Darkness My Old Friend

by Lisa Unger

  The late-morning temperature was a perfect sixty-eight degrees. The light was golden, the air carrying the scent of the leaves he was raking, the aroma of burning wood from somewhere. In the driveway Ricky’s restored 1966 GTO preened, waiting for him to come home from school next weekend. Jones had it tuned up and detailed, so it would be cherry when the kid got back.

  He missed his son. Their relationship through the boy’s late adolescence had been characterized, regrettably, by conflict more than anything else. Still, he couldn’t wait for Ricky to be back under his roof again, even if it was just for four days. If anyone told him how much he’d really, truly miss his kid, how he’d feel a squeeze on his heart every time he walked by that empty room, Jones wouldn’t have believed it. He would have thought it was just another one of those platitudes people mouthed about parenthood.

  He leaned his rake against the trunk of the oak and removed his gloves. A pair of mourning doves cooed sadly at him. They sat on the railing of his porch, rustling their tawny feathers.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, not for the first time. Earlier, he’d removed the beginning of their nest, a loose pile of sticks and paper that they managed somehow to place in the light cover of his garage door’s opening mechanism. Mourning doves made flimsy nests, were lazy enough to even settle in the abandoned nests of other birds. So the garage must have seemed like a perfect residence for them, offering protection from predators. But he didn’t want birds in the garage. They were harbingers of death. Everyone knew that. They’d been hanging around the yard, giving him attitude all morning.

  “You can build your nest anywhere else,” he said, sweeping his arm over the property. “Just not there.”

  They seemed to listen, both of them craning their necks as he spoke. Then they flapped off with an angry, singsong twitter.

  “Stupid birds.”

  He drew his arm across his forehead. In spite of the mild temperatures, he was sweating from the raking. It reminded him that he still needed to lose those twenty-five pounds his doctor had been nagging him about for years. His doctor, an annoyingly svelte, good-looking man right around Jones’s age, never failed to mention the extra weight, no matter the reason for his visit-flu, sprained wrist, whatever. You’re gonna die one of these days, too, Doc, Jones wanted to say. You’ll probably bite it during your workout. Whaddaya clocking these days-five miles every morning, more on the weekends? That’ll put you in an early grave. Instead Jones just kept reminding him that the extra weight around his middle had saved his life last year.

  “I’m not sure that’s a compelling argument,” said Dr. Gauze. “What are the odds of your taking another bullet to the gut, especially now that you’re out to pasture?”

  Out to pasture? He was only forty-seven. He was thinking about this idea of being out to pasture as a beige Toyota Camry pulled up in front of the house and came to a stop. He watched for a second, couldn’t see the person in the driver’s seat. When the door opened and a slight woman stepped out, he recognized her without being able to place her. She was too thin, had the look of someone robbed of her appetite by anxiety. She moved with convalescent slowness up his drive, clutching a leather purse to her side. She didn’t seem to notice him standing there in the middle of his yard. In fact, she walked right past him.

  “Can I help you?” he said finally. She turned to look at him, startled.

  “Jones Cooper?” she said. She ran a nervous hand through her hair, a mottle of steel gray and black, cut in an unflatteringly blunt bob.

  “That’s me.”

  “Do you know me?” she asked.

  He moved closer to her, came to stand in front of her on the paved drive that needed painting. She was familiar, yes. But no, he didn’t know her name.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Have we met?”

  “I’m Eloise Montgomery.”

  It took a moment. Then he felt the heat rise to his cheeks, a tension creep into his shoulders. Christ, he thought.

  “What can I do for you, Ms. Montgomery?”

  She looked nervously around, and Jones followed her eyes, to the falling leaves, the clear blue sky.

  “Is there someplace we can talk?” Her drifting gaze landed on the house.

  “Can’t we talk here?” He crossed his arms around his middle and squared his stance. Maggie would be appalled by his rudeness. But he didn’t care. There was no way he was inviting this woman into his home.

