People of the Dark

by Wright, T. M.

  "Just trying to be . . ." the woman said, but I was out the door before she finished the sentence.

  I went looking for Erika myself. I drove down Hunt's Hollow Road, past the house, past Wildwood Farms, two miles north of the house, drove another half mile and parked the car on the shoulder of the road. The rain had stopped, but the shoulder was several inches deep in mud and I thought I'd have trouble getting the car out of it.

  I made my way into a shallow gully just off the shoulder, climbed up the other side, pushed into some thick brush there, and fifty feet in came to Old Hunt's Hollow Road, which hadn't been used for over fifty years and was overgrown with grasses and birch trees that sprang up after a forest fire thirty years earlier.

  I stopped at the center of this road, looked right and left; I saw very little except the occasional movement of birds. Then, surprising myself, I yelled, "Erika?" I heard anger in my voice. "Erika, goddamnit!" The words came back to me. Once. Then again. And again several seconds later. I remember thinking what a weird kind of echo it was, so I yelled once more, intrigued. "Erika, goddamnit!" and the words came back to me from several places—from Hunt's Hollow Road a hundred feet to my right, from deep within the thickets to my left, from behind me, and up. I turned and looked. Old Hunt's Hollow Road gave itself over to a thick growth of red dogwood and sumac that grew on a small hill fifty yards away. The top of this hill was just visible through the vegetation. And as I looked, I heard "Goddamnit, Erika!" in my voice, and I thought again, This is a fucking weird kind of echo.

  "Goddamnit, goddamnit!" I heard, still in my voice, and I whispered, "What the hell is going on here?" That came back to me, too, in the same stiff whisper, but as if there were a crowd of people hiding around me, repeating it. "What the hell is going on here?" I heard. Then, as if in afterthought, "Erika?" And a moment later, "Goddamnit!"

  "This is fucking weird," I said.

  "This is fucking weird, Erika," I heard. "Goddamnit, goddamnit, this is fucking weird!"

  "What the hell is going on here?"

  "What the hell, goddamnit, Erika, goddamnit, what the hell, goddamnit, is going on, Erika, goddamnit, what the hell is going on, this is fucking weird, here, goddamnit, what the hell is going on here, Erika, what the hell . . ." It was a chorus of shouts and whispers that I heard now, from many directions, as I turned tight little circles at the center of Old Hunt's Hollow Road, as I tried desperately, and in vain, to see something other than dogwood: sumac, maple, and birch, the movement of birds, an occasional glimpse of blue sky.

  Then, like frogs startled by noise, the voices stopped all at once.

  "Erika?" I said. "Are you there, Erika?" Silence. "Erika, come back home; come home with me? We've got things to do—the roof needs fixing; the gutter needs fixing; the front door sticks." Far to my right, in the direction of the house, a big raccoon ambled across Old Hunt's Hollow Road. On a lone wooden fence post close to me a white-faced hornet took flight, circled me once, then again, and was gone. The air had become still, humid, and warm in the last half hour.

  I called, "Hey, Erika?" and waited a moment, heard nothing, added, "I love you," felt a little embarrassed smile start, dissipate, said again, louder, "I love you!" and knew that, out of desperation, frustration, and anger, I was on the verge of shouting it. But I didn't shout it. I turned and pushed my way back through the thickets to the car, had some trouble getting it out of the mud at the shoulder, but finally did it with some skillful use of the clutch and accelerator, and on the short drive back to the house said over and over again, "Goddamn religious fanatics, goddamn religious fanatics!"

  It was not until later, upon reflection, that I realized the roads had been empty.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Will came to the house that evening. He stood sheepishly at the front door and said, "Can I come in?" I said of course he could and showed him into the dining room, asked if he'd like anything. "No," he answered, thought a moment, and added, "I've never felt quite so foolish, Jack."

  "No need," I said.

  He sat at the head of the table. I stood, arms folded, near the door to the library, my back to the wall.

  I continued, "I understand why you said it, Will," referring to his comment that Erika was "still in the house somewhere."

  "Do you?" he said, and looked confusedly at me.

