The Dark Man

by Desmond Doane

  “Whoa, let me see.”

  “See what?”

  “Your right hand.”

  “I … it’s nothing.”

  He shows me anyway. It’s mottled pink with raised flesh, scratch upon scratch.

  I grit my teeth and wince. Some of them look fresh. Others have been there awhile. You would think that you couldn’t get that many scars across the back of a single hand, but they’re thin lines, crosshatched, like someone has been gouging him with a stickpin. I picture the razor-sharp point of a demonic claw, slowly dragging along, splitting flesh. One single, screeching nail on a chalkboard made of skin.

  I grab the stretchy jacket fabric around his wrist and pull the sleeve up to his elbow. My heart sinks. This poor man. “Oh, buddy,” I say, mimicking my mother when I got hurt as a child.

  Craghorn’s entire arm is covered in scratches, some new, some months old, and I don’t have to ask about the rest of his frail body. I can see it in my mind already. I’m sure he’s covered head to toe in claw marks. I doubt there’s much skin left that isn’t. He’s not wearing a jacket and slacks in 104-degree heat because it’s cold inside his house; he’s wearing them because this goddamn thing has used him as a canvas.

  “Get out of here,” I say. “You leave, and don’t you ever come back. We’ll handle this.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Craghorn leaves, but not without protesting as much as he can muster, and I call Melanie from wardrobe to check on Ulie. She’s not pleased that I’ve inconvenienced her yet again, but says she’s okay with it, because of this: “Ulie is just the cutest wutest puppy wuppy in the whole wide world. Yes, he is! Who’s the cutest puppy?”

  The conversation stopped being directed at me about two minutes ago.

  I say my goodbyes to the cutest puppy in the whole wide world and promise her that it’ll only be one more night. She knows me, and she knows I can’t keep that promise when I’m heavily involved in a case, and says as much.

  “It’s fine, Ford,” she adds. “He’s in puppy heaven. Doesn’t even know you’re gone.”

  Ouch. That stings, but I know that she’s not really referencing Ulie. I’m sure his feelings are the conduit for what she’s trying to tell me.

  “Thanks, Mel,” I say. “I’ll get back as soon as I can.”

  “Any word on Chelsea’s story?”

  She knows that any moment I’m not working for The Man—like, literally, the cops, government agents—I spend my time trying to find, and destroy, the thing that hurt that little girl. “I went back out to that farmhouse right before I came to Virginia.”

  “Any luck?”

  “Helluva lot better than last time. Listen, Mike’s coming. I’ll tell you about it when I come to pick up Ulie. It’s good. Big time. Could help a lot if I ever get a damn chance to follow up on it.”

  “Wait, hang on. Did you say Mike? As in, Mike Long?”

  “Yeah.”

  “One sec, let me check the news.”

  “For what?”

  “I didn’t hear anything about the world ending.”

  “Funny. Oh, hardy har, hardy har.”

  “He’s actually there. With you. On a job,” she says, not like it’s a question, but as a statement of absolute disbelief regarding a true fact.

  “He lives down in Kitty Hawk, remember? And this, Jesus, Mel, this is big. Whatever’s in this house, it’s as bad as that right-hander that got Chelsea. Maybe even stronger.” I almost tell her about the marks all over Craghorn’s body, but I change my mind. I don’t want her to worry about me. You know, since I’m foolishly thinking she’ll care. “I need Mike’s help. Seriously. So I called, and amazingly enough, he came.”

  I can hear her sigh. “For only the second time, the almighty Ford Atticus Ford has met something he can’t tame.” I can’t tell if she’s talking about the demon, or herself. That’s a long story for another chapter. I’m still hunting the ghosts of our marriage. Maybe they can tell me what went wrong. Maybe they can give me answers.

  Not about what happened, really, because I know what I did.

  About why I let someone like her go.

  I’d like to ask them what I was thinking, because I have no clue.

  “Yeah,” I say. It’s the only thing that makes sense.

  “Tell Mike I said hi and to behave himself.”

