Dark Passage

by Griffin Hayes

  Then another thought popped into his head and Tyson felt foolish for even allowing himself to entertain the idea. A foolish idea. An idea so preposterous he knew that when he looked back on all of this it would give him the greatest laugh he’d had in a long time.

  Could Han and Chewy have followed him back from his dream? The same way that stray dog had followed Tyson home late one night as he cut through an alley by Broadway and Thirty-Seventh.

  But how had they teleported from that old lunch box he kept in the storage locker of his condo to Skip’s cottage?

  Tyson glanced down at Chewy and had the unsettling impression those beady little eyes were looking back at him. He shoved the toys deep inside his pocket and went back to his dinner and the little vial of blue heaven that was supposed to follow every meal.

  Without a doubt, a strange thing had happened, but he was certain there was a perfectly rational, scientific reason for it. Until he found that reason and got a better grip on what was happening, he would hold off on the drug trial diary. He certainly didn’t want that asshole Stevens cutting him off over concerns for his mental health.

  Not long after that, Tyson was sliding under the covers in a pantomime he had enacted many a night. Only now he was beginning to feel more confident that it would end with him sound asleep instead of awake and screaming within a matter of minutes. Han and Chewy stood poised on the night table beside him. Tyson would keep them well within sight and when he got home he would check the dusty old lunch pail stuffed somewhere deep inside his storage locker and probably find them missing. Someone was messing with his head. He was sure of it.

  Tyson switched off the light and couldn’t help thinking about Ruma as he dozed. There had been so much he had wanted to tell her. Castleman jumping ship and the massive pile of shit he and Skip were knee deep in. God knew if ever there was a time he needed a shoulder to lean on it was now. But Tyson also knew news like that would only add fuel to Ruma’s already volatile conviction that he was a go nowhere dreamer in desperate need of a reality check. Without that million dollars, Onesizefitsall.com would be stillborn. And that was exactly how Tyson Barrett fell asleep, thinking about money.

  Chapter 7

  At four thirty in the morning, Tyson’s bladder started tingling. By five thirty, that tingle had become a razor sharp stabbing pain that couldn’t be ignored any longer. He stumbled out of bed and was hobbling through the living room toward the bathroom when his foot connected with something hard. Tyson yelped and hit the ground with all the grace of a drunken Ice Capade. For a few agonizing moments, he lay on his back, inventing new swear words. Outside bluish predawn light floated in through the large windows that overlooked the lake.

  He had had too much wine last night. Not nearly enough to make him drunk, or even tipsy, but enough to stretch his bladder into something that looked like a cantaloupe.

  Tyson finished in the washroom and came back to see what had crushed his foot. He switched on the light and stood there for a while, rubbing his eyes, growing more and more convinced he was still asleep. Before him was an object that hadn’t been there when he’d gone to bed. The old steamer trunk was mashed up against the side of the couch as if someone had thrust it there in a great hurry. The same kind of trunk he’d seen so often in those old black and white movies. On either side were thick leather handles and he grabbed one and tried to lift it, but the trunk refused to budge.

  “You’ve got to be shitting me. This thing must weigh over two hundred pounds. The hell is in there?”

  A dead body

  He was about to take a step back when he noticed the trunk had a three digit combination lock. Tyson bent down and started flipping the small rotary dial until they each read 999. He wasn’t sure just how he knew that was right, but tiny snippets from his dream were coming back to him. He pulled at the heavy latch and when it gave way he lifted the lid. Tyson’s eyebrow’s perked up and his eyes grew to three times their normal size. He was suddenly glad he’d gone to the washroom because otherwise he probably would have pissed all over himself. Inside the chest, stacked in what looked like piles of fives, tens and twenties, was more money than Tyson had ever seen in his life.