  "Yes." I didn't want to elaborate. I launched into my theory that the people around the house were religious fanatics. He stopped me in mid-monologue. "Sure," he said, "but where'd they go, Jack?"

  "Where'd they go?"

  "They're not there anymore."

  "Sure they are."

  "No, Jack. I saw some deer on my way down. I saw a raccoon—I almost hit it, as a matter of fact—and I think I saw a few bats. But I didn't see any of those people. I think they went home, Jack—wherever that is."

  I shook my head. "They were everywhere this afternoon. I went looking for Erika, Will. And they were everywhere." I stopped, remembered driving back from Cohocton, passing the house, parking the car on the shoulder, driving back to the house. I shook my head again, in confusion now. "I'm sure they were," I whispered.

  "They're not there anymore," Will said, paused, went on, his tone low, as if he were speaking in confidence, "You think they've got her, don't you?"

  "Yes," I said. "Of course they do."

  He leaned forward, put his elbows on the table, and folded his hands in front of his face. He said, eyes straight ahead, "Okay, so when she gets tired of them, she'll come back to us."

  I said nothing.

  "She will come back to us, Jack."

  "'Us'?" I said.

  He was quiet for a moment; then he shrugged as if his remark had been merely casual. "Sure," he said. "She'll come back to us. In time."

  I sighed, crossed to the window that overlooked the side yard, and parted the curtains slightly with my hand. The spotlight was on—I didn't remember turning it on—and in its light I could see an opossum trundling off toward the mountain behind the house. The opossum had its own peculiar hitching walk, probably from tangling with a car, so I recognized it as one that Erika had been leaving food for on certain nights. I watched it until it was beyond the perimeter of the spotlight. "Is that why you came here tonight, Will?" I turned my head to look at him. "To apologize?"

  "No," he answered at once, and paused.

  "Go on," I coaxed.

  "Uh-huh," he said, and nodded as if in resignation. I sat at the table. "What's going on, Will? Why'd you come here tonight?"

  He shook his head and grimaced a little, as if at a bad taste. At last he said, "I talked with Erika, Jack. I talked with her today." Another pause. I could say nothing. At last he continued, "You weren't here. I came to see you, but you weren't here. Where were you?"

  "Stick to the subject, Will."

  He nodded again, said, "Sure," smiled quickly at me, then looked back at his hands still folded in front of him. "She was here, Jack."

  "Here? You mean she was in the house?"

  He shook his head. "No." He shook his head again, as if for emphasis. "No. She was outside." He lifted his chin slightly to indicate the side yard. "She was out there, just inside the woods. Christ, she scared the hell out of me, Jack. I was coming up to the door, and I heard, 'Hello, Will.' I stopped and I looked around because I recognized her voice, of course—I could hardly hear it, but I recognized it." He paused again, briefly. "I called to her. I didn't know where she might be because I had heard her say only that one thing, so I called to her a couple times. Then she said my name again and I turned and saw her." He lifted his head once more to indicate the same area. "Just inside the woods, Jack. She was standing just inside the woods. And when I saw her, I said something like, 'Good Lord—Erika!' and I started for her." He looked confused, went on, "I can't explain this, Jack. I don't know how to explain this. But when I started for her, when I took a couple of steps toward her"—he shook his head—"she wasn't there. I mean, I kept my eyes on her while I was walking towa
rd her; I kept my eyes on her, and I was smiling, of course, because I was happy to see her. And maybe because I was smiling, because I was so very happy to see her . . . I don't know, I was crying too, and when you're crying"—he was on the verge of incoherence now—"it's very hard to see, isn't it? I mean, you're not concentrating on seeing, you're concentrating on crying! So I think she must have just . . . stepped back into the woods because I became aware—I looked, and I became aware—that she just wasn't there anymore."

  "You went looking for her, didn't you, Will?"

  "Jesus, yes, I looked for her. I looked for an hour and a half. I didn't find her; hell, I called to her over and over again, and I kept telling myself that I could hear something; I didn't know what it was, Jack, but it wasn't her, then I finally convinced myself that I'd been seeing things. Why not? Everyone sees things, don't they? I convinced myself that because I," he looked down self-consciously at the table—"because I do love her, Jack"—he looked up, grinned an apology—"that I'd kind of conjured her up out of the trees and the bushes and the rain." He shrugged. "I can't say it's impossible. I've done stranger things. It was a sort of wish-fulfillment fantasy, Jack." Another grin of apology.

