Slippin' Into Darkness

by Norman Partridge

  The Six Million Dollar Man watched the light. It was as red and dangerous as the cherry on his police cruiser. A warning. The streets were empty. Downtown was deserted. He didn’t move when the light turned green. The old engine idled, missing the occasional beat. April’s nightmare was real enough to hold in his hand, real enough to hide in the pocket of his uniform. But his dream was real, too, wasn’t it?

  Parts of it were. The doves nesting in the dying pines that ringed the drive-in. April’s dog, Homer Price, racing through the eucalyptus grove near the cemetery. But he hadn’t found the meadow. It wasn’t real. Not yet.

  Steve had wanted April to step into his dream, alive and young, just as she had wanted him to enter her nightmare as a living, breathing avenger. They had tried to make it happen with drugs and paperback wisdom. But neither thing had happened, not really.

  Something else had happened, something that they hadn’t anticipated. April’s nightmare had slipped into Steve’s dream, and now one reality was tearing at the other. But the tempest was only beginning. The winds were rising, just now, and Steve felt that in the end only one of the two realities could survive.

  The dream, or the nightmare.

  Seagulls drifted on dirty wings over the empty streets, rooting for fast food scraps. Steve felt the house of cards tilting. Maybe he could save it. He didn’t know if he was up to the task. The way he was feeling today…everything was out of sync.

  Behind him, a car horn sounded.

  Steve jerked in his seat as if he’d been stabbed in the back. His brain kicked into gear. He made a right turn and drove to the hospital.

  * * *

  Emptiness burned a hole in his gut as he stepped into the elevator. The caretaker was still alive. Steve was certain of that, because the receptionist on the first floor had informed him that Royce Lewis was on the third floor in room 303.

  Steve waited for the elevator doors to close. Maybe everything would end while he was in this small metal box. Royce Lewis would release his last breath as Steve drew his next, and when the elevator doors opened Steve would step into his basement and find April waiting there in the cool, screamless silence.

  Jesus, that was silly, almost as bad as his dream of being an avenging cyborg. Stupid.

  The elevator doors were rattling closed. An older woman hurried toward the diminishing gap, her heels clicking on the polished white floor in the hospital foyer. Steve closed his eyes, willing the doors to close, but a bell sounded above his head and he knew that he was trapped.

  The doors whispered open.

  “Oh my,” the woman said. “I’m glad I caught this one.”

  Steve nodded. The woman had gray curls, glasses, and a grin that seemed to waver, as if it were about to collapse into a frown at any moment. The doors closed. Steve was standing next to the controls, but the woman didn’t ask him to push a button for her.

  The elevator rose. The woman was heading for the third floor.

  Maybe she was Royce Lewis’s wife.

  Christ. Stop it. But he couldn’t. He was in an elevator with the caretaker’s wife. He was sure of it. He started sweating, and he leaned against the wall as the elevator came to a jarring stop on the second floor.

  A man pushing a shopping cart filled with patient records entered the elevator, taking the space between Steve and the woman. Steve’s thumbs closed over his fingers. Dull cracks echoed in the elevator as he popped his knuckles. He wasn’t an avenging cyborg, but he felt like one. What he had done to the caretaker was inhuman. Going after the old guy with a shovel. Just brutal. The guy couldn’t have seen him well enough to make a positive identification. The confrontation had taken place after midnight, the only light from the moon and a flashlight.

  But Royce Lewis had seen him. Steve was sure of that. He remembered the man’s unforgiving eyes.

  Steve stared at the woman. Beneath heavy bifocals, her eyes were wet, tortured.

  The hospital attendant punched a button. The doors closed. The elevator jerked. And then Steve wasn’t a cop, and he wasn’t a cyborg. He was a hit man in some bad movie. He was here to murder a South American dictator who was in the hospital for brain surgery. Steve would smother the bastard with a pillow if necessary, but he was going to get the job done, no matter the cost.

  The doors slid open. The attendant pushed the cart into the foyer.

  The woman glanced at Steve. Her grin faltered. Steve shored it up with one of his own, and she stepped onto the third floor.

