When the Darkness Falls

by Gonzalez, J. F.

  “Marianne?” Sherri asked.

  “Bingo!” Ken felt the anger return. “I should have expected it but I was hoping not to. But when she told me that Marianne was more important than me...it crushed me. I...I didn’t understand why...why this woman had become so important to her. I mean, I can understand the love between friends but...she was choosing her friend over her husband. Just like Carol did!”

  They ate their meals in silence for a moment. Ken could tell that Sherri was having a hard time accepting what happened, and he was determined to not let her go away from this evening thinking he was losing his mind. “I tried counseling again,” he said, spooning pasta in his fork. “Tried to get Jennifer to attend therapy with me but she refused. She claimed she didn’t have a problem. She thought it was my problem that I felt this way about Marianne, that there was nothing wrong with her. I almost believed her. That’s why I went back to therapy. But as I got deeper into therapy and laid it all out, I realized that it wasn’t me who had the problem. It was Jennifer. For whatever reason, Jennifer had left me. She’d abandoned me. And knowing that, it made it easier to...well...” He offered Sherri a sheepish grin. “It was easier to drift into an affair with you.”

  “So I’m the rebound, then?” Sherri asked, smirking.

  “No,” Ken said. He put down his fork and reached out, touched Sherri’s hand. “Far from it. Maybe you were at first.” He looked at her. “You know how it is.”

  Sherri nodded, looking down at her plate. Ken hadn’t been the only one cheating; Sherri was cheating on her boyfriend, a man she’d lived with for ten years who refused to commit to marriage and had become less intimate with her as the years went by. She’d drifted into the affair out of the same sense of desperation and loneliness as Ken.

  They finished their meal as Ken brought the story to its inevitable conclusion. After almost two years of neglect, Jennifer finally succumbed to the brain aneurysm three months ago. Again, it had come as a sudden shock. “Part of me wonders if it was my fault,” Ken said. “You know, cheating on her, driving her away from me.”

  “You didn’t drive her away,” Sherri said. She pushed her empty plate aside and wiped her mouth with her napkin. “She’d already made the decision to devote herself to Marianne. You had nothing to do with it.”

  Ken sighed. He’d needed to hear that. It felt good to finally tell somebody everything.

  “I loved Jennifer very much,” Ken said, keeping his voice calm and in control. “I really thought we would spend the rest of our lives together. She really took to Helen; she even talked about legally adopting her. Helen loved Jennifer and was already starting to call her mommy. That really felt good. And I could tell Jennifer liked it. We even talked about having a child of our own together.”

  “Marianne got jealous,” Sherri said. Not a question. She was picking up on what he’d been through.

  “Yeah, I think so. Years ago, Carol had told Marianne that if anything happened to her that she would be Helen’s godmother. She even wanted to draw up a living will declaring Marianne as a legal guardian. Can you believe that?”

  “She wanted to take Helen away from you?”

  “No. She wanted Marianne and I to raise her if she died,” Ken said, sipping his wine. “She wanted Marianne to take her place in Helen’s life as her mother. She mentioned this to me maybe a month before she died. I told her she was out of her fucking mind.”

  “So you never did have the papers drawn up.”

  “Hell no!”

  “Good.” Sherri sighed. “The poor kid. How has she taken all this?”

  “Pretty well, considering her age.” Helen was almost six years old, and she’d been heartbroken at Jennifer’s passing. Ken’s features clouded as he realized that Marianne had once again swooped in to the rescue, comforting the girl in her grief. That was going to stop. Immediately.

  “So Marianne is still around?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  Ken looked at her. “You really want to know?”

  “Yeah.”

  Ken drained the rest of his wine. “You believe me, right?”

  Sherri nodded, but Ken couldn’t tell if she was being truthful. She appeared to be hesitant, as if she were dealing with somebody who was crazy. Then she smiled. “I believe you. It sounds crazy, I admit, but...this is something you couldn’t have imagined.”

