Needless to say, this e-mail, and what has happened, came at a perfect time in my life. My web page says that I reside in Pasadena, California, which Julie no doubt saw. Since she first contacted me and now, eight weeks later as I’m writing this, I’ve since moved across the country. Despite the fact that I’m a horror writer, I’m not overly superstitious. And as a way of confronting whatever fears I may have, when I update my web page I will include the name of the town I live in. Yes, the coincidences are strange, but I also know a lot of the facts, too. Joel had come from a very dysfunctional home and had a drug problem. Brent, too, had a problem with drugs, namely hallucinogens. I can’t comment on what would cause him to kill his daughter and to do it in such a fashion. I also can’t say much about the speculation that he killed other people; that’s all based on circumstantial evidence anyway. I think blaming it all on drug use is a cop-out. Tina and Mark’s story is open and shut. And of course, you as a reader know Julie’s story. She, too, came from a dysfunctional background. Yes, she was intelligent, witty, and funny. But she also had serious emotional and psychological problems. I think her theories of the cult, and her fear that Belial was after her is simply a product of her drug-induced imagination.
Of course if I’m wrong, then I’m shit out of luck I guess. Personally, I don’t think she’ll find me. Guess the only thing to do is to wait and see.
What do you think?
JFG, 18 April, 2001
Girlfriend
IT HAD BEEN almost two months since his second wife, Jennifer, had died, and three months since he’d seen Sherri Anderson.
They’d taken dinner together at the Doubletree, and Ken had asked for a corner booth where they could have privacy. He almost hadn’t called Sherri; he wanted to see her, but it had been three months since they’d been together, so he decided to invite her out to dinner in the hopes of rekindling their relationship.
Sherri sipped a glass of Zinfandel. She smiled, her deep blue eyes radiant. “I’m glad you decided to call me.”
Ken smiled back. “So am I.”
Sherri opened her mouth as if she were going to say something, yet hesitated. Ken had an idea what was on her mind: his wife, Jennifer. It was obvious that she’d heard the news, even if he hadn’t told her himself. He figured she would have found out from Marianne Denver in the days following Jennifer’s death. Like Carol’s death four years ago, Marianne had swooped in to the rescue in the aftermath. She’d taken care of the house, made sure that Helen was fed and dressed and off to school. And she’d made the funeral arrangements with Jennifer’s parents and had no doubt answered the phone in the three weeks of blind grief that followed after Ken walked into the master bedroom upon hearing the muffled thump, finding Jennifer dead of a cerebral aneurysm
Now it was just he and his daughter, Helen
And Marianne.
Sherri hadn’t told him who she’d left a message with, but he knew she had to have spoken with Marianne. How else would she have found out Jennifer was dead?
What mattered was that she was back in his life.
He was waiting for her at the table he’d reserved when she arrived. He’d risen to his feet awkwardly and she immediately swept him up in a hug. “I’m so sorry,” she’d whispered, kissing his cheek. Ken had hugged her back, feeling an instinctual need for closeness. It felt good to hold her, to see her, and as they sat down and glanced at the menu, Ken tried to bridge the three-month gap with idle chatter. Drink and dinner orders were taken, and after a few sips of wine Ken felt his tongue loosen enough to drift into what was foremost on his mind.
“You didn’t call me at work,” he said.
“I tried,” Sherri said. “Your voice mail wouldn’t let me leave a message and I couldn’t zero out.”
“So you called me at home.” Ken looked at her. He wasn’t angry. He was just concerned.
“Yes,” Sherri said, nodding. “I’m sorry, but...”
“It’s okay,” Ken said, managing a smile. “Who told you?”
“Jennifer’s friend, Marianne.”
“Ah, yes. Marianne.”
Sherri detected the tone in his voice and she looked at him. “What?”
Ken wondered if he should tell her. He’d been dying to confess to somebody about this for years. It was bursting at the seams. Hell, it was the reason he’d drifted into the affair with Sherri in the first place.
