Dark Light Book Two

by Rob Shepherd

  Zoey wanted to laugh.

  “Poor Linda. She stuck beside him. He’d be out screwing Francine Rogers in the barn while Linda was makin’ his meat and potatoes. Bastard.”

  “So, it was Linda Carter? Then, what about Ollie Neilsen?”

  Doris looked way off—beyond the furthest hills. She shook her head in resignation, and then paused. “Oh,” she said, her eyes widening. “I knew Ollie Neilsen. Went to school with an Ollie Neilsen. I do believe Linda and Ollie courted a little in the younger days. He was older than her. By God, I do remember,” she continued, astonished at her memory, “Ollie went off to war. I don’t believe he ever came home, though.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “Did you come across some old clippings?”

  You could say that, she thought, but only nodded and imagined Doris’ wide eyes as she saw her old friend’s nude pictures and the unmentionable.

  Mister Pogo whined.

  “Should probably get him moving along,” Doris said. “He gets the shits when he’s off his schedule.”

  Zoey smiled as the woman started to leave. A few paces later, Doris turned and said, “I pray for your husband. I may not believe in war, but I do support the troops.”

  ***

  Zoey lifted the unmentionable object from the box like she was lifting a dead rat—carefully and at a safe distance. For some reason she sniffed it. It smelled clean. As she set it on the desk the switch turned on and it jumped to life, rumbling across the wood. She pinned it down and turned it off.

  Looking again at the objects, Zoey put the pieces together. Linda was in love with Ollie. But Ollie died in war, so Linda married George. For one reason or another, George cheated on Linda with everyone. And Linda, she cheated on George with the objects of the box.

  Cheated?

  Zoey didn’t know if that was fair. Was it, as Sister Maureen would say, doing what was evil in the eyes of the Lord?

  She checked her cell. No messages.

  ***

  When evening rolled around, Zoey took off all her clothes and stood before the mirror with her cell phone.

  This will get Blake’s attention. If not Blake’s, perhaps God’s.

  ***

  Zzzzz…

  Two in the morning. The unmentionable called out—rattling on the desk in the room next door. Zoey rushed into the office. It had vibrated off the desk and now danced on the floor.

  “Stop! Stop it!” she said, bursting into tears. “Turn it off!”

  Remarkably, the object stopped. Something turned it off.

  Zoey swallowed. Her tears stopped. Even though skeptical about ghosts and spirits, she couldn’t dismiss the peculiar things witnessed. She didn’t know if she should communicate with it, ignore it, or run like hell.

  “Linda?” she finally said, looking at the unmentionable object.

  Silence.

  She tried again.

  And, again.

  Nothing but silence.

  When there was nothing else to do, Zoey packed the item in the Cream of Wheat box and returned them to the attic. After the hinges squealed shut, she ascended the ladder and crawled back into bed and slept.

  ***

  A few days later, as Zoey ate an egg salad sandwich for lunch and checked her cell phone for the one hundredth time that day, a Sedan traversed driveway toward the house. She denied the sight of it, like a mirage. Not happening. Not real. Even as the car doors slammed, Zoey remained at the table, stuffing her mouth with even larger bites and washing it down with fruit punch. The knock at the door was like a stake being nailed into her chest.

  “Blake!” she screamed, some egg falling onto the table. “Don’t leave me!”

  By this time the Army chaplain and another officer had let themselves in. All the cell messages went unanswered. The rest was a blur.

  ***

  By the springtime, Zoey had put a garden in the flat spot below the kitchen window. She could grow enough veggies and fruit to stock her fridge and, perhaps even Doris’, if she could keep the ground squirrels and crows away. She admired it from her office window as the sunset.

  Zoey retreated to her laptop and the graphic design she was creating for a Seattle law firm. She felt blessed the way her business was picking up. The occasional weekend trips to Spokane and Seattle to visit friends and drum up art gigs were paying dividends. However, no amount of city excitement could woo her to relocate. She couldn’t wait to get home.