  “It isn’t. And thank God you’ve never met Marianne.”

  “After hearing about her I don’t think I want to.”

  “Good.” Ken set his wineglass down and reached across the table, taking her hands. “Sherri, I love you.”

  Sherri smiled, her features brightening. It was the first time he’d told her he loved her. “I love you too, Ken.” Her fingers caressed his hands and he brought them up and kissed them.

  “Come with me to Pennsylvania,” he said. The invitation was so out of left field that it startled her. She started, looking into his eyes with surprise.

  “What?”

  “I want to get the hell out of LA,” Ken said, holding her hands. “But I don’t want to leave you. I love you, and I want you in my life. And I want to get away from California, away from Marianne. Helen’s grandparents miss her, and I’ve been thinking of going back to Carol’s hometown in Lancaster County, getting a job in the Healthcare Industry back there. Starting over. Starting fresh.” He smiled. “And I’d like you to be a part of it.”

  Sherri looked so stunned that for a moment Ken was afraid his proposition was going to drive her away for good. Instead she blinked back tears, gave a little laugh, then leaned across the table and swooped him up in a hug. “Yes,” she said, laughing and crying in her joy. “Yes, I’ll go with you.”

  And that was the beginning of what Ken hoped would be the beginning of a new life.

  KEN NEVER THOUGHT things would end up so nice.

  He smiled as he walked out of his office on Prince Street in Lancaster, briefcase in hand. It was a warm summer afternoon, and the sky was a deep blue. He walked across Prince Street to the parking garage where he usually left his car, humming to himself. He was dressed in a pair of tan slacks and a blue shirt and brown loafers. No tie, no dress shirt, no patent leather shoes. His new employer, a Healthcare billing company, operated in a very casual business atmosphere and Ken thrived in the new environment.

  And he was thriving in his new life arrangement, too.

  In the year-and-a-half since setting up house in Pennsylvania, he and Sherri had become engaged and set a wedding date for the fall. Making the transition had been tough for her at first; she’d had to quit her job, uproot from her life in Los Angeles and come across the country. He’d helped as much as he could, but he’d had to spend most of his time in Pennsylvania setting up house and looking for a job. And then there was the matter of getting Helen settled in and making sure Marianne hadn’t followed them.

  Ken unarmed the Lexus and climbed in. He set his briefcase down on the passenger seat and started the car. He hadn’t thought of Marianne in over a year. That was a good thing. Not seeing her, not being around her, was what this move had been about.

  As Ken drove to Carol’s parents’ house in Lititz, he thought about how things had been since they made the move. He and Sherri were both fully acclimated to their new surroundings now. They both had new jobs they loved. Helen was in school and would be starting second grade in the fall. Sometimes seeing Carol’s folks brought back the old hurt, but it was rare that he thought of Marianne anymore. He knew he would never see her again.

  He’d made plans quietly. Shortly after the night he told Sherri that he loved her, he began to quietly arrange for the move. Stealing time at work to look into airline tickets, obtain price quotes from moving companies, getting bank and IRA accounts transferred, selling his car. He had no intention of leaving a paper trail if he could help it, so all of his transactions for the move were made in cash. He’d alerted Carol’s parents of the move and they’d been surp
rised and pleased. His parents hadn’t been as thrilled, but since they were both recently retired and living in Florida they were actually going to be a little closer now. He’d told Carol’s parents to keep the news of his move a secret; he’d wanted to make it a surprise to Helen.

  And through it all he told no one of his plans except for Sherri. Luckily, Sherri didn’t work at Kaiser, therefore didn’t run in the same social circles. And because he continued his front with Marianne, Sherri didn’t come by the condo very much. As far as he was able to tell, Marianne was never aware of Sherri.

  Finally, when all the arrangements were made, he gave his supervisor two weeks notice. A few weeks prior to that, he’d persuaded Marianne to take a two-week vacation. “You need it,” he’d said. “You haven’t had time off in years and you’ve been working too much during the day and doing too much for me after work. Seriously, Marianne. Take off and go somewhere.”