  Chapter 8

  It was approaching noon when he finished counting and stacking the money. The sun was high overhead, pushing the temperature inside the small cottage up into the high seventies. The smell of spring in the country was strong; wood shavings, birch trees and the vague odor of cow shit. Outside, motorboats roared across the lake at high speed. Something about that pine smell made Tyson’s stomach tie into knots and he got up—bolts of fire shooting through his legs—and went to slam the kitchen window shut. He needed to eat, not so much because he was hungry or because he felt his stomach grumbling, he was still on one hell of a high, but more out of habit and conditioning. It was noon after all.

  As to what he would have, that really wasn’t at issue. Right about now he could eat roasted goat ass and swear it tasted like filet mignon. The bagels and cream cheese he bought yesterday were at the bottom of the fridge and he figured they would do the job just fine. As he cut a bagel and plopped it into the toaster, his fingertips screamed back at him. They were red and tender from the morning he had spent leafing through a mountain of bills that now rose past his belly button.

  By the final count, and Tyson hoped he wouldn’t have to count it again, it had come to nine hundred sixty-six thousand six hundred eighty-one dollars. All in three old, weathered looking denominations: twenties, tens and fives. He had found a single one dollar bill floating around at the bottom of the trunk. A crumpled bill from 1974. Funny enough, that was the year he was born.

  He sat at the kitchen table, eating bagels and watching the pyramid of money as though it might sprout a pair of legs and take off running.

  Tyson reached into the side pocket of the khaki pants he was wearing and pulled out the jet injector. It was already loaded with his morning dose. He rested the nozzle against the flesh on his shoulder and fired, loving the sound of the compressed air as it blasted the Noxil through his skin and into his bloodstream.

  Looking at the cash again, one thing became certain. This trunk full of money—the very amount he and Skip were short, a striking coincidence which was by no means lost on Tyson—hadn’t been there when he’d gone to bed. He stormed off to his bedroom and snatched Han and Chewy off the night table. He set them both down on the table, the money looming behind them in the background.

  “What the hell is going on here?” he asked the figures out loud. “Am I going nuts or are things appearing out of thin air?”

  Could he still be dreaming? Tyson slapped himself across the face and felt the stinging pain in his cheek.

  Don’t remember ever feeling that in a dream.

  Was it possible the money belonged to Skip? After all, this was Skip’s cottage. But of course that begged two questions. A) Why on earth would someone who had a million dollars leave it in a trunk at their summer home? and B) Why would they have needed Castleman if they had their own dough all along?

  There was only one way to find the answer. Tyson picked up the phone and called Skip. His friend answered on the first ring.

  “Hey Ty, how you feeling?”

  “Amazing!” he said. He swore he could almost feel the Noxil working its way through his system. “Can’t remember ever being better.”

  “Well, that’s great news. When are you coming back?”

  “Skip, there’s something I need to ask you and I need you to be as honest with me as you can. Can you do that?”

  “I don’t like the sound of this, Ty, but go on, ask away.”

  “Is there anything you haven’t told me?”

  “Anything I haven’t…that’s kinda vague, Ty, can you be more specific? What’s this all about?”

  “I’m sitting here in your summer home, it’s a beautiful sunny spring day and I’m looking at an old trunk.”

  “Okay, an old trunk. I give up. What am I supposed to get from
that?”

  “It’s one of those steamer trunks.”

  “Great,” Skip said and the drawn out way he said it, made it sound like greaaaaat.

  “Well, it’s not so much the trunk itself, but what I found inside it and I need to know if you’re keeping anything from me.”

  Skip was starting to get annoyed, Tyson could tell by the heavy way he was breathing. “I have no clue what you’re talking about. In fact, I don’t even own a steamer trunk. Listen, Tyson, these phone calls you keep making. You’re starting to really worry me.”

  “Trust me, Skippy old boy, there’s nothing to be worried about, not anymore. Those money problems of ours. Gone. And screw Castleman and his associates. You know why? Cause we don’t need them. Not anymore. I’m looking at a pile of money here, Skip. A million answers to all our problems.”

