The Darkness Within

by Taylor Henderson

  “Oh, cool.” Westfield High was anything but cool. The school was farther than Montgomery and a lot of the students there hated my school. We had a huge rivalry. Everything between the two schools was a competition and a majority of the people I knew there were stuck-up bigots. “Well, you can tell Gwen if she ever wants to hang out then she can just come knock on my door. I’m usually there, unless I’m with my friend Adrianna. On the rare occasion that I’m not home then she can just leave a message with my mom.”

  David beamed. “That is very kind of you, Claire. I’m sure she will take you up on that offer.”

  “Of course. It’s my pleasure.” I pushed myself up to my feet, preparing to leave. It took me a while just to stand up. It was as if the couch was trying to pull me back down and suck me into its cushiony depths. When I was on my feet, David stood too. He waved his arm out, gesturing for me to lead the way to the door. When he waved his arm, his cuffed sleeve slid up a few inches, showing off a nasty mark on his wrist. The skin was inflamed and red, and I could swear I saw the unmistakable indentions that could only be left by teeth.

  David pulled his sleeve down quickly, eyeing me to see if I had noticed, but I had already flicked my eyes away. My mind was already racing again. Had Gwen done that to him? The bite was so deep it had pierced his skin. My head swam at the thought. How could someone hate their father that much for not letting them leave in the dead of night? Maybe Gwen wasn’t the kind of friend I needed. Not if she was capable of that.

  I walked to the door, my thoughts going wild.

  “Thank you for coming over, Claire. Tell Jasmine I said, ‘Hi’.”

  “Sure thing,” I said, stepping to the side as David twisted the lock and opened the door. He pushed on the screen door just as the sound of something crashing to the ground caught our attention. I whipped my head around, looking toward the basement door where the sound had come from.

  “Shit,” David said, looking angry instantly.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, my eyebrows knitting together in confusion.

  David shook his head. “I have a pest problem,” he growled. He was seething and his face began to turn red as the sound of another object crashing to the ground met our ears. “You should leave. I need to call animal control. Raccoons keep getting inside.” David all but shoved me onto the front porch before he slammed his front door.

  I stood on the porch in shock for a moment before I crouched down and peered through the window by the door again. I watched as a distorted image of David stormed into the kitchen, before he disappeared from view. I hurried over to the other window to get a better view, and watched as David flung his basement door open and descended the stairs.

  I watched the open door, but nothing happened. I listened hard, trying to hear what was going on inside the house but there was nothing. With a sigh, I stepped away from the door and turned to head back to my house. I couldn’t do anything about it if David was a freak like I thought he was. There are plenty of weird people in this world. Being weird isn’t a crime, but with all of the strange incidents that happened whenever he was concerned, I couldn’t help but feel a little worried. There was this hollow feeling inside of me, my gut was telling me that he was hiding something. I just didn’t know whether to ignore my gut or give into my feeling and try to figure out what was going on.

  As I took the stairs down from his porch I remembered the chain rattling noise I’d heard in the basement before. The crashes, along with the angry, red bite mark on his arm, and the scene from two nights ago made my skin crawl at the thought of what might be going on in his house. Something wasn’t right, and I was going to get to the bottom of it. I just needed to talk to Adrianna first.

  Chapter Nine

  Paranoia

  “Lorenzo is coming home to visit at the end of the month,” Adrianna spoke, her voice coming out loud and clear over the phone.

  I twisted a strand of hair around my finger, and continued to stare out the window at David’s house. “Mhm, that's good.”

  Adrianna huffed into the phone. “No it’s not. All he does is pick on me and act like he's in charge.” She paused for a moment, before saying, “Wait, you aren't still into him, are you?” Her tone was accusatory.

  I scoffed. “Not even,” I answered, coming out of my slight daze at her question. “He's not even cute anymore,” I lied. Adrianna’s brother, Lorenzo, was and always had been cute. He was three years older than us and was in his first year of college. I wasn't in love with him anymore like I was at one point, but I don't think I’d ever stop finding him attractive.

