Enter the Uncreated Night

by Christopher Rankin

  Enter the Uncreated Night

  By Christopher Rankin

  www.christopherrankin.net

  The following is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination.

  Copyright© 2015 by Christopher Rankin

  All Rights Reserved.

  Chapter 1 The Bardos

  Chapter 2 The Black Hole

  Chapter 3 Gorgonorphan

  Chapter 4 Mister Smiler

  Chapter 5 The Owlman

  Chapter 6 The Soul-line

  Chapter 7 Nightmares

  Chapter 8 Secrets

  Chapter 9 The Concrete Forest

  Chapter 10 Morgaza

  Chapter 11 Family of Origin

  Chapter 12 Something Rotten in Philadelphia

  Chapter 13 Scars

  Chapter 14 What did you say to Stanley?

  Chapter 15 Screaming

  Chapter 16 The Azuzu of Sumer

  Chapter 17 Adaptations

  Chapter 18 Twenty-Four Percent

  Chapter 19 The Glass Factory

  Chapter 20 Arnie’s Secret Project

  Chapter 21 The Mission

  Chapter 22 The Glass Snowflake

  Chapter 23 The Magic Spot

  Chapter 24 Feed the Spell

  Chapter 25 The Glass Chrysalis

  Chapter 26 Another New Beginning

  Other Books by Christopher Rankin

  Chapter 1

  The Bardos

  A salty bead of sweat tickled down Oscar’s forehead and landed on his notes.

  Across the room, the red light above the therapy room door was blinking, the sign his next patient was waiting outside. The red light system had been installed as a cost-cutting measure to replace the receptionist, making the office nearly empty at that hour of evening.

  The red light flashed once more before burning steady. His heart began to race, so hard that he could hear the thumping in his ears. Whatever he was feeling, it was more than just his flu. He was terrified.

  “You’re scared. Aren’t you, Doctor Loste?” His patient asked him.

  Without answering, the psychologist looked up with tired but startled eyes. Doctor Oscar Loste was only thirty-four but the worn-out stare and bags seemed appropriate for an older man. His clothes, especially his grey pants, had pressed wrinkles in the fabric from sitting in the stuffy therapy room all day. The fit seemed a size too large, a consequence of recent weight loss due to fierce metabolism, his recent flu and a busy schedule of patients. His head drooped a slight angle when he stood or sat, giving his body the shape of a bent nail.

  “Come on, Doctor. What’s the matter?” His patient asked him again. “It’s obvious something is wrong.”

  Oscar looked at his patient sitting across the office on the couch, asking, “Why would you say that, Dale?”

  “Well, you’re not hiding it very well,” said his patient. “You keep shifting in your seat like you can’t get comfortable. That isn’t like you.” He added, “You keep looking at that red light like it’s the barrel of a gun.”

  Dale McSorley, his patient, was close to Oscar in age but his face looked like he had been through war. His eyes were bloodshot and his voice sounded like he was on the edge of a caffeine overdose. The recently promoted police sergeant had been seeing Oscar for the past several months for anxiety and insomnia. He noticed what was distracting Oscar and spun around in his seat to see the red light.

  “That means the next one is here, right?” He asked.

  “Afraid so,” Oscar told him. “Looks like they’re here a few minutes early.”

  “Normally you pay close attention to everything I say the whole hour,” Dale said. “It amazes me how well you listen and pay attention, especially when I’m just blabbing on about my nerves and my crazy family. Today though, something’s different. Today you got something in your voice. It’s like you’re scared. And, shit, you’re sweating.”

  “You’ve really got an eye for people,” Oscar said as he patted a drop of sweat away from his hairline. “You’d make a good therapist.”

  “That eye for people has saved my ass a few times,” said Dale. “With my job and all. Want to talk about it?”

  Some thought burdened Oscar’s face. For a moment, it looked like he was about to confide something but he held back. “I’m sorry I’m distracted,” he admitted to Dale. “It’s unprofessional.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Doctor Loste. Hearing me complain about my stressful job and crazy brother must get old. Shit, sometimes I’m tired of hearing myself talk about it. Care to tell me what’s on your mind.”

