Rise the Dark

by Michael Koryta

  “I didn’t expect you so soon,” she said. She was holding a metal bucket filled with ice and four glistening bottles of Dixie beer.

  Mark nodded at them and said, “Brand loyalty, I see.”

  “What? Oh. Dixie. Right. No, that’s just my preference. I was going to go for a walk. Shall we walk and talk? I prefer to conduct readings in the house, but you’re not here for a reading. You’re here for her.”

  “Her?”

  “Your wife,” Dixie Witte said simply. “Did you think I wouldn’t recognize your name? Honestly, I’ve wondered what took you so long. I’m afraid that she has too.”

  Mark couldn’t think of anything to say to that, because there was an element of it that seemed like the truth.

  “Let’s walk,” Dixie said after a pause. “We aren’t going far, but the energy is better. I’ll need good energy for this talk. You understand,” she said, handing him the bucket. “Here. Carry this, please.”

  She headed down the street with a confident sway of her slim hips. She kept her stride fast enough to stay a full step ahead of Mark as he followed, holding the metal bucket, which sloshed water from the melted ice over his hands and numbed his fingers. Everything was still and silent and the lush smells of the oranges and rhododendrons were everywhere. In front of the moon, the scudding remnants of the storm clouds broke, re-formed, and then separated again like wet cotton.

  They passed beside a still lake, not unlike the one into which Mark had thrown Myron Pate’s keys earlier, but Dixie didn’t stop or slow. They looped away from the park, went up the road toward the Cassadaga Hotel, and then they left the pavement and walked into a small garden.

  “Medicine Wheel,” she said.

  Mark froze. Every muscle tensed; every nerve hummed. He could hardly breathe.

  “What did you say?”

  “That’s what this park is called.” She sat on the low back of a small stone bench, her feet resting on the seat.

  Mark looked around the dark park and tried to find his natural voice, one that didn’t betray the eerie spark he’d felt. “Officially?”

  “What do you mean, officially? That’s its name; I didn’t make it up. There’s a plaque that says it.” She shrugged. “What’s it matter to you?”

  What did it matter to him? He looked at her and thought about a flat mountain summit in the Bighorn range in Wyoming where rocks were laid out in twenty-eight piles that matched the lunar cycle, rocks that had been there for hundreds of years, their origin unknown but still lined up perfectly with the sunrise of the summer solstice. Rocks that were sacred to tribal nations from all over the West and where people still came daily to honor their own mix of gods, leaving behind feathers and brightly colored cloths and bits of bone and even the hair of the dead. His mother had been arrested there when she’d shown up and tried her Nez Perce spirit-guide act.

  That had been one of the more lasting shames in a childhood full of them, but it was also one of the most vivid, because he’d experienced something in that spot. Something not understood, only felt. He had felt, standing on that windy peak and watching people speak in unknown tongues and worship in ways he didn’t comprehend, that he was a part of something beyond himself.

  And then the rangers came for his mother, and they brought handcuffs. He would never forget the eyes of the grieving couple she’d been working with.

  Now, twenty-five years later and three thousand miles away, he shook his head and said, “It’s a strange name, that’s all,” and advanced to the bench where Dixie Witte was sitting. Something metal glittered in her hand and for an instant Mark thought, Knife, before he realized it was a bottle opener. She beckoned with her free hand, and he set the bucket down in the grass and passed her a sweating bottle of beer. She popped the cap and handed it to him and then he gave her another, which she opened and kept. She looked at him with a sad smile.

  “I knew you’d come,” she said. “It was a matter of time, that’s all. You weren’t ready before, were you? You had to get ready. In another place, maybe.”

  “Something like that. I didn’t see the point, early on. The police were interviewing you plenty, and I read all of their transcripts.”

  “The police asked the wrong questions.”

  “Oh? What should they have asked?”

  She didn’t answer right away. She drank some of the beer and then said, “Sit.”

  “I’m good.”