  Adrianna breathed a sigh of relief. “Good, because that was so gross. He has a girlfriend now, you know,” she pointed out.

  My eyes focused back on David’s house, looking at every square inch of it. The house really did freak me out. “Good for him.” I sighed into the phone and began twisting my hair around my finger again. “Can we talk about something else?” I asked. I had called Adrianna in hopes of talking about my suspicions about David, but she had instantly dove in and began talking about everything under the sun.

  Adrianna sighed. “Well, I had been meaning to tell you about something that happened in anatomy today,” she noted, her tone changing. There was a hint of something in her voice, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. Unease, maybe?

  I sat up a little straighter, finally looking away from my window. “What happened?”

  Adrianna took a moment to reply. When she did, her breathing was hitched. “Something happened with Ben. It was really strange.”

  I was perfectly still, holding my breath as I waited for her to go on.

  “We dissected a fetal pig in class today,” she continued. “Mrs. Nocera wanted us to remove all of the internal organs, examine them, and then make a chart on paper with their names and leave the correct organ beneath the name. Well, when it was time for her to come around and check our work, I noticed that our chart was missing an organ—the heart.”

  “Did you get points taken off?” I questioned, crossing my legs and bouncing my foot. I didn’t see where she was going with this story.

  “Well yeah, but that’s not the point. The point is that after class ended, Ben offered to walk me to my locker. I didn’t want to be rude, so I accepted.” Her voice lowered an octave, coming out in a whisper. “Claire, he gave me the heart.”

  My foot stopped bouncing mid-air. I froze completely, digesting her words. “He what?”

  “He gave me the heart,” she repeated slowly. “He used an x-acto knife to carve our initials into it. It was so small.”

  I gulped. “Okay, that’s disturbing.”

  “That’s an understatement. I threw up in the bathroom before we walked home. Dissecting the pig was bad enough already.”

  That’s why she was so quiet on our walk home. “You should’ve told me sooner,” I chided. “I could’ve talked to him. I honestly think he means well, he’s just a little socially inept. Not to mention the fact that he’s a guy. Guys our age are gross and don’t think before they act.”

  “I guess,” she mumbled under her breath. Then a little louder she said, “I’m going to try to avoid him from now on. He makes me uncomfortable.”

  “Fair enough.”

  We were both silent for a bit. I shivered at the thought of Ben handing Adrianna the heart. He always had a crooked smile on his face that made his expression seem haunting.

  “Is there anything you want to talk about?” Adrianna asked.

  I hesitated for a moment. “Well, since we were already on the topic of people who make us uncomfortable...can we talk about David?”

  Her response was immediate. “Oh my gosh, seriously, Claire?”

  “Seriously!” I retorted. “How come you get to be unnerved by Ben, but I can’t be suspicious of David?”

  “Um, maybe because David hasn’t done anything to justify your feelings toward him! Can't you just give the poor guy a break? So he likes your mom, that's not a crime! She’s gorgeous.”<
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  “It’s not that,” I said, feeling frustrated that no one else saw how strange he was. How was I the only one picking up on his odd behavior?

  “Then what is it?” she questioned. I could just imagine her with one eyebrow raised and her mouth pinched in the way she does when she's waiting impatiently for something.

  I dropped the cord from my hand and held the phone between my shoulder and my ear as I reached up and shut my window. I didn't want anyone overhearing this conversation. Call me paranoid, but I know when something doesn't click. “I still don't think he checks out. I went over there today, and we were talking, and everything was fine until something fell over in the basement.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, one minute we were having a good conversation, and the next he was all angry and rushing me out of his house. He slammed the door on my face and everything.” I stood up, pacing my room as I thought about earlier. “It was so weird, Ade. It was as if someone flipped a switch and all of his anger hit him at once.”

  Adrianna was silent for a second, probably taking in everything I just said and trying to find a logical explanation for it. “Did he give you a reason for rushing you out?”