  No. He wasn’t going to do it. He couldn’t do it now, anyway. He was in uniform, for christsakes. He couldn’t just walk in, pull out his revolver and fire away like a shootist in a Clint Eastwood—

  “Austin! Hey, what are you doing here?”

  Steve recognized another cop, Pete Rojas.

  “And what’s with the uniform?” Rojas asked, not waiting for an answer to his first question. “I’ve heard of heavy overtime, but this…”

  Steve stepped from the elevator. “I haven’t made it home yet. That thing this morning at the cemetery…I don’t know if you heard about it, but it really got under my skin.” Steve said that, and he knew it was no bluff.

  “That’s why I’m here,” Rojas said. “You can stop worrying. Lewis came around about two hours ago. Guy’s a diabetic. He faded out bad at the cemetery Blood sugar crashed big time. Getting whacked on the head and practically drowning didn’t help him any. I just finished questioning him.”

  “Get anything?”

  “The old guy doesn’t remember much. He knows it was a man who hit him, but he can’t recall if the guy said anything. And he couldn’t give me much of a description, apart from the fact that the guy was big…and white.” Rojas grinned. “Hell…that could be you, Austin.”

  Steve managed a sick little smile. “Yeah. Put me on the list of suspects.”

  Rojas slapped Steve’s shoulder. “I guess I saved you a trip. How about a cup of coffee before I hit the streets?”

  “No thanks,” Steve said. “I think I’ll look in on Mr. Lewis.”

  “Sure.” Rojas stepped into the elevator. “Like they say—seeing is believing.”

  * * *

  The corridor was too white and there were no shadows. Steve had no place to hide. He stood near the nurse’s station, just across from Room 303. Inside the room, the woman from the elevator held the hand of the gray little man who lay in the hospital bed. A bandage masked the man’s forehead and his eyes were closed, but the steady rise and fall of his chest was apparent, even from Steve’s distant position.

  The knot in Steve’s stomach uncoiled just a little bit. The old guy had been through hell, but he was going to be okay. And he didn’t know anything. Steve turned and started for the elevator. And then it hit him. Royce Lewis. The woman in the elevator—Lewis’s wife. Steve realized that he was actually feeling something for them. He shared their pain. He desperately wanted things to be okay with them. They had broken through the distance that separated him from the world.

  They were real. Steve cared about them. The way he cared about the nesting doves, and the crazy cartoon dog, and April. The way he cared, in his dreams.

  8:13 P.M.

  Amy kicked the balled-up cheeseburger wrapper. It ricocheted off of April’s foot and spun away at a weird angle.

  “Hey, nifty shot,” Amy said. “Not bad for a corpse. Score’s only ninety-seven to one, now.”

  Amy didn’t retrieve the wrapper. She was tired of kicking it. Instead, she sank into the La-Z-Boy. The cool leather smelled like Steve Austin, and his undeniably male scent stirred primitive feelings of safety and protection in Amy. That was too weird, considering that Austin—the owner of glands that produced the manful odor of hearth and home—had locked her in his basement.

  False imprisonment was what most people called it.

  So here she was, snuggled up in the big guy’s favorite chair, just like Goldilocks in the bears’ house. Wondering what was going to happen when Papa Bear came home. She leaned back, recli
ning comfortably, and found that the end table was now within reach. On it sat the Halcion bottle, the bottle of Jack Daniel’s, a glass, and an ice bucket.

  Why the hell not?

  She grabbed the glass. It was fairly clean. She scooped some cubes from the ice bucket. They were the little hollow cubes you bought at the grocery store. Ice for midgets, she called it. She tipped the bottle, filled the glass. The first swallow sparked a fire in her empty belly. The second swallow warmed her and she found that she needed to be warm.

  The chair creaked as she settled into the soft leather.

  She closed her eyes and listened to the fluorescent flight buzz.

  She sipped Jack Daniel’s.

  * * *

  Two drinks improved Amy’s demeanor. It was high time that she and April had a little talk.