  “I can’t say. It has to do with another patient.”

  “I understand,” said Dale, getting up from the couch. “Don’t say another word. Doctor patient confidentiality and all that. Still, you’re a human being. Sometimes you’re gonna need to talk.”

  “I really apologize,” Oscar said, “but I can’t.”

  “Maybe I could help. I run into crazies at my job too. We could keep it just between us.”

  “I can’t say, Dale.”

  “I gotcha, Doctor. I gotcha. Don’t say another word.” Dale adjusted his belt until his police sergeant’s badge and nine millimeter slid into a comfortable position. “I guess we’re at the end of our fifty minutes,” he said, checking his watch.

  “Do you think you’ll have any luck getting your brother to come in next time?”

  “I’m trying,” Dale said with a sigh. “He’s been especially bad lately. A lot of hallucinations and crazy shit,” he said as he visited an uncomfortable thought. “I’ll talk to him again. Maybe I’ll be able to get him in here next time.”

  “I would be concerned about any hallucinations. If he doesn’t come in to see me, he should go to a psychiatrist.”

  “It’s so odd,” said Dale. “My brother. His condition. He’s had epilepsy since we were kids but it’s never been like this. Lately,” he shook his head, “he’s been talking crazy, saying his condition is some kind of adaptation, that he’s sensitive or something.” Dale hesitated before adding, “He talks about some kind of dark forces or something. The other day after work,” he said with a flash of a smile, “after my day, he had me thinking he’s right.”

  “Your job wouldn’t be easy on anyone,” Oscar told him.

  “I guess,” he said. He caught Oscar’s eyes on the red light again. “Good luck with that next patient of yours. The way you’re looking right now, it’s probably one of the worst serial killers in American history.”

  After the door shut behind Dale, Oscar reached into the side pocket of his coat hanging on the back of his chair. With the swiftness of a veteran gunfighter, he whipped it out and twisted off the cap.

  He had come to find the cough syrup in the strangest of ways. He hadn’t really found gorgonorphan; it had found him. During the onset of his recent flu, he had spotted his first bottle on the drugstore discount shelf. The label had yellowed and the printing appeared to be fetched from several decades in the past. Oscar had passed the bottle with only a curious look but somehow it ended up in his bag when he got home. There had been no sign of it on the receipt.

  For the past several days, he had given up on measuring his gorgonorphan cough syrup dose. That evening, his sizable gulp of the violet-colored liquid constituted roughly a third of a bottle. The taste was strange but over the past couple of weeks with the flu, he had grown used to it.

  He slid the bottle back into his coat.

  The door to the office opened and Oscar rose to greet his next patient. He felt the same nauseating dread as the last time. Perhaps this time was even worse.

  Standing between her adopted parents, six-year-old Bet
h Bardo looked up at Oscar. The tiny brunette girl had bold, blue eyes that seemed to swell too large for her face. Both her hands were wrapped in thick white bandages. Even though the air was fairly warm that evening, she wore a tiny cashmere turtleneck sweater. Her expression held something both inquisitive and knowing, a look that seemed alien for a child. She focused on Oscar like she was sizing him up.

  “It’s you again,” she said to him with a distinct lack of a smile.

  “That’s right, Beth. I’m very happy to see you again.”

  Eva Bardo, Beth’s adopted mother, seemed to do most of the talking. Tall and slender in figure, she had rusty brown eyes, pale skin and healthy but unremarkable brown hair. Her clothes looked plain and matronly, in stark contrast to the jewels on her fingers and around her wrists. They stood out nearly as much as the surgical bandage around her waist from her recent injury.

  “Beth has been better this past week,” Eva said as though describing a terrible, terminal illness. “She’s sleeping completely through the night.”

  Beth’s adopted father, Lorne Bardo, rarely spoke and that day he kept his eyes demurely at the floor while his wife discussed matters.