  “This is private,” she said. “And I’m cold.”

  She started walking toward the house, stopped at the bottom of the three steps that led up to the painted gray porch, and turned around to look at him. He didn’t like the look of her so near the house, any more than he did those doves. She was small-boned and skittish, but with a curious mettle. As she climbed the steps without invitation and stood at the door, he thought about how, with enough time and patience, a blade of grass could push its way through concrete. He expected her to pull open the screen and walk inside, but she waited. And he followed reluctantly, dropping his gardening gloves beside the rake.

  The next thing he knew, she was sitting at the dining-room table and he was brewing coffee. He could see her from where he stood at the counter. She sat primly with her hands folded. She hadn’t taken off her pilled houndstooth coat, was still clutching her bag. Those eyes never stopped moving.

  “You don’t want me here,” she said. She cast a quick glance in his direction, then looked at her hands. “You wish I would go.”

  He put down the mugs he was taking from the cabinet, banging them without meaning to.

  “Wow,” he said. “I’m impressed. You really are psychic.”

  He didn’t bother to look at her again, let his eyes rest on the calendar tucked behind the phone. He had an appointment with his shrink in a few hours, something he dreaded. When he finally gazed back over at her, she was regarding him with a wan smile.

  “A skeptic,” she said. “Your wife and mother-in-law offer more respect.”

  “Respect is earned.” He poured the coffee. “How do you take it?” he asked. He thought she’d say black.

  “Light and sweet, please,” she said. Then, “And what should I do to earn your respect?”

  He walked over with the coffee cups and sat across from her.

  “What can I do for you, Ms. Montgomery?”

  It was nearly noon. Maggie’s last morning session would end in fifteen minutes, and then she’d come out for lunch. He didn’t want Eloise sitting here when she did. The woman could only bring back bad memories for Maggie, everything they’d suffered through in the last year and long before. He didn’t need it, and neither did his wife.

  “Do you know about my work?” Eloise asked.

  Work. Really? Is that what they were calling it? He would have thought she’d say something like gift, or sight. Or maybe abilities. Of course, she probably did consider it work, since that was how she earned her living.

  “I do,” he said. He tried to keep his tone flat, not inquiring or encouraging. But she seemed to feel the need to explain anyway.

  “I’m like a radio. I pick up signals-from all over, scattered, disjointed. I have no control over what I see, when I see it, the degree of lucidity, the power of it. I could see something happening a world away, but not something right next door.”

  He struggled not to roll his eyes. Did she really expect him to believe this?

  “Okay,” he said. He took a sip of his coffee. He didn’t like the edgy, anxious feeling he had. He felt physically uncomfortable in the chair, had a nervous desire to get up and pace the room. “What does this have to do with me?”

  “You’re getting a reputation around town, you know. That you’re available to help with things-checking houses while people are away, getting mail.”

  He shrugged. “Just in the neighborhood here.” He leaned back in his chair, showed his palms. “What? Are you going on vacation? Want me to feed your cat?”

  She released a sigh and looked down at the table
between them.

  “People are going to start coming to you for more, from farther away,” she said. “It might lead you places you don’t expect.”

  Jones didn’t like how that sounded. But he wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of reacting.

  “Okay,” he said, drawing out the word.

  “I wanted you to be prepared. I’ve seen something.”

  When she looked back up at him, her eyes were shining in a way that unsettled him. Her gaze made him think for some reason of his mother when he found her on the bathroom floor after she’d suffered a stroke. He slid his chair back from the table and stood.

  “Why are you telling me this?” He leaned against the doorway that led to the kitchen.

  “Because you need to know,” she said. She still sat stiff and uncomfortable, hadn’t touched the coffee before her.

  Okay, great. Thanks for stopping by. Don’t call me, I’ll call you. Let me show you out. Instead, because curiosity always did get the better of him, he asked, “So what did you see?”

  She ran a hand through her hair. “It’s hard to explain. Like describing a dream. The essence can be lost in translation.”