  “Y’know,” Amy said, imagining what she looked like wearing a cheerleader’s outfit and holding a glass of whiskey in her hand, “you never did this kind of thing when you were a good girl.”

  April didn’t reply. Her face remained slack, her closed eyes puffy, as with sleep.

  “I’ll bet there were lots of things you never did back then,” Amy continued. “But, on the other hand, I’ll bet you ended up doing lots of things that you never imagined you’d do.”

  Amy smirked at that last dig and took another sip of whiskey. That’s telling her, she thought. That’ll hit her where it hurts. But then the voice inside her added. But you did lots of things you never imagined you’d do, too. You played all those little get-ahead games you thought you’d never play. You always thought that you were different, better, but you weren’t different. Not really. Maybe a little smarter Maybe a little tougher. But nobody ever took you on. Nobody ever came at you when you weren’t expecting it and tried to break you into little pieces. Not until tonight. Not until you met up with Doug Douglas and his sidekick, Miss Mortuary Science of 1994. So we don’t know how tough you really are, do we?

  “I’m sure,” Amy said aloud. “Give me a break!” She stared at the stupid little sliver of lettuce stuck between Doug’s teeth and buried her laughter. “I’ve been in a basement with Doug before. I guess he told you about that. If you’ll remember, I ended up calling the shots back then. I’ll end up calling them this time, too. Just you watch.” She sat up in the chair. “You have to learn to fight if you want to survive. You don’t just give in and let someone beat you. You don’t curl up in some trailer park somewhere and kill yourself with drugs.”

  No, the voice inside her said. You take your club membership seriously. You count every fucking calorie and you worry about every little wrinkle. You worry about skin cancer so you stay out of the sun. You mummify yourself without even recognizing—

  “Okay, I worry. But it’s a matter of pride. I care about myself. That’s what it is.”

  Is it?

  “Sure it is. Believe me, April, insecurity isn’t my problem.” The words seemed to hang in the air, and it was as if Amy could see them floating before her eyes. She set the glass aside. Okay. That was enough. When you start talking to yourself, when you hear corpses arguing with you in your head…. Okay. That’s enough.

  Amy tipped the bottle. Whiskey spattered over the cement floor. She rose and kept her balance very nicely, considering the drinks sloshing in her very empty stomach. She dropped the empty bottle onto the chair.

  “Maybe you had me figured out,” she said. “Maybe you wanted to hurt me because you found out that I’d hurt you. Hell, maybe you even planned this crazy reunion. I know you were pushing Doug’s buttons, and it looks like you were pushing Ozzy Austin’s, too. Making me come here dressed like this…that was for him, wasn’t it? Did you want to drive him over the edge? Did you want to give him what he really wanted? Or did you just want to hurt me?” She shook her head; she’d never know the answers to those questions, not with Doug and April dead. “But I’ll tell you one thing: whatever happens, I’ll make it through. Whether you planned it or not. You were never as strong as I am. I mean, just look at us. I’m a survivor. You’re a corpse, and I hope you rot in hell.”

  Amy rammed the door with her shoulder, then stepped back and kicked it several times. Nothing. No good.

  Damn. Tears welled in her eyes, but she didn’t want to cry in front of April. Christ, that was so stupid. “Let me tell you something, April,” she said. “There was a time when I really wanted to be you. I would have given anything. But I don’t want to trade places now, and it’s not going to happen, no matter what your fucking books say.”

  Amy raised the hem of the cheerleading sweater to her shoulders. The toilet paper stuffed in April Destino’s bra chafed her nipples as her palms passed over them. An invisible wave of cold raised gooseflesh on her bare skin. She held the wool hem just under her nose, smelling her own scent and the lingering ghost of April Destino’s favorite perfume. Both scents mixed together in the sweater.

  Amy’s grip tightened on the hem. “I wanted to be you,” she whispered.

  At first, she had been nothing. Just another high school nobody. And Amy couldn’t understand that, because April Destino was somebody, and they looked so much alike. They were both pretty. They were both smart, though Amy didn’t like to admit that April had a brain. But April was somebody, and Amy was nothing.