  Which she did. At Ken’s urging, Marianne booked a trip to Alaska on a cruise. He tendered his resignation on the first Monday she was gone.

  He hadn’t anticipated Marianne returning home early, or coming by unexpectedly the morning the moving truck showed up. The last item had been stowed in the trailer when Marianne arrived and she’d looked frantic as she ran up to him. “What’s going on?” she’d asked, looking strangely refreshed (and younger, Ken had noticed; since Jennifer’s passing she looked a good ten, maybe fifteen years younger again) from her trip.

  “What I should have done a long time ago,” Ken had said. His parents, who were visiting to help out with the move, had taken Helen to visit his sister and her family for the day. “I’m moving.”

  “Well no shit you’re moving!” Marianne exploded. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

  “Why should I tell you?” Ken replied coolly. He’d refused to look at her.

  “Because I deserve to know! Because Helen needs me!”

  “Helen doesn’t need you,” Ken had replied, turning to her. “I don’t need you. We never needed you. Get lost.”

  Marianne had looked stunned. He’d remained impassive and strong. There was no way he was going to give in to her. “How can you say that?” She’d started whining, and already she was starting the old vulnerability trick. “After all I’ve been through...”

  “I don’t give a shit about you,” he’d said.

  She’d pleaded for him to remain in contact with her; had started crying that she was going to miss Helen deeply. Ken had felt a smug sense of satisfaction as he’d listened to her. She hadn’t said anything about missing him; she was no doubt turning her attentions on to Helen now, was already beginning to work her influences on his daughter and he hadn’t even been aware of it. She was that sneaky. Knowing how Helen would have wound up boosted his confidence, made him feel good about his decision, made him feel strong in standing up to her. He’d turned to her and ordered her to leave. He never wanted to see her again.

  “Please!” Marianne had wailed. Tears streamed down her face. Her muddy brown hair hung in her face. “You don’t know what you’re doing! Don’t take Helen away from me!”

  “She’s my daughter, not yours. She never was yours. You’ll never see me or my family again, and I hope you die, you bitch!”

  His final memory of Marianne Denver was of that crying, wailing caricature. He remembered that receding figure as he’d driven away from the condominium complex that day in the rain, the last echoes of her cries reverberating. “Please don’t take Helen away! You don’t know what you’re doing!”

  Oh, but he did. He surely did.

  Ken smiled as he drew closer to Carol’s parents’ home. The summer air was warm, tinged with the scent of new mown grass. Now he and Helen and Sherri were free from Marianne.

  He had not seen or heard from Marianne Denver since that rainy afternoon. He’d made a clean break. There was no way for Marianne to ever find them. Helen had mentioned her a few times, asking Ken “whatever happened to Aunt Marianne? I miss her. Is she ever going to come visit?” And every time Helen asked this, Ken would nod and say that Aunt Marianne would visit soon, she was just very busy right now. And Helen would smile and scamper off and Ken would tell himself that Helen would cease asking about Marianne as the years went by. Until that happened, though, he didn’t want to trouble his daughter so he’d told her what she wanted to hear. Maybe someday he would tell her the truth.

  Sherri had been worried the first few months they set up house in Pennsylvania. “Suppose she does find us?” she’d asked one night as a thunderstorm rumbled outside. Helen was asleep in her room down the hall, and Ken and Sherri had just finished making love. “How am I supposed to know what she looks like? I’ve never even seen her?”

  The next day Ken had rooted around in the old photo albums he and Carol had kept and found a picture of Marianne. In the photo, Marianne was posing with Carol and a six-month old Helen. To those who didn’t know what was really going on, the photo looked like it captured a snapshot of good times. “There she is,” he’d said, handing Sherri the photograph. “If you want to keep it, you can have it. I’m going to gather all the pictures I have with Marianne in them and burn them.”