  “Apparently he’s off the sauce. I don’t think we’ll have to worry about that too much.”

  “I meant for him not to kill you tonight. He wouldn’t last long in prison.”

  “Jokes galore today, huh?”

  “It’s a necessary evil around you, my friend. Okay, Ford. Call me when you get into town. Ulie misses you.”

  And for about half a second, for the teeniest, tiniest moment, I hope that this statement might not be about the dog, either.

  I hang up. It’s not and never will be. I done screwed up good.

  Thunder grumbles in the distance. It would be nice if a rain shower came through and cooled things down a bit, but most likely what’ll happen is, it’ll rain for five minutes, just enough to soak this concrete jungle. And here, this close to the ocean with the humidity sitting at about 7,000 percent, it’ll do nothing more than turn all of Hampton Roads into a suffocating sauna.

  I’m almost looking forward to the freezing air inside the Craghorn compound.

  But not really, considering the thing causing it might finally commit me to an insane asylum.

  I turn my eyes away from the dark clouds shouldering out the blue sky on the horizon and see Mike walking toward me. His expression is glum. He looks like he went a few rounds with Tyson and finally managed to crawl off the mat long after the match ended.

  “Didn’t go over so well, huh?” I ask.

  “Well, I got permission, but if you ask me, there was another right-hander on the other end of that line. She was not happy.”

  “Not my biggest fan anymore?”

  He chuckles and shakes his head. “As if she ever was.”

  “Good point.”

  “She’ll never forgive you for Chelsea.”

  “Her and about forty million people.” I let that simmer a moment. Then I ask him, “Have you?”

  “Forgiven you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What do you think?”

  His tone suggests I already know the answer. I do, but it was worth a shot, regardless.

  I have to wipe the layer of sweat from my forehead. It’s now mixed with hair gel that seems to be melting off my damn head and leaves my hand gooey. I fling away the droplets, and the remainder gets swiped down my pants leg. Pretty sure that my trademark black from head-to-toe outfit was the worst idea imaginable in this heat. Right about now, I’m praying that storm in the distance makes its way here. I’d love to have about five minutes of relief before we go tackle this beast.

  I ask Mike if Craghorn showed him any of his scars earlier.

  “Not until I asked. He wanted to show me how the doorbell would ring by itself at all hours of the night. Caught me looking at the scars on his hands, and I made him show me what else had been done to him. I wanted to ask you about it because something felt weird.”

  I pantomime pulling a sleeve back. “He showed you, right? Whole arm was covered, both sides.”

  “Not just his arms. Nearly everything.”

  “Yeah? I thought his entire body would be covered.”

  “What’re we gonna do about him?”

  “He’s already gone.” I point my chin east, in the direction of the ocean, and tell Mike that I sent Craghorn away. “Gave him money for a night’s stay at the Seaside—”

  “Delane still there?”

  “Yeah, but that’s not—forget it. Doesn’t matter.”

  “So what’s he doing after we’re finished? What happens if we can’t get rid of this right-hander on our own? It’ll take a while to convince the Catholics to come down for an exorcism, and, even then, there’s no guarantee. He can’t come back here. Does he have family
? Friends?”

  “We already went over all that, and no, he doesn’t. I’ll figure something out.”

  I’ve been known to help out a client on occasion if I’m moved enough by their story, but rarely do I commit myself this deeply. Mike and I made a lot of money in sponsorships and advertisements for The Paranormal Channel, and, in turn, we were extremely well compensated for it. Truthfully, I wouldn’t ever have to work again if I chose not to, but I have questions that remain and a little girl to avenge.

  What I’m trying to say is, I have plenty of offshore accounts and investments that I can tap into. If Dave Craghorn needs a new place to live, I can afford to set him up until he gets rid of the deep shadows that are sucking away the light in his life. Nobody deserves that.

  Mike says, “You know, I don’t get you, Ford. I’m not sure I ever did or ever will.”

  “How so?”