  The screen read: 11:47 PM

  She wondered if Blake would call tonight. Most often he called after midnight. She looked over at the box. By this time, Zoey had put Linda’s Cream of Wheat box back in the attic and had assembled a special Nike shoebox just for Blake.

  “Blake?” she said, looking at the shoebox. “Honey, are you there?”

  Nothing.

  Zoey began to work again—but not for long.

  Sighing, she got up from her chair and walked over to the shoebox and opened it. Inside, Blake’s number eleven football jersey was neatly folded with her cell phone and the unmentionable object. She picked up the cell phone and scrolled through the nudes she captured and the text messages she sent. She put the cell phone back and then returned to the desk—waiting for Blake.

  Misplaced

  By Diane Arrelle

  The desk clerk looked her over for at least a minute. “Ah, yes, Miss Place” he said and nodded. “Room 614.”

  Not used to scrutiny of any kind, Annamarie fidgeted then took the key with barely a thank you. As she walked to the elevator, she glanced at the stairs. So long since she could walk steps without pain. So long since she had set foot in this town, it was like a lifetime ago. So long since she suppressed all those memories of her young years, only to have her past reappear and stir memories she didn’t even know she had.

  Riding the empty car to the sixth floor, she quickly found the room. So familiar, the wallpaper in the hall; slightly faded and yellowed at the seams. Annamarie held the big metal key, and noted that it was cold even after being clasped in her hand all this time. She inserted it into the lock and entered the room…letting out the breath she didn’t realized she’d been holding.

  Normal, the room was an old shabby hotel room, just like any other room in an old-fashioned hotel, high ceilings painted white, a double bed with a cheap fake brass headboard and a thin bedspread, a nightstand, a closet, a bathroom, and a mirror with the silver darkened to gray on the wall above the small pine dresser. No TV, an old plastic black phone, one window with Venetian blinds and sheer age-stained curtains. She nodded to herself, trying to stir any memories out of hiding. The place was only remarkable by its lack of personality and lack of advancement into the 21st century. This room could have been here since the 1940’s like a museum piece of Urban Americana.

  But still, she wondered, why was she here. At 72 years old, the phone calls came as a complete shock. Her daughter, a child she had no memory of ever having, had traced her down. After all the years of being a nonentity, she was suddenly someone; she was someone’s mother. How, she wondered, could she have forgotten that? Yes, there’d been the dreams over the last half century, but she had always assumed that that was what they were, dreams, nightmares or the fantasies of a broken mind.

  She walked over to the bed dappled yellow with the afternoon sunlight and collapsed in total exhaustion. The train ride, going outside into the world, wiped her out and she was so very tired. Her arms and legs felt like rubber and her eyes kept losing focus. Before she could decide what to do, she fell into a deep sleep.

  And woke almost immediately. She heard a baby crying, a demanding wail, and then it stopped, cut off in mid-bellow. She stood and looked in the dark mirror with the blackened edges. An old face looked back, a face worn out by a life not fully lived. She started to fix her hair when she noticed the bed behind her. A wave of nausea washed over her and she looked down at her hands. They had blood on them. She spun around to stare at the bedcover, splattered in red. She took in
the streaks on the wall behind the short brass headboard, it looked like someone had tried to dig their fingers into the wallboard leaving behind stripes of crimson.

  Dizzy, she went into the bathroom to wash the blood off her hands, out from under her nails. As she reentered the bedroom, she stopped and grabbed the small dresser to stop from falling.

  The bed was clean, the walls untouched, the sun streaming in through the sheer curtains highlighting the normalcy. Fiery pain filled her stomach and the dizziness intensified. She shifted her gaze and stared at her reflection in the mirror. Pale and oval her face stared back with bewilderment and fear reflecting in her eyes. And the bed behind her was still blood soaked. She turned and there it was clean and bright.

  She ran back to the bathroom and threw up. Kneeling on the floor, hugging the toilet, she began to cry. What was happening? She’d spent so very long in institutions, and so long after that trying to regain the lost years, trying to find out who she had been, who she had lost along with all that time.

  Then all those the calls, a baby crying, strangers calling to tell her about a child she never knew she had, and now this, hallucinations. She needed a doctor! She needed some pills to put life straight again.