  “No. You’re putting a shadow on the road. Sit down.”

  Why the shadow mattered, he had no idea, but he sat. He took the actual bench, so that Dixie was sitting above him, perched up by his right shoulder. He didn’t like that; he liked to be able to see her, to have the best vantage point and the freest movement possible. That was a consistent desire for Mark. Some would call it obsessive-compulsive, but he called it practical. Wild Bill Hickok didn’t get shot until he broke his own rule and sat with his back to the door.

  Dixie Witte said, “Your wife had death all around her that afternoon.”

  Mark didn’t speak, didn’t move.

  “You, um…you were able to see this,” he finally said, thinking of a hypnotist he’d known in Indiana and trying to be accepting of things he knew better than to believe. To be tolerant of them, at least. That wasn’t so much to ask, but still, his own wife hadn’t thought he was capable of it on the day she’d made her drive to this place.

  “Yes,” Dixie said. “Death arrived with her. It was very close. Unnerving, because I’d felt that before, but always in situations when it was anticipated. Home visits, usually, dealing with the terminally ill. Those things. But your wife, she was so vibrant. Her body was strong, her spirit was clean. Illness was not present.”

  Mark had nothing to offer to that.

  “I was relieved that she didn’t ask for a reading,” Dixie said. “Because I knew what I’d have to tell her. Then she told me the purpose of her visit, and I made a mistake. I’ve regretted it every day since. I mean that. Not one day has passed that I have not thought of her with regret.”

  “You and me both,” Mark said. “I understand my regrets, Dixie. What are yours?”

  “I let her leave without a warning.”

  “What would you have said? What would the warning have been?”

  “That death was close. Perhaps she would have laughed and gone on her way. I don’t know. But if I’d said it? Perhaps even if she didn’t take me seriously, it would have lingered in her mind just enough. The words linger, and sometimes, the words affect choices. And so I think of her, and I wonder, would she have had her guard up? Would it have mattered?”

  “Yes,” he said. His voice was scarcely audible.

  Dixie looked pained. “She had that quality. Skeptical but not aggressively so. That was something you shared, of course. You both wanted to believe in challenging things, but you kept that desire secret.”

  “I just need facts, Dixie. Not mysticism.”

  “You’re not going to succeed with that attitude, and you already know that. If what you’ve experienced recently hasn’t taught you that, what will?”

  There was a tight tingle at the back of Mark’s skull, and he had a sudden vision of an accused murderer, Ridley Barnes, vanishing into dark cave waters, and he heard an echo of a hypnotist’s voice, revenants of the last case he’d worked, an experience that had taught him more than he’d wished to learn. He gave a small shake of his head, and Dixie watched him knowingly.

  “You don’t care for coincidence, do you?” she said.

  “No.”

  “But you don’t believe in fate either.”

  “No.”

  “Do you realize there are no other options?”

  “Sure there are.”

  She shook her head. “It’s either coincidence or fate, Markus. You’re going to have to decide.”

  “I don’t think my wife was fated to die here. I think someone made a choice to kill her.”

  “Of course. But there’s one element in the mix that you
do believe in already. At your core.”

  “And what might that be?”

  “Purpose,” she said. “You believe in purpose. You believe that it all fits, that opposing forces will find balance, and that your role in all of it matters.”

  She put her left hand over the top of his right. Her eyes had the tender but firm expression of a good mother assuring her child that there were no monsters, and it was time to trust the dark and get some rest.

  She said, “You are correct, Markus. Your role in all of it matters. It will matter—and it already did.”

  Her touch put an electric heat through him that he wanted to deny, but he didn’t move his hand away. She was leaning forward, a posture that pressed her breasts high against her tank top.

  “The answers you need won’t come from me,” she said. “You’ve got to believe that. But I can still provide them.”

  “How does that work?” Mark said. His voice sounded the way steel wool felt.