  “I get what you’re saying. I know exactly what you’re talking about. You’ll buy that guy a freakin’ house on the oceanfront if it means taking care of him. You got a good heart, but damn if it ain’t tainted black once in a while.”

  “You mean Melanie? Cheating?”

  “That’s part of it, yeah. How many were there? Ten? Fifteen?”

  “Six,” I admit, angling the word out in a tone that suggests, ‘Hey, it wasn’t that bad.’

  “One is all it takes. Anyway,” he says, checking the sky as thunder barrels through, “it’s more than just screwing up with Melanie. The greed, the motivation, stepping all over people on our way to the top, sending Chelsea into—never mind. This ain’t about her. It’s about—”

  “It’s always been about her. At least since TPC yanked the show.”

  “Let me finish,” Mike says. A sprinkle of rain splats against my cheek. “What I’m trying to say is, it will never make any goddamn sense to me how you can buy some poor soul a house with your own money, or cut a check for a couple mil’ to some kid’s charity, and then you turn right around and grind something into hamburger if you think it’ll get you somewhere. I don’t get it. I don’t know how you live with yourself, and I don’t know what motivates you to pay attention to the angel on your shoulder one day, and the devil the next.”

  Mike is right. He’s always right. But I’m not ready to admit it.

  Plus, I don’t know what the answer is either—faulty wiring, perhaps.

  It’s funny how this is the most he’s ever opened up to me, especially on the back of a two-year separation. It sounds as if he’s been practicing this for a while, and no matter how much he says he’s only here to help Craghorn, I feel like he was looking for an opportunity to get this little speech off his chest. Maybe Toni got tired of listening to him recite it in front of a mirror.

  No, Ford, be nice. Could be a distant attempt at forgiveness.

  But, given a second to think about it, maybe I shouldn’t get that confused with pity.

  Whatever. I’m glad to have him back.

  I spend too much time analyzing things these days.

  Best to let this discussion go to voice mail.

  I slap Mike on the back, heartily, like old pals, and say, “Okay then. Nice chat. Now let’s go hunt some fucking ghosts.”

  Mike and I go through our standard routine, and it’s fluid, like we never hopped off the bicycle. He’s wax on; I’m wax off. Easy as it ever was. He runs a baseline EMF check to see if there are any unnatural electromagnetic spikes that might cause a sensation of being watched and things of that nature. You get too much EMF humming around your body and brain, there’s a good possibility that it can cause visual distortions, even hallucinations. Some people are more sensitive than others, and that’s the way it is. No rhyme or reason.

  We had a janitor in Minnesota one time who was working around enough EMF juice to fry an egg. He never noticed. But then, there was a woman in Northern California who had a minimal spike in her laundry room whenever she turned on the washing machine. She would faint from the EMF buzzing around her and claim that whole hordes of angry spirits were trying to have an orgy with her. Fun stuff.

  But, on the other hand, a hungry spirit can also soak up this EMF energy and use it to communicate. We even have what we call an “EMF Pump” that we’ll deploy sometimes in an attempt to supercharge the atmosphere. Neither Mike nor I have one with us at the moment, but given the strength of this razor-clawed entity that’s already here, I doubt we’ll need it.

  It won’t be fully dark for at least another three hours, so it’s beneficial to us to get all of the standard objectives out of the way while we can still see.

  By the time Mike finishes the routine EMF scope downstairs and comes up empty, I already have three of his “spotcams” situated in assorted positions. Various paranormal groups have their pet terms for what they call these stationary filming units, but they’re really just digital cameras on tripods that are set to record in night vision from a static location. One spot all night, thus, the spotcam.

  We even had a group of die-hard Graveyard: Classified fans who dubbed themselves the “spotcamgirls.” The pictures they sent to our e-mail address at The Paranormal Channel headquarters would make a porn star blush, much less the unfortunate intern who answered all of our mail for minimum wage.

  Maybe he didn’t mind so much.

  Glory days, indeed.

  “Looks like you’ve got them in good locations,” Mike says.