  There was a pause before Skip spoke. “I think I know what this is about and I’m sorry. I’m truly, truly sorry. You won’t hear an apology from Skip Williams often, but I think I know what’s been eating away at you, Ty, and it’s my fault.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Last night I accused you of sabotaging things with Castleman. I implied you’d said something to him. Listen to me. I was frustrated. You haven’t been yourself lately with the insomnia and all that and I hit you below the be—”

  “No, Skip, you don’t understand…well, maybe I did say something to Castleman, I don’t remember exactly, but that’s not the point. I’m sitting here looking at a mountain of money. I’m sitting here with my legs up on a table that’s filled with nearly a million dollars.”

  “Ty, old buddy, you know me well enough by now. You got my apology, please don’t rub my face in it.”

  Tyson felt his blood pressure begin to rise. There was nothing that got to him faster than being called a liar. If a lifeguard yells shark, no one asks questions, they get the hell out of the water. But Tyson still had enough sense to know when to stop pushing. Skip was beginning to think he was losing his marbles. And could he blame him? Their last two conversations had gone from bad to worse in less than thirty seconds. No, Skip wouldn’t believe him until he drove up to his house and dumped this trunk filled with cash over his head.

  “All right, Skip, I accept your apology.”

  Their conversation went on for a while after that, but Tyson wasn’t really there. He was thinking about the money. At last he hung up the phone and grabbed a stack of twenties and flung it on the table, his heart skipping wildly in his chest as the money thudded heavily and slid across the oak finish with a faint whispering sound. There was something incredibly satisfying about that sound. It sounded like…freedom.

  As frustrating as it was, Tyson’s conversation with Skip had certainly been definitive. He reached into his pocket and came out with the small plastic case which held the vials. He wasn’t sure how this stuff was doing it, but somehow when he drifted off to sleep, a hidden door in his mind creaked open.

  A secret passage.

  He thought of slapping himself awake again. Surely he was stuck in a dream. Things like this didn’t happen in real life, not to guys like him at least. It’s time to stop clinging to your cactus, he reminded himself. Good things happen to those who are open to receiving them. Isn’t that the kind of thing people pay those self-help gurus to tell them? That anyone can conquer the world with nothing more than positive thinking? This was the happiest he’d been in a long time and he was doing his best to dispel his many nagging concerns about how any of this was possible. But his anxiety wasn’t so easy to dismiss. What if he was right about the drug opening some kind of hidden door inside his mind? A doorway between his dreams and reality. And what would happen if he stopped taking the drug? Would that door suddenly swing shut? What if it couldn’t be closed anymore? Maybe at this stage, the Noxil was only keeping the bad dreams away?

  Then a final terrifying thought crept into his mind and Tyson tried in vain to bat it away. If that door won’t close, and his nightmares started to return, it won’t be piles of money that start coming through. It’ll be other things. Ugly, unimaginable things.

  Tyson shoved a frantic hand into his pocket and pulled out the black case with the Noxil. There were still nine vials left. Enough for three more days and then he’d have to head back to Dr. Stevens for more.

  Back to your Junkie, a tiny voice whispered.

  “Shut up,” he shouted at the empty room.

  Then another voice chimed in. One he liked much better.

  You have a million dollars sitting in front of you. Stop being such a doubting Thomas and go with it for once in your goddamn life.

  If there was anything Tyson had learned from his ex-wife, it was this: there was no better therapy than retail therapy. And that was exactly what he intended to do.

  Chapter 9

  Dr. Hunter closed the door to his new office and turned the lock until he heard the bolt slide into place. Normally there wasn’t any reason to hide himself away in the cramped confines of his office. The stack of books cradled in the crook of his arm, however, said otherwise. They were children’s books and he had taken them from Brenda’s room. An odd rush of exhilaration had struck him as he snatched them. A guilty sort of pleasure—the same one he had felt at fourteen sneaking copies of Penthouse magazine into the bathroom. Of course, this time it wasn’t about satisfying any perverted fantasies. His interest was purely professional and he reminded himself of that as he laid the books on his desk and sat down. Who knows, he thought with a tinge of hope, locked inside might be the raw data for the kind of research paper that can really skyrocket a man’s career. Hunter spread the books out and surveyed the titles before him. The Little Engine That Could, Clifford the Big Red Dog, Are You My Mother? 100 of the Greatest Fairytales. He let his hand pass over the worn covers until his fingers came to rest on Are You My Mother? Yes, this was where he would begin.