  "I understand," I told him.

  "I wanted to see her, so I saw her. That's pretty simple, isn't it?"

  "Sure it is, Will."

  "You don't believe me, do you?"

  "Don't believe what?"

  "That I saw her. You don't believe I saw her."

  "I don't think you believe it, Will."

  He shook his head, smiled sadly. "I've thought about this, Jack. Ever since it happened I've thought about it. And I know that I saw her. She was there. And then she wasn't. It's as simple as that."

  I sighed. I didn't know what to say to him.

  "I saw her," he repeated, as much to himself as to me. "And Christ, Jack—it was like seeing a ghost."

  BOOK TWO

  CHAPTER ONE

  This turns out to be Erika's story.

  Will's story, too.

  And Knebel's, Sarah's, mine; the several hundred people who called Cohocton their home.

  But mostly it turns out to be Erika's story.

  Our memories haunt us. Mostly, they haunt us. We can peer at them and smile and say that they feel good. But they recall the past, which is what it is, and so our memories haunt us. It's all our memories can do, ultimately.

  We want to be rational. We take photographs, movies; we write in our journals every day or every couple of days. And for the sake of the future we do the things that need doing. We fix the gutters because the rain that plummets from them will undermine the foundation after a time. We repair the roof; we replace some tiles here and there; we check for dry rot because we know if we don't the house will fall down around us in a few decades. We live for what will be. And we live for what might be.

  Sarah Talpey said, "There are snakes with two heads, and there are fourteen-hundred-pound men, and amino acids in meteorites that have fallen in China." And those are the things that are really important.

  That night, after Will left and before I went up to bed, I made sure all the doors were unlocked. I said to myself, She might have lost her keys. She'll have no way in if she's lost her keys. I checked each door from the outside, and then I went down to Hunt's Hollow Road, in the darkness, and called for her. I got no answer, of course, and what I could see of the road was empty, but I kept calling. Not out of desperation, and not out of anger or futility, but because, for the first time, I believed that she was there, near the house. And I was calling to her as if she knew I was calling and she only needed a little time to answer. Perhaps until she got tired of being away from me—a few minutes, or a few hours, or a few days. Longer, maybe. I was letting her know that I was still interested. "I'm still interested, Erika!" Silence. "I still love you." Silence. "The doors are unlocked. There's nothing I'd like better than to wake and find you beside me." Silence. "That would be a real treat. I'd like that. We could talk. I think we need to talk." Silence. "Do you want anything? A coat? A pair of gloves?" I was grasping now. "You must be getting awfully hungry. Come back; I'll feed you." Still nothing. "What do they do for you, Erika? What's the attraction?" I smiled as if she were there beside me and I was trying to put her at ease. "What do they do for you that I don't?" I shrugged in the darkness. "Hey, I'm sorry." I could feel myself slipping into a pose. "Everything has to revolve around me, right, Erika? How many times have you told me that? And it's true—it's been true—but that will change." I peered into the darkness. There was a heavy cloud cover, so the darkness was nearly total. "We'll talk about you, Erika. We'll talk about your needs, finally." Another smile, one of invitation—Go ahead, it said, talk about yourself. I waited, heard nothing, saw nothing, began to feel foolish, and cold, realized that I had to use the bathroom. "Erika?" I called at last, "I'm going into the house now. But remember, please remember, I'm here for you; I'll always be here for you." And I heard, to my right, "You're fooling yourself."

  I recognized the voice, though I couldn't see the man. "Martin?"

  He said, "Are you looking for your wife, Mr. Harris?"

  I hesitated, felt anger welling up, fought it back. "What in the hell do you know about Erika?"

  "Not very much, my friend. But a bit more than you do, apparently."

  I inhaled quickly and deeply in order to keep my anger from building. The air was cool. "If you have something to say to me, perhaps you could come over here and say it." The beam of a flashlight stabbed at me then. I closed my eyes. "Christ, stop that, you idiot!" I hissed. I heard the flashlight click off.