  “Yeah, the one there in the eastern corner picks up the entire living room where Craghorn was attacked earlier today, plus that entrance down into the kitchen where he was watching something while I talked to the detective.” I move over to the next one and wave down the hallway. “This one will capture anything along this whole corridor—living room, kitchen, storage closet off in the peripheral with a direct line of sight down to the back door. It’s all covered. Then the third one over here is set up in the top corner of the stairwell, looking up at where Craghorn told you he hears footsteps all night long, and then right over to the entrance. It’s all set up like a funnel down here, herding everything in front of a camera.”

  Damn, that felt good. There for a minute, I was totally in the zone with Don the cameraman behind me and Charlie Chocolate Chip, the sound guy, standing off to the side and holding a small boom mic over my head, while I explained to the fans and casual viewers how we were setting up to conduct the investigation. Back a couple of years ago, I would’ve nailed the whole thing on the first take.

  “Ford?” Mike says, bringing me out of the revelry in my mind.

  “Huh?”

  “You got a little gleam in your eye. Right there in the corner.”

  “Sorry. Reminiscing.”

  “Doesn’t change anything, but I felt it, too. Did you ever think about—Jesus Christ!”

  We duck, throwing our heads down and to the side as a decorative ceramic plate hurtles past our heads.

  Bewildered, mouth agape, Mike straightens up and asks, “Where in the hell did that come from?”

  I look behind us. The plate lies on the hardwood floor, smashed to pieces against the grandfather clock that’s been dead for decades, according to Craghorn. “That looks like the Elvis plate,” I tell him. “One of those commemorative ones. It used to be in the kitchen, hanging beside the refrigerator. I noticed it because my mom used to have the same one.”

  In the silence between our breathing, my ear picks up an intruding sound.

  It’s a distant noise, the staccato rhythm of slow-stepping hooves.

  Clop, clop.

  Clop, clop.

  I picture the demon walking down the hall behind me. I strain to listen for the hooves. The hair on my arms stands at attention. The pressing pain in my bladder builds.

  Then I realize the sound isn’t coming from far away. It’s right beside me.

  It’s the dead clock ticking.

  Now that is an omen.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  We’re standing up on the second floor, at the head of the stairs, lookin
g back down toward the front entryway where the decorative plate lies in ruins. We left it alone as a small symbol of defiance, just enough to flip the bird at the right-hander to let him, or her, or it, know that we weren’t going to bend to its will.

  You break something and we clean it up?

  As if.

  Well, I mean, not until the investigation is over. We won’t really leave a mess for Craghorn if he ever comes home. God, I hope he won’t. I hope he listens to what I said and stays far, far away from this place.

  Mike holds a thermal imaging camera, and what this thing does is, it takes all of the ambient heat in the room and projects it as an image on a small screen. All the warm stuff is displayed in reds, pinks, oranges, and yellows. Imagine the stages of a sunset; that’s what the room temperature heat looks like, more or less. Now, a spiritual presence is typically cold because it’s sucking energy out of the atmosphere in order to manifest, so if you’re looking at the screen and you see a dark mass, or figure, whatever, as it’s walking across the room, there’s a damn good chance you’ve got company.

  I wait with my arms crossed, patiently and silently. “Anything?”

  Mike breathes heavily through his nose. He’s always done that. That’s a sound I haven’t heard in a long time. It’s like going home again.

  He answers, “Nothing. But it’s already so cold in here that it would almost be hard to tell the difference.”

  “Would it help to switch it over to black and white?”

  Same concept, only instead of a rainbow differentiating heat discrepancies, you have a monochromatic representation. It has its uses, but I prefer all the pretty colors.

  He flips a switch, turns a couple of dials and, yeah, lots of black. That doesn’t do much for us.

  “Should we move on?”

  “Five more minutes. I want to see if that thing is stalking us.”

  In all honesty, we sort of retreated up to the second floor. That’s not something I’m fond of admitting but when you have a right-hander powerful enough to sling breakable things at your head, it might be a good idea to get out of the way.