  “They’ll come from your wife,” she said. Then she squeezed his hand tighter. “I’ll need to let her enter me, do you see? Once she makes contact…I become the conduit. And you’ll have all that you want then.”

  She leaned closer, her chest nearly touching his face. “You don’t want to believe in that, I know. It’s not your way. But you’ll have to. I can’t tell you anything about Garland Webb. I can’t tell you anything about what happened. But Lauren can. Of course she can.”

  Mark was silent. She rubbed her thumb lightly over the back of his hand, and when she spoke again, her voice had the same caressing feel.

  “I’m a channel, Markus. A conduit for energy. When we return to the house, the rest will be your choice, not mine. If you want the truth, you’ll need to let me open myself for Lauren. And once I have…you’ll need to believe that she’s within me. Will you be able to do that?”

  “I’ll try.”

  She nodded and squeezed his hand again. “That’s all that you can do. So let’s try together, shall we? We’ll go back to the house, and we’ll find your wife.”

  She released his hand and climbed down from the bench, and he rose and followed her back through the moonlit streets.

  11

  The big house was dark and there was light in the windows of the guesthouse behind it, where Mark expected to go, but Dixie led him up the porch of the old home.

  “I thought this was Myron’s,” he said. “Your tenant. The man in the big truck.”

  She frowned. “My tenant lives there.” She pointed to the guesthouse. She used a key to turn the ancient lock, then pushed the door open and smiled reassuringly at Mark.

  “You’ll need to accept the darkness.”

  “What?”

  “It helps. Trust me on this. We can have candlelight, but nothing more. Not if you want to hear from your wife. From Lauren.”

  The way she said the name was musical, and it hurt him. I take thee, Lauren…

  She hooked one index finger through his belt loop and tugged him forward. “Don’t be scared, now.”

  In truth, he was a little scared. Everything, from the sound of the lock ratcheting back to the smell of the place, age-old dust and mildew, was unappealing, but there was more to it too. Sparks of concern, flickers at the edge of his consciousness like orbs.

  Bad energy.

  Mark told himself that the sources of that energy were pretty damn clear—when you blended Myron Pate and Garland Webb and this strange town, how could the house feel anything but bad?

  That was to intellectualize it, though, and as Mark stepped inside that house with Dixie Witte, there was nothing intellectual or rational about the negative charge he felt; it was pure emotion, something primal, something that would have told his ancient ancestors, You need to run now.

  Just in front of them a staircase led to the second floor, a window at the landing illuminating them. To the left a living room stretched out and blended into a dining room. Dixie hadn’t turned on any lights and the furniture stood around them in shadows. Then she slipped away from him and in seconds was on the landing halfway up the stairs.

  “Markus?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Coming.”

  The stairs creaked. The wood felt soft, yielding. Dixie Witte waited on the landing, and Mark was glad, because there she looked nothing like Lauren. Then she took another step away, into the darkness, and in silhouette she could have passed for his wife once more.

  Were you here, Lauren? Were you ever inside this house?

  He dearly hoped not. He knew that she hadn’t been killed here, but all the same, he prayed she had never been inside. It was that kind of place.

  From the landing, he noticed what he thought at first were odd shadows on the walls. Then he realized they were actually paintings, and when he leaned close enough, he saw that the pictures had been painted directly onto the wall. The ancient plaster was the only canvas.

  The paintings were strange symbols. Mark couldn’t make them out very well in the dark, but they seemed heavy on circles and triangles. Masonic symbols? He leaned closer to the wall, trying to identify the shapes. Not Masonic symbols, or at least not any he’d seen before. The triangles blended into a circle with what appeared to be a spiral at the center. In the uneven moonlight, the spiral drew the eye and made Mark feel suddenly dizzy. He put a hand against the plaster to steady himself.

  Dixie Witte came back down the steps, took his belt loop again, and let her body press against his. When she spoke, she reached up so that her lips were next to his ear.