“You’ll think I’m crazy,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because it’s a crazy story.”
“What is?”
“What I’m about to tell you.”
“And what’s that?”
“How Jennifer died. And how Carol died.”
“Carol?”
“Carol.” Ken took a sip of wine. “My first wife.”
A sharp intake of breath. “Oh. I didn’t know you’d been married before.”
“I was,” he said. Now he really wished for a cigarette. So much for quitting.
Sherri poured herself some more wine from the carafe. “Well, as long as you’re here you might as well tell me,” she said.
“That’s why I ordered a full carafe of wine.”
Sherri raised her eyebrows in surprise. “This must be some story.” She took a sip and winked.
“It is.” Ken felt relaxed, at ease. They’d started sleeping together almost two years ago, and most of those trysts occurred at her luxury Glendale apartment. Some nights had been spent at the Doubletree. Virtually every time they’d had a weekend together he told Jennifer that he was out of town on business. Jennifer never checked. She’d always been doing something with Marianne.
He took a deep gulp of wine. “I’m going to be completely honest with you on this. I’ve been honest since the beginning, when I told you that I was married. At the time, though, I didn’t mention Carol because...well, I was over it. I’d gone past it, and it was over. I needed to not talk about her so I could heal. Do you understand?”
Sherri nodded. Her expression changed from puzzlement to sympathetic understanding. “I’m all ears,” she said.
“I think the best way to go about this is to tell you from the beginning,” he said. “I’m not even going to tell you what’s been happening. I’m going to let you come to your own conclusions about that. I think once I’ve told you everything about my relationships with Carol and Jennifer and Marianne, you’ll understand completely.”
Sherri’s expression darkened slightly. “You’re not going to tell me that you’ve been having a secret affair with Marianne this whole time, are you?”
Ken shuddered; he didn’t mean to, and he could tell from the look on Sherri’s face that she saw the look of horror and disgust that must have fluttered across his face at the mention of an affair with Marianne. “God no! Don’t even think that!”
“Okay.” Sherri’s features took on a look of concern at his expression. Ken took a sip of his drink and started talking.
“The best place to start is at the beginning,” he said. “I was twenty-four years old when I first met Carol. I was attending the University of Pennsylvania, going for a Masters degree in Health Care Administration. Carol had just graduated from Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, her hometown. We met at a healthcare seminar. One thing led to another, and we fell in love.”
Sherri smiled.
Ken smiled back, the memories fluttering in his mind. “It was 1986. We were young and infatuated with each other. We dated for a few months, then when it came time for me to come back to California, Carol pulled stakes and came back with me. We moved into a one-bedroom apartment in Pasadena. I got a job at Kaiser Permanente while she finished up her Master’s Degree at UCLA. Two years later, we got married.
“Carol got a job at Kaiser, on my recommendation. We had a lot of friends, had an active social life. Most of our social circle came from my old friends I’d grown up with, and a few people I went to college with who’d come out to LA. And while I thought Carol had come to think of them as her frien
ds, too, I was mistaken. Because a year or so later, she began to get depressed. She felt she had no real friend in Los Angeles that she could hang around with. You know, a girlfriend to like, go shopping with.”
“We girls need to have our fun,” Sherri said, paraphrasing Cindy Lauper.
Ken grinned. “Yeah, I guess so. I understood perfectly where Carol was coming from. I encouraged her to seek out friendships with people at her office. And the only person she could really connect with was Marianne Denver.” He frowned. “I think about that now and wonder if Marianne saw the perfect opportunity in Carol. If perhaps she planted herself there and waited until the perfect victim just came along.”
“Wait a minute,” Sherri said, holding her hand up. “Are you accusing Marianne of something?”
“I’ll get to that in a minute,” Ken said, taking another sip. “I told you that you were going to think I’m crazy.”
Sherri regarded him for a minute, then nodded for Ken to continue.
“At first I didn’t mind the relationship. They hung out together at work; went to lunch together, stuff like that. Then they started taking weekend shopping trips together. You know, either Marianne would come over to our place or Carol would drive out to Marina Del Rey to hers, and they would hit up all the stores and spend money. You know, things all women do.”