  If this was some kind of show, it was a good one. She seemed sincere, not put on or self-dramatizing. If she were a witness, he would believe her story. But she wasn’t a witness, she was a crackpot.

  “Try,” he said. “That’s why you came, right?”

  Another long slow breath in and out. Then, “I saw you on the bank of a river… or it could have been an ocean. Some churning body of water. I saw you running, chasing a lifeless form in the water. I don’t know what or who it was. I can only assume it’s a woman or a girl, because that’s all I see. Then you jumped in-or possibly you fell. I think you were trying to save whoever it was. But you were overcome. You weren’t strong enough. The water pulled you under.”

  Her tone was level, unemotional. She could have been talking mildly about the weather. And the image, for some reason, failed to jolt or disturb him. In that moment she seemed frail and silly, a carnival act that neither entertained nor intrigued.

  The ticking of the large grandfather clock in the foyer seemed especially loud. He had to get rid of that thing, a housewarming present from his mother-in-law. Did he really need to hear the passing of the minutes of his life?

  “You know, Ms. Montgomery,” he said, “I don’t think you’re well.”

  “I’m not, Mr. Cooper. I’m not well at all.” She got up from the table, to his great relief, and started moving toward the door.

  “Well, should I find myself on the banks of a river, chasing a body, I’ll be sure to stay on solid ground,” he said, allowing her to pass and following her to the door. “Thanks for the warning.”

  “Would you? Would you stay on solid ground? I doubt it.” She rested her hand on the knob of the front door but neither pulled it open nor turned around.

  “I guess it depended on the circumstances,” he said. “Whether I thought I could help or not. Whether I thought I could manage the risk. And, finally, who was in the water.”

  Why was he even bothering to have this conversation? The woman was obviously mentally ill; she belonged in a hospital, not walking around free. She could hurt herself or someone else. She still didn’t turn to look at him, just bowed her head.

  “I don’t think you can manage the risk,” she said. “There are forces more powerful than your will. I think that’s what you need to know.”

  For someone as obsessed with death as Jones knew himself to be, he should have been clutching his heart with terror. But, honestly, he just found the whole situation preposterous. It was almost a relief to talk to someone who had less of a grip on life than he did.

  “Okay,” he said. “Good to know.”

  He gently nudged her aside with a hand on her shoulder and opened the door.

  “So when do you imagine this might go down? There’s only one body of water in The Hollows.” The Black River was usually a gentle, gurgling river at the base of a glacial ravine. It could, in heavy rains, become quite powerful, but it hadn’t overflowed its banks in years. And the season had been dry.

  She gave him a patient smile. “I don’t imagine, Mr. Cooper. I see, and I tell the people I need to tell to make things right. And if not right precisely, then as they should be. That’s all I do. I used to torture myself, trying to figure out where and when and if things might happen. I used to think I could save and help and fix, drive myself to distraction when I couldn’t. Now I just speak the truth of my visions. I am unattached to outcomes, to whether people treat me with respect or hostility, to whether they listen or don’t.”

  “So they’re literal, these visions,” he asked. He didn’t bother to keep the skepticism out of his voice. “You see something and it happens exactly that way. It’s immutable.”

  “They’re not always literal, no,” she said.

  “But sometimes they are?”

  “Sometimes.” She gave a careful nod. “And nothing in life is immutable, Mr. Cooper.”

  “Except death.”

  “Well…” she said. But she didn’t go on. Was there an attitude about it? As if she were a teacher who wouldn’t bother with a lesson that her student could never understand.

  She moved through the door and let the screen close behind her. He didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing, just watched as she stiffly descended the steps. She turned around once to look at him, appeared to have something else to say. But then she just kept walking down the drive. Her pace seemed brisker, as if she’d lightened her load. She didn’t seem as frail or unwell as she had when he’d first seen her. Then she got into her car and slowly drove away.

  chapter two

  She wrote slowly. Heavily tracing over each of the letters until her pen broke through to the notebook page beneath. Big block letters along the top of her English notebook: THE HOLLOWS SUCKS. It did. It did suck. She hated it. Beneath that she wrote in a loopy cursive, Why am I here? Why?

