her cologne. Marc reaches a hand out to her, signaling her to come to his side, but the man puts a hand on her shoulder. She squirms away and out from under it as Marc again moves toward them. “Hey, keep your fucking hands off her.”

 
It is then that he realizes the thing in the man’s hand is, in fact, a gun, some sort of semi-automatic pistol. He’s certain now, because it is leveled and pointed directly at him. Marc has never had a gun pointed at him before and the reality of what it could do to him at such close range is sobering and horrifyingly real. This isn’t a movie or a television show, some mindless shoot-‘em-up he can watch from the safety of his couch. He raises his hands awkwardly.

  “Put your hands down,” the tall one says.

  Marc does. “We don’t want any trouble with you guys,” he tells them. “This doesn’t need to get out of hand. You want the car, take it. We don’t have a lot of cash but you can have whatever we’ve got. We have a few credit cards too. Take them.” He holds the key ring out for him, a peace offering. “OK?”

  “We want something we’ll take it. Don’t need your permission.”

  Marc forces himself to look back into the big man’s diseased eyes. Something passes between them in that moment but he can’t be sure exactly what it is. He pulls the phone from his belt and tries to dial 911, but in one quick motion, the younger man steps forward, swats the phone from his hand then jams the gun against Marc’s chest with enough force to knock the air from him.

  “Who you think you’re calling, you fucking faggot?”

  As pain shoots through his ribs, Brooke again tries to get to him. The man stops her a second time, clamping a beefy hand on her shoulder before she can take more than a step. With a resigned look that can only be helplessness, she doesn’t even try to break free of him this time, but instead looks to the ground, her shoulders slumping forward in what she now understands is defeat.