  The crying started again, not hers, but a baby’s gasping wail, the wah-wah-wah of first breath, just like the one in the phone calls.

  She let go of the toilet and held her ears.

  Quiet abruptly took over again and she pulled herself up on knees stiff with arthritis but loose with fear. She rushed to the door, yanked it open then glanced back. The room was pristine, except for the rumpled spread where she had been sleeping. She backed out into the hall and just as she was closing the door, she saw movement in the mirror. She stopped and studied the reflecting glass, but nothing happened.

  “I want a different room,” she told the front desk clerk as soon as she reached the lobby.

  “Anything wrong?”

  Could she tell him about the blood, the visions, the baby crying? “No, I just want a room that is quieter. The baby next door is too loud.”

  The clerk nodded, handed her a different key, “Room 314. The bellboy will switch you luggage.”

  She took the key mumbled, “Thank you,” and turned to go to her new room.

  “And Miss Place, we aim to always accommodate our guests, but there are no children living at the hotel at this time.” The clerk stared at her, gave a stiff smile and added. “Be sure to contact us if you need anything else.”

  She rode the elevator up and wondered if she were crazy again. At room 314, she studied the door for a moment too afraid to open it, but finally she stuck the key in the lock and went inside. The room was identical down to the shabby curtains on the one window. She sat on the edge of the bed and wondered, now what? Her daughter, she was named Angela, was going to contact her here. Angela, speaking with a Hispanic accent during that last call had informed her that she’d made all the arrangements including the reservation at this hotel.

  It had been such a strange series of calls, Annamarie thought. She’d been home, wondering what to do with Mama’s things. Mama had been dead for almost a year, and Annamarie was still living among her things, as if Mama had only gone to the store, not Heaven. The phone rang making her jump, because Annamarie had made being invisible her life’s work and now someone was calling her.

  She picked up the phone listened to the cry of a baby. She’d hung up but the calls continued until she’d left the phone off the hook. The next day the phone rang again. Annemarie picked it up, ready to slam it down. Miss Place? Miss Annamarie Place? A man said.

  “Yes,” she’d said slowly, carefully.

  The man said,” Don’t hang up, but I am your daughter, Angela.”

  She’d hung up immediately. What kind of sick joke was this, a man claiming to be her daughter? Well, she was no one’s mother. She’d never married, never had children, had lived here all her adult life with Mama, ever since getting out of the institution after her breakdown. Whenever she’d asked Mama about the past, Mama always told her she’d been a good girl, lived with them in the city until, well, until she lived at the institution. Then Mama moved her to the country and the two of them spent almost five decades together living the quiet life. Mama always said a quiet life was the best sort of life. She told her if she dressed quiet, spoke quiet and lived quiet, she’d be as good as invisible, and then no one would ever bother her again, make her go back to the institution.

  Annamarie followed Mama’s advice because she’d spent a few years at that hospital, where so few people lived the quiet life. She never wanted to go back there. She had no past that she could remember and that was just fine. The present at home was enough for the rest of her life.

  She shuddered in the lonely little hotel room and thought, why am I here? Do I really want to find those misplaced years? The silence was oppressive so she spoke to break its spell, “48 years of good memories, why should I care about a lost two decades?”

  “Waaaaah-wah-waaaaaaah,” answered her.

  Annamarie jumped up, swinging her head from side to side. The clerk had said no babies in the hotel! Why did he lie?

  Movement, she saw something out of the corner of her eye, something moved in the mirror. For just a second, she saw an infant’s refection and then the mirror was covered in blood, running down the silvered glass, dripping onto the dresser top staining the yellowed doily first pink and then crimson. She screamed and then screamed again.

  A knock on the door. “Miss Place? Are you all right?”

  She unfroze and ran to the door, age and joint pain completely forgotten. She yanked it open and screamed, “Blood…blood!”

  The clerk glanced over her shoulder into the room. “Blood? Are you hurt? Where?”