  He opened the book somewhere in the middle and saw a gawky looking bird talking to a cow. “Are you my mother?” the bird asked hopefully. “No,” the cow said with indifference.

  But it was what Hunter saw next that really got him excited. Lining the margins of the children’s book was Brenda’s malformed juvenile penmanship. There were no dates or headings. The words just started. And Hunter read them as they came.

  He’ll never leave me. My little spider friend. I was afraid that I would open my eyes this morning and find him gone. He spent most of yesterday building his web. Shameful, all that work to catch one nasty little shit fly. Swiped my hand through his web to see what he would do. He scurried behind the bookshelf to safety. Ten minutes later he was out and right back at it like nothing had happened. The lamp is less than six inches away. I can already see his plan and it’s brilliant. In the evening when the light is on, the insects will be drawn straight into his trap.

  I’ll name him Alexander. It’s such a beautiful name, isn’t it? I’ve been telling Dr. Bowes that I’d like to have another child. He gets funny when I say that. Told me I was too old to have kids anymore and then asked me if I remembered why I was here at Sunnybrook. I told him yes. I was here because I loved my children and tried to protect them. He still doesn’t seem to get the point, no matter how many times I tell him. Death lurks around every corner. The devil doesn’t have horns. No, no, no, he’s much smaller. As small as a microbe. Most people don’t know that, but if you’re careful, the way I’m careful, you can protect them. Safety doesn’t come cheap, no siree Bob. There are rules and procedures to follow and when those rules are broken, everyone’s at risk. So of course you stupid Doctor Bowes I know what happened to my sons. Tyson loved his mother the most, but even that wasn’t enough.

  I want him back.

  There was a knock on the door and Dr. Hunter came up with a start. He could see a pair of feet under the crack shuffling impatiently. Hunter’s heart was pounding in his chest and he shoved the books under his desk. He unlocked his office door, pulled it open and saw the frown on Dr. Bowes’ fa
ce.

  “Why is your office door locked?”

  Hunter suddenly felt the flesh under his arms moisten with perspiration. There really was no good reason to lock the door, was there? “I’m sorry, Dr. Bowes, it won’t happen again.”

  Hunter could see Bowes’ nose twitch and wondered if he was searching for the distinct scent of alcohol on his breath.

  He remembered Brenda’s diary and how she described the way Bowes had gone stiff when she told him about wanting another child. She got to him. In a way Hunter didn’t quite understand. Unnerved him. Even now, lying in her room, defenseless and vulnerable, he was still scared. Hunter wanted that kind of power over the old man.

  “Listen,” Bowes was saying, “you’ve been working long hours lately and I appreciate that, but our meeting today with the government review board; you should have been there. No excuses.”

  Hunter’s expression didn’t change.

  “Next time you take a cat nap, do it on your own time.”

  Bowes turned to leave.

  “Oh, Doctor, before I forget. I was looking through our patient records and I couldn’t find a file for Brenda Barrett.”

  Bowes stopped. “Records for patients on the eighth floor aren’t kept there.”

  “Where can I find them then?”

  “They’re locked away in a safe place,” Bowes said, clicking his heels impatiently. “Listen, Elias. I’m not sure I made this clear enough when you first started, but contrary to what you may have learned at Albany Medical College, we’re not running a counseling service here at Sunnybrook. These people, especially the exceptional group up on eight, are not going to get better. They’re never going to live normal lives like you and I. Own houses, white fences, golden labs, two point five children. I’d even go so far as to say they’re probably the neediest people in the world and you know what the biggest irony is? Most of their families want nothing to do with them. Like it or not, our job is to medicate and subjugate, not to reform. If you’ve come to cure people, Dr. Hunter, you’ve come to the wrong place.”