  “That’s good. That’s very good as a matter of fact,” Oscar told them both.

  Lorne knelt down next to his adopted daughter and explained the situation to her. “We’re going to be right outside the whole time, Beth. Just the like the last time, the doctor wants to help you. There is no reason to be afraid of him.”

  “I’m not afraid of him,” she said. “I can tell he’s afraid of me. Just like everyone else.”

  Oscar shied behind an uneasy grin and told the little girl. “I’m not afraid of you, Beth. I know you’re a good kid and all I want to do is help you.”

  Beth’s stare bit down and she told Oscar, “I know when someone is afraid of me.”

  Both of her parents stood by the door while Beth pulled herself up to the sofa across from Oscar. The little girl’s eyes shot over to the empty corner of the therapy room. She nodded to the bare wall and smiled like she had just been let in on a joke.

  “We will be waiting right outside, sweetheart,” Lorne told her from the doorway. Eva Bardo followed him out of the office and shut the door.

  Beth glanced over to the end table, where three fake daisies beamed bright yellow from a vase that had run dry. “How much more do I need to talk to you?” She asked like her time was being wasted.

  “This is only the second time I’ve met you. Don’t tell me it’s that bad.”

  Beth had a serious, almost threatening, look on her face. She asked, “How much longer?”

  “That depends, Beth. The judge wants me to talk to you a little more, at least until you feel better.”

  “What if I never do?”

  “I promise you’re going to feel better. That’s what this process is. I’m going to help you.”

  “You’re afraid of me like everyone else,” Beth said.

  “I’m not afraid of you, Beth. I like spending time with you.”

  “You’re a liar,” she said with a resigned, almost hopeless look.

  “Despite what happened, despite what you did, Beth, I know you’re not bad. I know that something is wrong and that’s why you did what you did.”

  The black pupils in her eyes swelled into hypnotic emptiness. She turned her head to the side as though someone was whispering in her right ear. She smirked and sharply nodded her head.

  “What is it, Beth?” Oscar asked her. “You’re acting like someone is whispering to you.”

  “It’s him again,” she said to Oscar. “He keeps saying things about you.”

  “Is he saying anything nice?”

  Beth wrinkled up her nose in a confused and wide-eyed look. She told Oscar, “Mister Smiler says you’re crazier than me.”

  “Is that right?” Oscar asked her as a smirk broke out on his face. “First of all, your friend, Mister Smiler is wrong. You’re not crazy, Beth. We just need to figure out what’s been upsetting you.”

  She glanced up to her right shoulder.

  “Is your friend saying something else?” Oscar asked her.

  “Mister Smiler says he knows what you’re going to say next. He says you’re going to ask me,” she started to whisper, “about what I did.”

  “Your friend is right, Beth. We didn’t talk about what happened at all when I met you last week. Have you talked to anyone about what happened?”

  “Just Mister Smiler.”

  “Is it OK if we talk about it now?”

  Beth looked over to her right shoulder before answering. “Um hmm,” she said, nodding.

  “Three weeks ago, your mommy got hurt. Do you remember what happened?”

  “Um umm,” she said, shaking her head no, “but I did it.”

  “What did you do, Beth?”

  After listening to Mister Smiler, she answered, “I stabbed her.”

  “Can you tell me why?”

  “Um umm.”

  “You don’t remember and you have no idea why you did it?”

  She just looked down at the bandages nearly as thick as boxing gloves on her hands.

  “Do you remember cutting your hands on the knife, Beth? It must have hurt.”

  “It was shiny. I could see my reflection.”

  “What else do you remember?”

  “Nothing.”

  Oscar decided to change the subject, asking, “Have you talked to your mom about what happened to her?”

  “Mister Smiler says she isn’t my mommy,” she told him, before becoming distracted by her imaginary friend. He was apparently telling her something. Whatever it was seemed to confuse her. She looked back to Oscar asking him, “What’s gor-gum-orphan?” She had considerable trouble pronouncing the word.