  Martin said, "We take care of them from time to time, Mr. Harris." A pause. "They get confused. They come here. And we take care of them."

  "Christ, will you make some sense?!"

  "Listen to the woman," he said. Then, faintly, I heard footfalls in the tall grass to my right, where his voice had been.

  "Martin?" I called. "We're not done here." I listened. I heard nothing. "Martin, goddamnit, I said we're not finished talking here." Silence.

  I went back to the house.

  Erika and I have talked about having kids. In the first couple of years of our marriage she was very keen on the idea. We discussed names; she proclaimed that she wanted a boy, and I said I wanted a girl, and then we said in unison, "Whatever we get, we'll keep," which made us laugh.

  We worked hard for several years at having kids. We put everything we had into it, even to the point that it was becoming a chore (which, we were told later, probably "increased the difficulty due to tension").

  Eventually we decided that each of us had to have a thorough checkup. I was first and I was fine—everything worked. Then it was Erika's turn. She was reluctant, needed persuasion, but she had her checkup and everything appeared to be in good working order with her, too. We decided that we were just having bad luck, so we redoubled our efforts.

  It did no good. At the end of our fourth year of marriage we had stopped actively trying to have kids.

  Two years later we came here, to the farmhouse.

  And one day, not long after we'd moved in, she came to me and said, "We're going to have kids, Jack," which I naturally assumed meant she was pregnant. It made me very happy, of course. I threw my arms around her and lifted her—I thought, as I had several times before, that she was awfully light—kissed her, and said "Great!" again and again.

  Then she said, "Not that I'm pregnant, Jack. I don't mean I'm pregnant."

  I set her down. Maybe she was talking about adopting. I asked her if that's what she meant.

  She shook her head. "No. I mean, literally, we're going to have children."

  "Oh, it's a kind of wish, is that what you mean? Here we are, set up in our house in an idyllic country setting, so of course, eventually, we're going to have children. Is that what you're talking about?"

  "Sure." But she seemed unconvinced.

  "That's not what you mean, is it?" She was confusing me.

  S
he shook her head again. "I don't think so, Jack. I'm sorry if I've misled you. I think what I mean is"—a short, happy smile—"we're going to have kids," and her tone was precisely what it was when she'd said it the first time, as if she were making a surprise announcement, but one that was a surprise to her, too.

  "Who's going to have kids, Erika?"

  We were outside, in front of the house. I had my Nikon in hand because I was taking some pictures of the house. She held her arms wide, did a quick, graceful pirouette, and said, "We are!"

  I got the distinct impression that "we" had nothing to do with me, which made me nervous and confused.

  I reached out, tickled her at the waist; she's always been outrageously ticklish. She let her arms fall, stood quietly for a moment under the big window at the front of the house; I took a picture of her there, a Mona Lisa smile on her mouth.

  "We're going to have kids, Jack," she said after the shutter clicked. "We're going to have kids."

  CHAPTER TWO

  When I was twelve years old, I was walking the shores of Irondequoit Bay, near Rochester, New York, and I came upon the bloated carcass of a German shepherd that had apparently drowned several weeks earlier. I remember that I stood for a couple of minutes, several feet from it, staring at it. I didn't let my eyes wander over the body; I concentrated only on an area near the bottom of the ribcage, where there was a small, cream-colored hole. Someone had been poking the body there with a pointed stick. The stick lay nearby. After a couple of minutes I took a step forward, hesitated, took another step, picked the stick up—saw some fur clinging to the end of it—and then prodded the body with it. I poked at its belly. I think that somewhere inside me I expected that because it was so bloated, it might explode, and I thought that would be a terrific thing to see.

  I had two dogs, myself, then. I had an Irish Setter and a black-and-white mongrel, and I loved them. What I was poking at didn't seem to be the same sort of creature. This creature was dead, most importantly. If it had once had a master who loved it and fed it and let it curl up at his feet, that was all behind it now. And it didn't look very much like a dog, either. It looked like the fat and grisly caricature of a dog. If I'd encountered it on the street just after it had been killed by a car, I would have had different feelings about it. Maybe I would have wept for it, stroked it.