Carol brayed laughter. “Yeah, that’s right. Spend all of our men’s money.”
Ken’s demeanor was dark despite the jovial memories. “This went on for a year, maybe a year-and-a-half. Then it got more intense. They’d talk on the phone occasionally after work or on weekends. And Carol would tell me certain things about her. Like how messed up Marianne was. How she’d been this horribly abused child and was involved in some very intense psychotherapy. During this time, Carol told me Marianne was attending nightly therapy sessions that would last an hour or two, not to mention weekends. And the more Carol played the patient listener, the sympathetic friend, the more Marianne began to rely on her more. Pretty soon, Marianne was calling the house to have these intense conversations with Carol about things she probably should have been talking to her therapist with. And it was really bugging Carol, but not the way you would think. She wasn’t irritated by it. Instead, she was drawn to it, and before I realized what was happening, Carol had become her second shrink. Marianne not only had her normal therapy sessions, she had second therapy sessions with my wife. And it was starting to become draining on Carol, but she wouldn’t admit it to herself.”
“How do you mean it would become draining to her?” Sherri asked.
“It was like...” Ken thought about it for a moment as he nursed his drink. “It was like she was becoming as emotionally involved in whatever problems Marianne had. Marianne’s problems became Carol’s problems. And Marianne’s problems became Carol’s burden, in a way. To give you a good example, Marianne was very suicidal.” Sherri raised an eyebrow. ‘Yeah,” Ken said, nodding. He took a sip of wine. “Carol told me more than once that Marianne often had thoughts of killing herself. Apparently she’d tried it years ago and it didn’t work. It was an obvious cry for help. And she used the suicide ploy to get Carol to run to her aid whenever she had some sort of emotional episode. Carol would tell me that whenever Marianne got in one of her depressed moods, she got worried. She was always afraid her friend would hang herself, or slit her wrists or something.” He huffed. “Sometimes I wish she did!”
“So all Marianne would have to do was call and say ‘oh Carol, I don’t know what to do,’ Sherri mimicked, cradling an invisible phone to her ear. “’I feel that the weight of the world is just crashing on my shoulders and I could just kill myself today. Please come help me’.”
Ken nodded. He knew Sherri was kidding, but he also knew that she was taking his story seriously. “Yeah. It was exactly like that. Marianne snapped her fingers and Carol jumped.”
“Wow.” Sherri took another sip. “Okay, go on.”
“It eventually turned into a symbiotic relationship. Soon, Carol started sharing intimate details about her private life with Marianne. It was like a quid-pro quo thing. Carol told Marianne things and vice-versa. It didn’t take long before I dropped down to the number two person in her life. Carol started going to Marianne first with her problems. If she was having trouble at work, at home, with her parents, whatever, she would consult Marianne first.”
Sherri looked at Ken. “You sure that maybe you weren’t just...”
“Jealous of the friendship?” Ken shrugged. “In the beginning I thought I was. Carol and I were best friends. She knew she could come to me with things. And before Marianne entered her life, she did. That changed. Before I knew it, Carol was consulting with Marianne on things first before coming to me. I think it really started bugging me when her cat, Tom, died.”
“Her cat?”
“Yeah.” Ken nodded, taking another drink. He leaned over the table, reflecting on the incident. Despite the subject at hand, he had warm memories of Tom. “Carol had Tom for years, even before I knew her. She’d brought him out to California with her. He was like, ten years old when we made the trip back. He was her baby. And I’m not, you know, trivializing it or anything, because I’ve been there. I had a dog when I was in high school that I was real attached to. It broke my heart when he died.”
Sherri nodded. “Yeah, I know how that is.”
