by Susan Murray
Light will show you home
Hear the words inside you
Sing your own true poem
Nothing is forever
Nothing stays the same
Light alone will guide you
Let it show the way
Marley awoke from her brief nap feeling completely refreshed. Pondering her strange dream, she climbed out of the bathtub, pulled the stopper and toweled herself dry, humming wordlessly. After dressing in a maroon matching sweater and skirt set (definitely not black) Marley went downstairs to make herself a cup of coffee in the gleaming little kitchen.
She took her coffee with her into the reading room where she sat in an overstuffed armchair and looked out through picture windows, sipping the steaming brew and jotting notes about her interview and experiences with The Dark so far. It was time to get to work. Stella would want to see an outline of the article Marley planned to write as soon as possible.
CHAPTER 19
October 30th – 3:00 p.m.
The Dark Forum was taking place at the Target Center in downtown Minneapolis. As it turned out, every single entry into the Target Center was heavily guarded by armed security staff and no one was permitted inside without the proper identification and seminar pass.
Marley waited in line for twenty-five minutes and presented her ID to the staff when she finally reached the front of the line. She’d been told her name would be on the list. The female security staff guarding the entry scrutinized Marley’s driver’s license closely then gave her a meaningful look.
“This is for you.” From under the counter she produced a large, shiny, black box and handed it across the metal barrier to Marley. The box had been wrapped in soft black plastic bearing the logo Believe in The Dark.
“Thanks.” Marley accepted the somewhat bulky container and walked through the turnstile, carrying it a little self-consciously under her arm. Once inside she was immediately engulfed by an orderly push of people heading into the big auditorium that comprised the heart of the Target Center.
Marley was one of the lucky few who had access to a VIP level private box, built into the side of the wall and sheltered from the masses below. Once Marley had fought her way upstairs and taken her seat, she was able to indulge in some undisturbed people watching, able to get a better feel for the assemblage. Demographically speaking, The Dark’s fans seemed to range right across the board. Marley could detect no obvious ethnic or cultural pattern among his followers.
All skin colors, races, ages and persuasions were represented in the faces of the people who were gathering for the Dark Forum. To Marley’s way of thinking the fact that every single Darker was wearing form-fitting black from head to toe at times lent them an air of inadvertent comedy.
One old woman seated in the fifth row sported an astonishing array of high-end electronics that made her withered form twinkle and glow with artificial life. She chuckled and mumbled constantly to herself, twiddling and tweaking the numerous dials on her mysterious devices. Marley noticed that to either side of her the seats were empty. On her left shoulder she still wore a red welcome badge from the Dark Brunch that morning which proclaimed, “Hi, I’m Susan.”
Most of the people in the crowd wore similarly flashing LED vests and hip holsters supporting some kind of Star Trek looking handgun. These were likely the laser guns used for playing Dark Tag, Marley realized, taking a closer look at the subject weapon when a man walked by wearing one.
It was black (of course) about the size of a Ruger but with a much longer barrel. Narrow grip, it looked far more slender than a handgun and Marley realized this was because instead of bullets, it shot some kind of pulse, or beam. It seemed fairly lightweight in construction.
The lights dimmed promptly at three, which was the signal that things were about to get started soon. Belatedly, Marley remembered to unwrap and inspect the special gift box she’d been handed at the front gate. Inside she found laminated guest passes to the next few seminar events along with her very own Dark Tag vest and laser gun. Also in the box was a sophisticated, plastic-sheathed headset of some kind.
Very Bluetoothish.
Carefully Marley removed the plastic sheathing to have a closer look at the headset. This must be the new product The Dark planned to introduce over the weekend that he’d told her about during the interview. The new tech was pure black. A cobweb framework of wire extended from the earpiece up over the wearer’s hair and supported a pair of glass lenses which were clearly designed to settle over the wearer’s left and right eyes.
“Ouch!” Marley yanked her hand back, startled by the tiny lick of pain that had assaulted her right middle finger. A teensy little cut oozed blood there. It was hardly even a nick, yet it really hurt. Marley held up the headset, examining the earpiece. The very tip end of the earpiece had a sharp metal edge that would normally rest right against the wearer’s scalp. No doubt it would have cut Marley there had she put the headset on.
Marley dropped the offending Dark Headset back into its box and closed it while she sucked on her injured finger. Her wound was little more than a paper cut, but she still wished The Dark’s production line had done a better job on quality control. The lights went off quite suddenly and the crowd silenced to a hush.
A three second pause.
A blush of light and The Dark dramatically stepped from behind the shadow of a curtain while everyone present erupted into joyful adulation. Muted joy, since this frenzy of clapping was muffled by the black gloves worn by every Darker in the crowd.
Oddly there was no cheering, screaming or shouting whatsoever, just clapping and the thunder of many stomping feet. Marley was to learn later that The Dark advocated against cheering, since cheers reminded him of screams and screams reminded him of people who hadn’t mastered their fears.
Holding his hands up and indicating his preference for silence, The Dark nonetheless basked in these accolades, finally saying, “Thank you. Thank you all for coming, everyone. No, really, I should be thanking you, not the other way around.”