  “She’s close to us now, Markus. I can feel her. It’s so special. I can’t explain just how special it is. But if you can trust, if you can open yourself to the energy…you’ll feel her too. Are you able to trust?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Don’t try, just believe. Soon my energy will cease, and hers will replace it. You’ll know when it happens. You’ll feel her within me.”

  The house felt too hot, with none of the fresh breezes scented with oranges to cool him here. He wondered if she’d paid the boy, the strange boy who spoke of the dead. Fifty cents if I do the whole tree, he’d said. Someone cut off his hands. Put them in a cigar box, he’d said. You ever seen something like that?

  There was sweat on Mark’s forehead and he was breathing hard, as if the stairs had been a laborious climb. Dixie moved her hand to his forehead and wiped off the beads of perspiration gently. Her hand felt cool and wonderful. He didn’t want her to step away. If anything, he wanted her to come closer, press tighter.

  You’ll feel her within me.

  What he felt was sick. Disoriented and dizzy. Were there no fans in this damn house, no open windows? It was like a tomb.

  “Trust,” Dixie Witte breathed in his ear. “You’ve got to trust.” Then she stepped away again, heading up the next flight of stairs. “She’ll have the answers for you. She knows if it was Garland Webb. She knows, Markus. She’s the only one who does.”

  He climbed after her, sweating freely now. At the top of the stairs Dixie turned toward a room that was on the side of the house facing away from the moonlight, which left it in total darkness. Mark followed her in and his sense of claustrophobia rose to new heights. The room was small but it was also blacked out, with thick curtains over the windows, and smells of sage and other incense hung heavy in the air. Cloying and unpleasant, nothing like those cool orange-scented breezes in the yard. He thought of the strange boy again and wondered if he should ask about him. She would know who he was, who had told him that story about the man named Walter with the severed hands. Maybe it had been Dixie. She certainly seemed right for the part. Or maybe one of the people who’d passed through, the angry people. They come and they go, the boy had said.

  “We’ll try to make contact with her now,” Dixie said. “With Lauren.” She stepped close to him and then, in a strange and sudden motion, she slid down to her knees and took his hands, gripping them tightly, bowing before him. “Close your eyes and trust. You’re resisting. Y
ou’re not open yet. Just trust.”

  He could barely make out her shape. The room was that dark. Cave dark, he would have said once, before he got a lesson in what cave dark really was. She held his hands and swayed in silence, and he tried to find the part of himself that felt scorn for this, the part of himself that should be laughing at the whole act, but he couldn’t. That part was gone now, in this place. She was compelling. And disturbing. The most disturbing thing since that boy…

  They come and they go.

  The boy had pointed at the big house when he said it. Not the guesthouse. He had pointed indisputably at the old house, the one where angry people came and went.

  Dixie Witte had begun to hum, a low and eerie sound, and her fingers were sliding over his hands, tracing the lines on his palms.

  “Lauren,” she whispered. “Lauren, join us.”

  Mark didn’t like hearing the sound of his wife’s name from her. He wanted to tell her to stop saying it. But Lauren had given this woman respect; that was what had brought her here in the first place. Unlike Mark, who for two years had settled for the transcripts of police interviews, and now he had to—

  Too young.

  The thought came to his mind unbidden, a blitzing image, the opening page of one of the police transcripts. They’d asked Dixie to state her name and age. She’d said she was fifty-two.

  Mark stepped back fast, releasing the woman’s hands and fumbling in his jacket. She got as far as “Markus, you’ve got to relax—” before he withdrew the tactical light from his pocket and hit the thumb switch.

  These days they gave the label tactical to everything from socks to polo shirts, but with the Surefire light, it was more than an adjective—the light was a weapon in its own right. The thumb trigger flooded five hundred lumens directly into Dixie Witte’s eyes, approximately ten times more light than human night vision is prepared to handle, and the overload both blinds and freezes. She lifted her hands and swore at Mark in a harsh voice that bore no similarity to her Tennessee Williams–heroine tone.