  “Willow? Miss Willow Graves. Care to join us?”

  She sat up quickly, startled. Sometimes she disappeared into her own head and the world around her faded to a buzzing white noise, only to crash back in some surprising and often embarrassing way. They were all looking at her, the cretins.

  She lifted her eyes to Mr. Vance, her English teacher, who was watching her expectantly.

  “I didn’t hear the question.” She felt the heat rise to her cheeks as someone in the back of the room giggled.

  “The question was,” he said, “can you tell me the difference between a simile and a metaphor?”

  She didn’t mean to roll her eyes. But sometimes they seemed to have a mind of their own. Mr. Vance crossed his arms and squared his shoulders. A dare.

  “A simile is a literary device that compares things, using the connector like or as. As in ‘His eyes were blue and beckoning, like the deep, wide ocean.’ A metaphor is a figure of speech that equates one unlike thing with another. For example, ‘Her love for him was a red, red, rose.’ ”

  She’d played it vampy, flirty, just to save face. But it came off wrong. From the zombies there was more nervous giggling. What a dork. The words wafted up from the stoners in the back of the room like a plume of smoke. Mr. Vance wore a high red blush-anger, embarrassment, maybe a little of both.

  When Willow was younger, her mother used to say, Your mouth is going to get you into trouble, kid. Then, That mouth, Willow. Watch your words. Lately the admonishment came so often that her mother had simply shortened it to Mouth!

  Mr. Vance did have the prettiest blue eyes. He was a preppy, neatly pressed, hairstyled, shiny-new-gold-wedding-band kind of clean. But she wasn’t crushing on him or anything. She liked him. Most teachers just found her “challenging,” “distracted,” “bright but undisciplined,” or “difficult to engage.” There were as many descriptions as there were parent-teacher conferences, most of them negative.

  But Mr. Vance was different. He let her talk, did
n’t become frustrated by her questions: Wasn’t there evidence that Shakespeare really was a woman? Didn’t his sister really do all the writing and he just took the credit? Did anyone else find Hemingway flat and inaccessible? Or Moby-Dick dull in the extreme? When Mr. Vance had met her mother during the last parent-teacher night, he’d told her that he thought Willow was “gifted” but often bored and “needed lots of challenge and stimulation to really excel.” He was the first teacher with whom she had ever really connected. And now she’d fucked it up. Screwed it up. Her mother didn’t like it when Willow said “fuck.” Use that imagination of yours, Willow; swearing is for people with small vocabularies.

  “That’s right, Willow,” said Mr. Vance. He turned his back on her and walked to the front of the room. “That’s right.”

  He returned to his lecture on literary devices, but Willow didn’t hear another word, just sulked the rest of the class. Usually she hung around to talk to him after the bell rang, but today he left before she could put her things in her bag. It was familiar, that feeling of having said the wrong thing and driving someone off, that sinking disappointment, that pointless wishing that she’d watched her words.

  On her army-green locker, someone had scratched the word freak into the paint. They’d done this at the beginning of the year, and she hadn’t complained or even tried to cover it. She liked it. The Hollows was a social and cultural void, populated by the petty, the small-minded, the unimaginative; here she was a freak and proud of it. She wanted all of them to know that she was different. She wasn’t a freak in New York City, where she’d lived all her life until her exile to The Hollows six months ago.

  She rifled through the backpack and found her cell phone. She dialed and tucked it between shoulder and ear while she bent down to retie the laces on her Doc Martens, straighten out her fishnet tights.

  “How’s life in the fast lane, kiddo?” her mother answered.

  “It sucks.” She leaned heavily against her locker and watched the sea of morons wash down the hallway. Lots of giggling and shouting and running, sneakers squeaking.