These words set off another round of approval from the crowd and it was quite some time before The Dark could make himself heard again. “Let’s just say I’m very glad to be here with all of you today. My fans are what make this journey worthwhile for me. Now, let’s get started. Who wants to hear a scary story?”
“Meeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!” Again The Dark’s fans rose to their feet as one, feet stamping rhythmically. The balcony floor under Marley’s seat shuddered and bounced but she wasn’t worried about it collapsing. Just three months ago Prince’s dancing fans had put the Target Center through a far more serious test of its structural integrity.
The Dark adjusted his microphone and lowered his voice to a spooky-story-telling level. “Once upon a time there were a little boy and girl named Hansel and Gretel. You all remember this story, don’t you?” The crowd murmured its assent.
The Dark was standing before a podium of what looked like solid ebony carved into the shape of a large wooden rose, thorns and all. As he spoke The Dark raised his arms and the cape he wore flowed and shifted around his shoulders while he continued.
“Now, Hansel and Gretel are often criticized for being disobedient. The moral of their story is that they should have stayed home and done their chores. The moral of their story is that they got in trouble because they went off on their own, got lost in the big forest and took a big bite of someone else’s gingerbread house. Right?” The Dark’s face was lit from below, giving him a ghoulish look. “Or is it?” He stopped speaking, allowed the silence to accumulate.
Marley found her pen slowing to a stop as she pondered this interesting interpretation of the old childhood classic. In the original story hadn’t Hansel and Gretel actually been
taken to the woods and abandoned?
“Maybe,” The Dark leaned forward, addressing everyone intimately, “just maybe, the true moral of the story is very different. Maybe Hansel and Gretel did exactly what they should have done. Because what did they really do, those two brave little children?” Without waiting for a reply, he went on, “They took matters into their own hands. They followed their own initiative and they followed their hearts! And that’s not wrong, is it? No. So what did Hansel and Gretel do that was actually very right?”
“Prioritize! Actionize! Finalize!” The crowd chanted enthusiastically.
“I can’t heeear youuuuu!” The Dark called back to them, teasingly cupping one ear.
“Prioritize! Actionize! Finalize!” The crowd screamed again, more loudly.
“And what’s that spell?”
“PAFFFF!” Fists pumped the air in unison, a demonstration of solidarity among all Darkers. Marley watched and took notes.
CHAPTER 20
October 30th – 4:00 p.m.
Although PAF! appeared to be key to The Dark’s self-help philosophy, Marley was fairly certain that actionize wasn’t even a bona fide word. Then again she diswanted to voice her opinion in this regard.
“That’s right. Prioritize. Actionize. Finalize.” The Dark rapped the podium briskly as he delivered each word, intoning this mantra solemnly once the crowd had settled down. “Prioritize – know what you want. Actionize – do what you want. Finalize – be what you want. And who can tell me why it’s important to always do what we want in life?”
“Because Today’s Unfulfilled Dream Becomes Tomorrow’s Nightmare!” The crowd chanted back at him happily. Another key phrase.
“That’s right.” The Dark continued, especially serious now. He jabbed the podium with a fierce forefinger. “Because today’s repressed urge becomes tomorrow’s neurosis, a budding monster that eats away at our psyche. And that’s where our deepest fears truly begin.” Murmurs swept through the crowd, a kind of buzzing hum that lasted about five seconds.
When the crowd was quiet once more The Dark continued. “So the truly scary story would be one where little Hansel and Gretel stayed home and missed their chance to meet the Witch who ultimately empowered them both.” His expression grew grave, his voice lowered. “Because if that had happened, they might have gone through life too afraid to take risks, too afraid to live up to their own dreams and too repressed to follow their own urges. They might have let their fears stop them from being fully alive.”
Before The Dark could clarify this point and expound in further detail on the evils of repressed urges a man’s baritone voice called out loudly, “Do you even know how sick in the head you are, you pompous twit?”
These words carried loudly through the auditorium in that unique way words have when they are perfectly timed to fall between the cracks in a crowd’s chatter. Realizing that some kind of verbal gauntlet had been tossed, the Darkers in the auditorium quieted and looked around.
The Dark held up one black-gloved hand to shade his view against the glare of spotlights and peered out over the audience, searching for his heckler. A solitary figure out of range of the spotlights began to shuffle forward, pushing his way through the crowd and even shoving a few slow moving Darkers out of his way.
“Every single one of you people here right now, you’re all nuts if you believe this crap and that’s a fact. I know because my sister Gillian was one of you. A Member, just like you.”
Still largely invisible because of the relative darkness that shadowed the audience, the man pointed at The Dark then broke into a trot, approaching the podium more quickly. “That man murdered my sister Gillian last night. They’re saying she committed suicide by jumping from a rooftop but she was terrified of heights. She’d never have committed suicide but even if she had she’d never have done it like that, never! He killed her!”
The Dark recoiled in distaste, drawing his cape about himself. “Security!” he shouted.