  “Raccoons.”

  “Raccoons?” she repeated.

  “Yeah, he said that they keep getting in his house.” I walked back toward my window, staring down at the house again. It was like I was drawn to it or something.

  “Hold on a sec.” She yelled down to her parents in Spanish before returning. “Okay, I'm back. Maybe raccoons do keep getting in. His house is pretty shitty.”

  I let out a breath of laughter at her words. “Maybe, but something feels off. First it was the chains, then it was him fighting with his daughter, and now there’s the crashes from the basement. It’s all too much. I didn't even tell you about the bite marks on his arm yet.”

  “The bite marks?” she questioned, her words coming out slowly.

  “Yeah. I think his daughter bit him.”

  “That’s really strange.”

  “I know.” I stepped away from my window again, this time closing the curtains. If I stared at the house any longer I would undoubtedly have nightmares about it.

  Adrianna breathed into the phone. “Okay, maybe the basement stuff is really just raccoons, and the thing you saw the other night was even more exaggerated because your sleepy mind warped it into something more than it was.”

  I frowned, furrowing my eyebrows deeply even though she couldn't see me. “I know what I saw.”

  “Yeah, yeah, it was just an idea. Hold on.” She began yelling in Spanish again, and this time I heard my name. When she returned, she said, “Okay, I'm coming over. Be there in ten. We can look into David and see if there are any red flags.” She didn't even say bye before she hung up.

  I placed my phone down on the receiver and cleaned my room up a little before she got here. By the time I had straightened up and went to the kitchen to get us some cheese and crackers to snack on, she was here. The doorbell rang and without waiting for me to answer, Adrianna pushed the door open and came inside. Whenever I knew she was coming over I would leave the door unlocked for her, and when she got here she would ring the bell before coming in to be polite. I rounded the corner with the plate full of cheese and crackers as she was locking the door behind herself.

  “Hey,” I said, smiling and extending the plate toward her.

  “Yes, I'm starving,” she groaned before taking a few crackers in her hand. She never ate the cheese, but I was okay with eating the cheese by itself so it worked out.

  “I figured that was part of the reason you came over.”

  She smirked, pushing her sunglasses up into her hair. The pink stripe was fading into a bleached line in. “Mom hasn't gone grocery shopping yet. It's like she's trying to starve me.” Adrianna frowned before stuffing two crackers in her mouth.

  I laughed and stared down at her toothpick thin legs. “It's working.”

  “So funny.” She feigned laughter while chewing her crackers, looking anything but amused at my joke. “Come on.” I followed her up the stairs and back into my room where she pulled out my desk chair and plopped down in front of the computer. I set the plate on my desk and kneeled next to her. “Let's get to work. I've always wanted to be a spy.” She winked at me.

  I rolled my eyes and watched as she got to work, signing into my computer and pulling up an Internet page.

  “Where should we start?”

  Adrianna began typing instantly. “Let’s start by searching his name.” She pulled up Google and typed in David. “What’s his last name?”

  I furrowed my brows, trying to remember if he’d even mentioned his last name. If I couldn't remember it then this whole search was going to end before it even began. I thought back to the day David moved in. He had introduced himself as David Greer. “Greer,” I answered.

  Adrianna’s fingers danced over the keyboard as she typed it in and then clicked search. After a few seconds, a bunch of different links loaded. We clicked on each one, not finding any that led to information about our David Greer. Once we had gotten to the bottom of the second page, Adrianna said we should try searching something else.

  “What next?” I asked, shifting positions to get more comfortable.

  “We’ll check social media sites. If David has a teenage daughter then she’ll be on Facebook. Maybe even David has one.” Adrianna searched Facebook for Gwen Greer and David Greer, but none of the results were correct. I didn't know what Gwen looked like now, but I knew she was blonde and from Ohio, which cancelled out every girl who came up in the people search on Facebook. After spending over a half an hour just searching for their names and pairing it with Ohio, we still hadn't found anything. “What else do you know about them?” Adrianna asked, munching on another cracker.