“Anyway,” Ken said, continuing the narrative. “We had Tom another five years or so. Then he got real sick and died. Carol lost it. I mean, she utterly collapsed with grief. She couldn’t function. She wouldn’t talk to me about Tom on the drive home from the vet. I let her have her space; I knew she would come around and we would talk about it. When we got home I told her that I was there for her, that if she wanted to talk that we could talk whenever she wanted to. And the first thing she said was, ‘I have to call Marianne’.”
“So maybe she needed to talk to her friend first,” Sherri murmured. “Sometimes women...need to talk to another woman friend first. Sometimes we just...need that closeness that we can get from other women.”
“You don’t think I didn’t tell myself that? Christ, you’re making me sound like I’m some...needy, egotistical macho pig or something.”
“No, I didn’t mean it that way—”
“Carol never talked to me about Tom,” Ken said, his gaze leveled at hers. “Never. Not even once. Not even after I gave her the time and space to grieve. Not even after she talked to Marianne about it several times in hours-long phone conversations and visits. Not even after I brought it up to her myself.”
Sherri appeared stunned. “She never talked about it?
“Never. Not even if I brought it up. When I did bring it up, she said she was fine. I...I didn’t know what to think. I mean, you should have seen her when the damn cat died. She was a nervous wreck. She bawled to Marianne over the phone like she had...lost a child or something...”
Sherri shook her head, engrossed in the story.
“...and then a few days later it was as if Tom didn’t even exist,” Ken said. “It was as if she’d gotten over his death just like that.” He snapped his fingers for emphasis. “I’d try to bring it up; hell, by this time I needed to talk about Tom. But to her it had become something trivial. It was almost as if Tom had never been in our lives.
“That’s when I began to notice other things. How she was starting to forget certain things about our relationship.”
“What kind of things?” Sherri asked. The carafe of wine was all but forgotten now as Sherri leaned forward, elbows on the table, engrossed in the story.
“Little things,” Ken said, trying to think of an example he could share with Sherri. “Like one time we were at a fast food restaurant. It was one of our favorite places—Burrito Express. A cheap little roadside dive that makes the best take-out Mexican food you could ever have. We were sitting at a table eating our lunch and we were just making small talk. And I said something like, ‘yeah, remember the first time we came here and you ordere
d the real spicy burrito and it was so hot you couldn’t eat it?’ And she literally did not remember. And that’s when I first started noticing that she was forgetting other significant things in—”
“How can you call something like eating at a fast-food—” Sherri began.
“Because it was all she talked about for days afterward!” Ken exclaimed, raising his voice. He glanced around quickly, then leaned forward, making an effort at lowering his voice, which was hard to do because he was really into the momentum of the narrative. “Christ, it was all she talked about for months! She was still referring to the incident three years after it happened! Carol had never had anything spicier than Taco Bell before she moved to Los Angeles. She bit into this stuff and her mouth went numb. Trust me, she referred to it enough times in conversations afterward that she would have remembered it.”
The waiter arrived with their salads, and as they dug in Ken related other incidents; how Carol couldn’t remember her last birthday party (“how the hell could she forget that? She got plastered on Jagermeister and laughed at Gary when he fell down the steps to our apartment!”), or why she disliked a mutual friend’s fiancé, or her first job in California. “Little things, maybe,” Ken said. “But they weren’t that little that she would easily forget them. I mean, I’ve forgotten about one or two day temp assignments I had in college, but she worked at Watterson for three months before they shit-canned her! How the hell do you forget a place like that?”
Sherri sipped her drink and said, “I don’t know.”
“And through it all, her relationship with Marianne intensified.” Ken huffed. He stabbed at his Caesar salad with his fork. “Christ, I’m surprised we even got pregnant.”
“But you did.” Sherri smiled.
“Yeah, we did.” Ken’s tone became reflective whenever he talked about his daughter. “Six, seven months after Tom died, Carol found out she was pregnant. That was the first time I thought that maybe things weren’t going downhill after all. Even Carol started to come around a little. When she found out she was pregnant it was almost like old times again. We spent more time together, spent less time with our friends and at work. She even cut down her visits and phone conversations with Marianne.”
When the Darkness Falls Page 31