  Until April’s rape. After that. Amy became somebody. She found something in herself, something rooted deep within her, and she nurtured it, and it made her somebody. She found it in Todd Gould’s basement. April wasn’t the only one who had her share of spiked punch at Todd’s party. Amy got drunk, too. She and Doug were the first to make use of the basement. They found some old blankets down there. Amy took Doug by the hand and led him into the darkness, stumbling through a tangled maze of old furniture until they found a spot between a couple of old desks that was large enough to accommodate the blankets.

  But Doug was blitzed. She couldn’t get him interested. She almost cried, because she thought that it was her fault somehow. She kept on trying—kissing him, whispering dirty things in his ear, doing everything she knew—but none of it worked.

  Until Doug saw April. Until he saw what the A-Squad did to her. Watching from the shadows, his breaths coming rapid and eager, pushing her away from him. Then, when it was over, he was very interested. He wouldn’t let her go.

  He was drunk. Sure, he was drunk. Sweating over her. Leering at her, but not recognizing her. Touching her, but feeling someone else.

  Calling her April. Whispering the name in her ear, over and over.

  More than anything. Amy hated April for that.

  But it freed something in her. Something evil. She never let Doug forget the things he saw in the basement, or what they did to him. When word got out about the A-Squad and April, Doug had a serious attack of conscience and wanted to tell what he’d seen. But Amy didn’t want that to happen. She wasn’t going to allow Doug to forget any more than she was going to furnish April with a knight in shining armor.

  Amy promised Doug that if he said one word, she’d tell her story, too.

  Doug knew that story. A day wasn’t complete without Amy reminding him what he had done—and not done—in Todd’s basement. He kept quiet.

  Amy didn’t get what she wanted, of course. She eventually broke up with Doug. He just wasn’t the guy she wanted anymore. But she knew that she was the winner. Doug was broken, and she wasn’t. Doug fell apart. She went on.

  She went through other men the same way. She came out the winner every time. She always showed her men that she was the strong one. Husband number one learned the lesson. Husband number two was going to learn it.

  And Ethan. Would she do the same thing to him?

  No. She cared about Ethan. She…she loved Ethan.

  But would that last? Could she trust him? And even if she did, what if he got tired of her? What if he looked for a younger woman?

  No. She had to show him, just like the others. She had to teach him before it was too late. She had to be in control. She had to b
e the winner.

  And then what would she be?

  Alone again, naturally.

  Suddenly, the pattern was clear. Here she was, locked in another basement with Doug and April, only now she was wondering if she really wanted to be the person she had become eighteen years ago. She held April’s sweater at her shoulders and she wondered who she would be if she took it off, wondered if her hard core would shatter without it.

  April was dead and had no answers for her. Still, Amy couldn’t stop herself from asking, “Did you know? Did you understand?”

  And then she heard the footsteps.

  Upstairs. Then descending, entering the garage.

  Papa Bear was home. Amy lowered the sweater. Smoothed it. She grabbed the empty Jack Daniel’s bottle, imagining the sound it would make as she broke it against the wall, visualizing a spray of blood geysering from Steve Austin’s face as she slashed him with the jagged edges.

  She waited for the sound of a key sliding into a lock.

  Something hard hit the door, and it exploded inward, and a man came tumbling after it. Amy broke the bottle and lunged. And Bat Bautista’s eyes widened in terror.

  8:31 P.M.

  Shutterbug’s brain was a dog run, and his worries were the dogs. They raced back and forth, chasing after answers. Getting tired, slowing down. Then running some more, too stupid to stop when they hit the same old walls. Amazing. Countless years of evolution, and all the human race had to show for it was a three pound mass of nerve tissue that thrived on processing misery.

  Eventually, Shutterbug’s worries decreased. The threats against him seemed to grow weaker with each passing moment. Like the song said, time was on his side. Steve Austin had threatened him, and nothing had come of it. The anonymous telephone warning was becoming a distant memory. Maybe the call was just an outgrowth of someone else’s paranoia. Or maybe it was a joke. Maybe a competitor was trying to get under his skin. Maybe—