  “Not me, “ she shrieked and pointed, “The mirror!” She stared at the mirror in disbelief. It was clean as was the unsoaked doily.

  She slammed the door on the clerk and limped over to the bed and sat, not knowing what else to do. Was this place haunted, or did her supposed daughter bring her here to drive her insane, or was she there already?

  Two decades lost, her entire youth gone, the only memories she had were given to her by Mama. Mama who patiently and lovingly stood by her, helping to rebuild her lost life, filling in all the pieces, helping her realize that she had always been and would always be a good, clean, decent girl in a changing world. Annamarie stumbled back to the door and swung it opened. No one was there. She stepped out into the hall looked around, then turned to go back in.

  Her hand froze on the knob. She stared at the door trying to convince herself that she was seeing 314. But she wasn’t, she was back at 614. How could this be? How! She pushed the door opened and entered the room she had just left only it wasn’t, was it? “I really am crazy,” she moaned and wondered if she really had received the call that brought her here.

  After she had hung up the first time, a woman who identified herself as Angela called a few days later. “Please don’t hang up again. Look, you are my birthmother. I don’t want anything from you, I just have to meet you, for my own sanity, my piece of mind.”

  Annamarie listened and thought about it, peace of mind, sanity, things she couldn’t remember ever having. Mama was gone and maybe, just maybe, this strange woman could fill in a few of the blanks, offer her some sanity and peace. “How old are you, Angela, and where were you born?”

  “I was born 48 years ago in an old hotel in the city. Will you meet me?”

  Before she thought about it, “Yes,” had spilled out of her mouth, and here she was in this hotel, most likely the one where she gave birth to her daughter— why else book her here?

  She backed out of the room and watched the mirror. Just as she reached the threshold, the mirror turned liquidy red and through the running streams she thought she could make out the shape of a baby. Legs protesting, she ran down the three flights of stairs to the lobby. The clerk looked up as she approached. “Everything all right, Miss Plac
e? Need anything?”

  She didn’t know what to say, after all she had just slammed the door in his face after screaming for help, and here he was acting like nothing happened. She shrugged, gave a weak smile and said, “I need, um, I could use another towel.”

  He smiled back, “I’ll have it sent right to your room.”

  “Thank you, and which room is that?” she asked, knowing that asking as just another invisible old lady, he’d just chalk her up to senility.

  He didn’t even blink, “We just moved you to 314, remember?”

  She nodded and took the elevator back to the third floor. She found 314 unlocked and went in.

  Normal. It was perfectly normal. She opened the door and saw 314 and shut it again. A few minutes later there was a knock. She opened it, checked to make sure the number didn’t change and then saw that her suitcase and a set of towels had been placed outside her room.

  The very normalcy of the situation reassured her that she must have been having a nightmare or something. She went back into her room and waited for Angela to show up. She picked up a magazine from the nightstand drawer and absently thumbed through it.

  And stopped.

  It was dated from the early 1960s; just around the time she’d lost her memory. It was a pulp confession magazine and was opened to, I WAS UNMARRIED AND PREGNANT!

  She slapped it closed and shoved it back in the nightstand. Unmarried and pregnant, that had to be the secret she had erased along with the rest of her life. My, that seemed a drastic solution to what was soon going to be a more socially acceptable problem, she thought. But it does explain Angela. And Mama’s obsessive need to protect her from the outside world.

  She relaxed and put her head on the pillow. Mama sacrificed her whole life for me. What a wonderful woman, she acknowledged to herself and drifted off to sleep. When she woke, the room was dark and stuffy. She was soaked with sweat.

  Stumbling for the light switch, she couldn’t find it but did feel a doorknob. She twisted it and found it was the room door. Opening it to let some outside light in, she saw the door number, 614 and her hands covered in blood. She looked down and saw she wasn’t sweat soaked at all. She was blood soaked and she could feel more wet sticky fluid running down her legs. The blood was pouring out of her, puddling on the floor and running in a ruby river into the room. She somehow hit the light switch as she collapsed. Half in the room half out. The baby cry again filled the entire room with sound. Waaaaah-wah-waaaaaaah-wa—”