  “It’s a medicine for cough, I believe,” Oscar answered. He wondered if she could see the ring of familiarity in his face. Then he thought perhaps she had spotted the bottle in his coat somehow. “Why would you ask me that, Beth?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Mister Smiler told me to ask you about it. He didn’t say why.”

  At that point, a knock on the therapy room door interrupted them. Lorne and Eva Bardo let themselves in without any sort of apology about the intrusion. They told Beth to wait in the car with the family driver. It was obvious they wanted to speak to Oscar alone.

  After they sat down, Eva Bardo started off, saying, “You see, doctor, I very much appreciate what you’re trying to do here, the help you’re giving. But I think as Beth’s parents, we have the situation handled.”

  Oscar glanced down to the bandage, which was thick as a rolled-up bed sheet around her waist. He remarked, “Something happened Mrs. Bardo, to you and to Beth. Ignoring the problem will only make it worse. We have to understand and treat Beth’s condition.”

  “How long do you think it will take?”

  “Well I’m not sure,” Oscar answered. “I don’t have enough information to make an assessment. The judge wants me to evaluate Beth and the home, to make sure it’s a happy, safe situation for everyone and to recommend a course of treatment.”

  “Are you saying you don’t think we’re providing Beth with a good home?”

  “No, Mrs. Bardo,” Oscar said carefully. “That’s not the case at all.”

  An uneasy hush took over the room while they looked at one another. Misses Bardo pitched her nose up slightly, flaring her nostrils as though she smelled the faint trace of cigarette smoke in the room, from when Oscar let one of his morning patients cry and smoke by the window. The left side of her lip made a disgusted twitch and she looked around the old therapy room the way someone would shudder away from a leper colony.

  She said, “I really don’t see how bringing her to a place like this is going to help to her. She’s not, we’re not, the sort of people that come to a place like this.”

  Mister Bardo finally spoke, saying, “We understand this formality, Doctor Loste. The hospital should have never reported the
matter and we really just want the whole thing to go away. No one even suggested that Beth be charged with any kind of crime. There is no sense in us wasting your time.”

  “Mister Bardo,” Oscar said with some sternness. “This isn’t…”

  “I’m sorry to interrupt,” said Eva, putting up her right index finger. “Under normal circumstances, we would never be so pretentious, but my husband and I are doctors of anthropology.”

  “We only mention this,” said Lorne, “so you know that you’re dealing with educated people who don’t need anything dumbed down.”

  “I apologize, Doctor Bardo,” said Oscar. “But Beth put a knife into your wife’s stomach. Something is clearly wrong and it isn’t obvious to me what it is.”

  Eva chimed in. “Beth certainly didn’t mean to hurt me,” she said. “We think she was just having a bad dream and got confused.”

  “Has Beth spoken to you about Mister Smiler?”

  They both looked at Oscar as though an uncomfortable topic had been broached.

  “I take it you know about him then,” Oscar went on. “It’s pretty common for children to have imaginary friends, especially at Beth’s age. But her case is peculiar. Her friend, this Mister Smiler, seems to possess more sophistication than he should. An imaginary friend should be as childlike as the child who created him. Have you talked to Beth about it?”

  Both parents just stared back at him.

  “Doctors Bardo,” Oscar went on. “Do you happen to know Beth’s complete history? How much did you know about her background before you adopted her?”

  “We understand that her biological mother was a drug user. She died in prison, I believe.”

  “I see. Has Beth ever seen a counselor or therapist?”

  Oscar’s question made them uncomfortable. They looked at each other and came to the unspoken conclusion that it was the husband’s turn to talk. “You see, doctor,” Lorne said, “The judge spoke very highly of your skills with trauma survivors, especially children. But, Beth, I’m afraid, is a special case, a complex one. We’re dealing with it effectively.”

  “Effectively until three weeks ago,” Oscar told him, “when Beth tried to kill your wife.”