  I bit my lip, trying to think. Absolutely nothing came to mind. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my Chapstick, rolling it onto my lips and pocketing it again before saying, “Nothing that will help us stalk him online.”

  Adrianna pouted. “No social security or passport identification numbers?”

  I rolled my eyes at her question, and she laughed. Then she slid back from my chair and said, “Hey, at least we tried.”

  “Yeah, but we didn't find anything,” I pointed out.

  Adrianna shrugged, pulling the sunglasses from her hair and setting them on my desk. She began twisting her hair up into a high bun. “We don't have enough information.”

  “I know,” I responded, pacing my room again. “We need more information,” I said slowly, as I came to a stop in front of my window. I stared at the curtains that were concealing my view of David’s house. “I need to go back to his house, but this time when he’s not there.”

  Adrianna leveled me with a look. “You can't be serious.”

  I nodded, already thinking of ways to get inside and find out what David was hiding. “Dead serious.”

  Chapter Ten

  Breaking and Entering

  The wind whistled through my open window, tickling my skin and sending chills down my spine. Maybe it wasn’t the wind causing the chills, but the anticipation of what was going to happen soon. I stood near my window, peering outside to check and see if David’s car was in the driveway. “He’s still here,” I groaned into the receiver.

  “I thought you said he leaves at seven every night?” Adrianna questioned. “It’s almost eight now…” The skepticism was loud and clear in her voice. She thought this was a bad idea, and I didn’t blame her for that. There were probably better ways to go about finding out information about David, but this was the only one I could think of. By searching for information in his house, I could find what I was looking for without him getting suspicious or risking being lied to. Besides, I wanted to see for myself what he was really hiding in his basement and why he’d been so jumpy when I asked to see his photography.

  Sighing, I turned away from the window and went to plop down on my bed
. “He does! I don’t know what’s taking him so long.”

  “Do you know where he goes? How long it takes him to get back? Are you sure his daughter isn’t home?” Her questions came at me like rapid fire. If I was being honest, I hadn’t really put a lot of thought into this mission. I had been watching him for the past few days and all I knew was that he left every night around seven o’clock and that I’d have enough time to get in and have a look around. I just wanted to find out what he was hiding and then get out unscathed.

  Instead of answering her questions, and then having to hear her try to convince me that this was a bad idea for the umpteenth time, I answered her question with a question. “Do you have no faith?”

  Adrianna blew out a breath of air into the phone. “I just have a bad feeling about this, Claire. You hardly know this man and now you’re planning on going inside his eerie, little house alone, and at night?” I could just picture her shaking her head in disbelief. “Eres una chica loca,” she mumbled under her breath.

  I rolled my eyes at her words. I didn’t speak Spanish, but I had picked up a few things from being around her and her family. “I’m not crazy. I have to make sure Mom isn’t cozying up to some weirdo. We know absolutely nothing about this guy. He claims to have a daughter, but the only girl I’ve ever seen was at night when she was trying to escape. How do we know he’s not running some illegal prostitution ring from his basement? What if that girl wasn’t even his daughter, Ade?”

  She scoffed. “All the more reason for you not to go inside.”

  “Well, I’m going,” I huffed. She didn’t understand because she hadn’t experienced David’s weird behavior first hand like I had. Plus, he wasn’t interested in her mother.

  Outside my window, the sound of a car roaring to life caught my attention. I jumped off of my bed, practically running to the window. David’s gray sedan was backing out of the driveway. I gripped my cell phone tighter, forgetting that it wasn’t as durable as my house phone and would probably bend if I squeezed it any tighter. My heart hammered in my chest at the thought of what I had to do next. Planning to go inside David’s house, alone, at night, was much easier than actually going through with it. I took a deep breath to calm my nerves. I was not going to chicken out. “He left,” I said, my voice coming out in a whisper. If it was any louder it would have come out shaky and she would have been able to tell exactly how nervous I was.