  He didn’t know if Sherri kept the picture. And he did what he told her he was going to do.

  He was glad that Sherri and Carol’s parents had become friends, though. He was hoping they would get along, and they did. Carl and Ann had taken to Sherri the minute they were introduced, and within a few weeks it was almost as if Sherri had been a part of the family forever. Every other weekend they got together for dinner, either at their place, or at a neighboring restaurant or diner. And many times Sherri picked Helen up from Carl and Ann’s place after they’d picked her up from school.

  Yep, things were just great. Yet as much as he loved Sherri, he sometimes still found himself wishing Carol were still alive. That it was she instead of Sherri that was here with him and Helen now.

  Ken pulled up in front of the house. Sherri was already here. As he walked through the front door he heard them on the back porch talking. It sounded like they had a guest, as they were laughing and talking happily, their voices intermingling. The fifth voice was unrecognizable to him, and as he wound his way through the kitchen toward the back porch, Helen opened the screen door and stepped inside. She looked and sounded excited. “Daddy! Guess who’s here?”

  Story Notes

  Desire

  Jeff Gelb invited me to contribute a story to Hot Blood 12: Strange Bedfellows, and because it was a professional paying anthology, I said yes. I don’t write much erotic horror these days, having squandered most of my good ideas in my early work, but I came up with this tale, which was sort of a sequel to a previously published story “Dream Girl” (reprinted in Old Ghosts and Other Revenants). The more I thought of the idea, the more I wanted to write it, so I pitched it to Jeff and his co-editor Michael Garrett. They liked it, and I wrote the story. They made some suggestions for rewrites, I did them, turned it in, and got paid.

  I’m happy with the way the story turned out. It focuses on a theme I see running through several of my stories and novels – the theme of choice and personal responsibility. This is apparent in other stories of mine (“Choices”) and novels (Maternal Instinct/Survivor, and Bully) and so far I seem to have written the theme out of my system.

  Menage A Trois

  This is an older story, and was originally written for Book of the Dead 3 (which was never published) in 1993!

  Backstory:

  In October of 1993 Craig Spector asked me to help him put together Book of the Dead 3. I came on board as a sort of “ghost editor”. The Skipp and Spector team was in the middle of disintegrating and the duo had just sold film rights to their last novel, Animals, and Craig was busy adapting it to the screen. Book of the Dead 3 and 4 had been sold to a British Publisher and the editing chores were to be broken up by each partner. Because Craig was pressed for time and a deadline was looming, he asked me to help him put the book
together and I agreed.

  It was the idea of starving to death forever that sparked the idea for this story, probably thanks to remembering some lean financial times I’d had previously in which macaroni and cheese consisted of my sole meal for the entire day because I was too poor to eat much else. I’ll stop right here in case some of you decide to jump to these notes before reading the piece itself (and shame on you if you do that!). Needless to say, that’s what sparked the idea, and the characters, situation, and plot came pretty quickly. The girls, Andrea and Tiffany...well, they came pretty easily and their motivations are something I’ve seen over and over again, both personally and elsewhere.

  I wrote this story as the anthology was being assembled with the hope that I would show it to Craig and hopefully be included in the final line-up. However, I was rather intimidated by the material we eventually put together: stories by Douglas Winter, David J. Schow, Poppy Z. Brite, Charles L. Grant, Christa Faust, Brian Hodge, and Robert Bloch still stand out in my mind as being outstanding stories (most of them later went to other anthologies). There was so much good material that I never showed Craig the first version of this story. In hindsight, I realized I should have but I never did.

  To make a long story short, the publisher cancelled Book of the Dead 3 and 4, much of the aforementioned material went to other anthologies (some were never published, which is unfortunate), and eventually both volumes morphed into Mondo Zombie, which John Skipp ended up putting together from selected material out of both books. As I write this, Mondo Zombie has just been published by CD Publications.