The irate stranger had picked up quite a bit of forward momentum during this tirade. There were flecks of spit flying from his mouth and the crowd readily cleared a path before him.
“Gillian told me all about everything. Sent me a letter with names and places. She may have agreed to sign your waiver, but she never agreed to hand over all the money in her bank account too!” By now the man was full on running down the aisle, moving faster and faster toward the stage with no less than three guards moving on a direct intercept course.
“You killed her!” The deranged attacker had reached the front of the room and began clawing his way up the stage platform, grabbing wildly for The Dark’s foot. As discreetly as was possible under the circumstances the guards pried the unhinged man off the edge of the stage, hoisted him up under the armpits and carried him away with them, kicking and thrashing and maybe even biting. When he refused to come quietly there was the hot flash of a taser and after that he dangled limp and quiet in their arms.
Obviously rattled by this disturbance, The Dark adjusted his cape and flicked a non-existent speck of something away from his right shoulder. There was a ripple beneath the cape and with dread Marley remembered The Dark’s pet. Should she or shouldn’t she try to get a photograph of the thing for her article? Right. The answer to that was a definite no way.
Collecting himself with visible effort, The Dark turned to the microphone. “It was with deep regret that I learned of Ms. Folsom’s death last night.” His eyes swept the crowd sadly. “Like everyone else I was unaware that Ms. Folsom suffered from undiagnosed paranoid schizophrenia.” A sorrowful shake of his head. “I did everything I could to help her but I’m afraid she found life’s challenges to be too much. She was too depressed and too afraid to go on living.”
Marley’s impression had been that Gillian had been neither depressed nor afraid, but rather extremely pissed off. Then again, Marley had no way of knowing what (if anything) had transpired between Gillian and The Dark after she’d left. Most importantly, this was the second time she’d seen an irate customer angrily confront The Dark and Marley couldn’t fight her budding suspicion that he and his therapy were just old-fashioned frauds.
Considering Gillian’s anger and her brother’s behavior along with what she and Alison had learned about The Dark that afternoon, Marley had more than a few serious reservations about the efficacy of The Dark’s treatments. Maybe his therapies were triggering pre-existing emotional or mental illnesses or other undiagnosed medical conditions in his followers.
“Let’s take a moment now to bid our sister Gillian farewell.” The Dark bowed his head and the crowd followed his example. A solemn few seconds passed. “And now,” he raised his head smiling, “shall we get back to conquering our fears? To living up to our own potential?”
“Yessss!” The crowd cheered right up at this prospect.
Marley endured the longest two hours of her life after that. Not to mention, the teensy cut on her finger continued to throb. The finger even began to swell slightly. Despite this she hung in there and got some excellent pictures of the crowd during the question and answer session. She even managed to read a few passages of The Dark’s latest book through some of the longer-winded commentary.
By the time the Dark Forum finally wrapped up at five Marley was starved and ready for a break. But to her dismay instead of leaving the stage at the close of the event, The Dark reached under his cape and produced a Dark Tag Laser gun. Held it aloft triumphantly. “Who wants to play some Tag?” he grinned mischievously at the audience.
A rustle of movement below indicated compliance among the crowd. Marley looked around herself in consternation. She wasn’t even clear on the rules or the purpose of the game and had no desire whatsoever to join in the fun.
“Read
y? Get set! Go!” The Dark raised his laser and fired at the ceiling whereupon in the crowd below Darker turned upon Darker, face-to-face, nose-to-nose, firing point blank at each other as the LED displays on their vests quickly registered either hit points scored (green) or mortal hits taken (red). There was a frenzy of activity in the auditorium below her as Marley watched, stunned. Glad to be in a private box.
The scene below was an electronic slaughterhouse. A lot of Darkers had already been “hit” and had “died” so the auditorium had quickly sorted out the more experienced players from the less dedicated souls whose LED lights were no longer flashing.
The more skilled players were crouched in the aisles, hiding behind doors and picking each other off one by one as the crowd continued to separate its stronger members from the weak. Suddenly feeling a little ill Marley stood up and hurried for the hallway heading outside.
CHAPTER 21
October 30th – 5:00 p.m.
Since Marley was already downtown and not very far from The Kid Factory, she stopped by on impulse to drop off the new Dark Tag headset The Dark had given her, and to talk to Alison about Galea. Watching the game of Dark Tag had given rise to some hard speculations on Marley’s part about the new product The Dark was planning to unleash on his followers.
Aside from the headset’s obvious application in the context of Dark Tag, Marley wanted to know exactly what else the thing might be used for, if anything. Someone should have a close look at the headset, and that someone was Alison. But when Marley arrived at the Kid Factory, she found that Alison was in a physical therapy session with her trainer, so Marley left the headset at the front desk of The Kid Factory along with a note for her friend explaining matters.
After which she drove back to Uptown where a vegetarian burrito with plenty of guacamole from The Uptown Diner soothed her appetite if not the throbbing pain in her finger. When she’d finished eating, Marley stopped by the pharmacy to buy some bandages and medicated ointment for the cut then drove home to Uncle Max’s house.