Dark Rooms: Three Novels

by Douglas Clegg

  She stared at him, angry now. “Matt? Matty?”

  “He killed him. When he was only three. That was too young. But he doesn’t care, Julie. It was a test. I know, because his wife came to me. Amanda. She came to me and she was losing her mind with fury for what she’d allowed them to do.”

  “Matty? He’s not dead. He’s in his room, sleeping. He’ll wake up soon.”

  “She told me that she fought him—your husband—to make him stop. But the problem with what they do, Julie, is they want fear. Fear makes the adrenaline pump. Fear makes them come back. It wakes up a part of the brain after one part of it turns off. Fear is a switch. It gets the Ability going at hyper speed. They need that. It opens a door that should be permanently sealed in the brain. It turns on something. When one part of the brain diminishes, another part begins to rewire and come alive. Do you know how they did it to that little three-year-old boy? Do you?”

  “He doesn’t have the carving,” Julie said, her eyes watering up with tears and she went to the knife block and pulled out a long sharp knife. She held it up, more afraid than she’d ever been in her life.

  “Amanda stopped them from carving into his skin after he was dead. But before he died, they had to frighten that little three-year-old. They had to do something so terrible to him, Julie, that his system would go into shock. And then they drowned him. They made his own mother do it. Your husband made his wife wrap her hands around the boy’s neck and press him into a bathtub and the fear was like electricity so that even she felt it. But he had some of the Ability. He came back. But he didn’t come back without something not right. That’s what they do, Julie. They think that they’re changing the world. They think by doing this, they’ll eradicate death. They’ll close the door of death. But it doesn’t always work. Sometimes the body rots. Three days are crucial. If the mind does not awaken in three days, corruption sets in, and it’s too late. If the brain doesn’t turn on, then natural death occurs. But they stay inside them for three days. They stayed inside me for three days after the fire. They made sure I turned on and came back from the dead. And they did it with your husband. And his son.”

  “Hut saw her. That’s not true,” Julie said. “He saw her. He told me. He said she was trying to kill him. When he was eleven.”

  “Maybe she was trying to send him where his soul had been meant to go,” Diamond said. “Julie, there’s no time now. I want to ask that you and your children come with me. I’ll protect them. They can’t really hurt me. They can’t do anything to you once you’ve died and come back.”

  “No,” she said, wiping at her eyes with the back of her left hand. She held the knife up, sobbing. “Matty’s a good boy. He’s good. There’s nothing wrong with him.”

  “It doesn’t make you bad,” Diamond said. “But there are no guarantees how we come back. None. Nobody understands how the brain—and mind—work, Julie. Nobody understands the enormous part of our minds that is untapped. They play with fire. They murder and call it understanding.”

  “That’s insane. You’re talking insane. This is not real. This is not happening. Please, just leave. Just go. I...I’m confused. I don’t...I don’t want this. Please.” She tried to reach for the phone on the counter by the sink, but wasn’t quite there. He stepped toward her, and she jabbed the knife in the air.

  “We’ve been inside each other. You know this is true. You know it.”

  “Stop saying that! It’s obscene. It’s disgusting. He’s dead. You killed him. Please. Why don’t you leave? Why don’t you leave?”

  “I know you won’t stab me,” he said, stepping closer. “I’ve been inside you. I know you, inside and out. I know.”

  “Don’t, please,” she sobbed, slashing at the air, less than a foot from him, crumbling to the floor, wishing the world would disappear, wishing she could feel safe again.

  “There’s something I need, Julie. You know where they are. But they blocked you. But I can unblock it inside you. I just need to go find that door. I need just a little time to find that door. I can stop them for good, Julie. Inside you, you have a memory. You’ve been to where they’re giving their tests.”

  “Sixty-six S? Is that what this is about?”

  “No,” he said. “That was a young woman’s apartment. A woman I knew. Her father had been friends with my father, and he gave her the apartment after it was converted into units. A woman named Gina Lambert. Another one of us. But she was the daughter of a girl named Nell who had been in Project Daylight. Her mother was one of them. And they got her. They killed her to test her. They killed a boy named Terry West. He was still in college. He had Ability X. Do you want to know how? They had to create great fear in him before he died. But he still died. He didn’t come back. Do you want to know how monstrous they are?”

  “I don’t know anything, I don’t.”

  “Let me inside you one last time. Just one last time,” he said, “Please let me get inside you.”

  She jabbed the knife at him, almost touching his skin. “No, please, no.”

  “There’s a place inside you. I know it’s there. We were almost there. Almost. I almost found it. If you can let me in, I can stop them. I know I can. There’s always hope. It’s a blessing and a curse. But sometimes, it’s all we have. Yet, when faced with this, there is no hope. There can be no hope. Do not let hope cloud your resolve. Help me find them. Help me open that one door in your mind.”

  “Please,” she wept, slashing blindly. “Go away. I don’t want this. It’s not happening!”

  He reached out and touched the edge of the knife, and then the tips of her fingers. “Let me inside you, Julie.”

  She felt a spark between them, and a lubricating familiarity as he slid into her and she shut her eyes for just a moment and felt him moving, and now she tried to resist but he was pushing her hard, slamming up against her on the inside, his consciousness roaming and tearing at walls and doors and things that she felt were the tunnels into her memory.

  And then she saw it at the moment he did.

  It was simply a house.

  It was a house with glass walls on one side.

  She had seen it before but she wasn’t sure where. She could not name whose it was. She vaguely remembered a video of Matt’s that was just a house on a lake. On the lake, she thought. Their lake. Somewhere right here. Somewhere in Rellingford. On the lake. She remembered the rich people’s houses across the lake, and felt as he searched her memory for who owned this house and why she was there, and she saw a woman coming to the door as she stood out in the side yard looking at the brown lake, and she turned to see the woman more clearly, but the image was out of focus and she almost had a name …

  And then something exploded. She felt a sudden rush of wind inside the Stream. Diamond was no longer there with her. She opened her eyes.

  At first she thought the noise was from outside the windows, a cherry bomb blast.

  She looked at Michael Diamond’s face. He wore an expression of shock.

  He tried to reach around to his back.

  He fell hard on the floor.

  Behind him, Hut.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  She felt the world spinning around her. She saw Michael Diamond wriggling and then trying to crawl. Looked up at Hut. She looked at Hut as if she’d never seen him before. Trying to comprehend. Trying to make it all make sense to her. Reason was gone. She knew Michael Diamond. She knew him. She didn’t know Hut. She had never known Hut. He had hidden from her. He had...used her? For what? For making a child? Another child? Another test to pass? Livy? With her brain radio? Was that it? Were they all making children? Stealing children? With Ability X? That’s insane. It couldn’t be. Why? What purpose? Why kill them? Why do it? Hut can’t be here. It has to be like the movies. It has to be just me. How is it possible? But she remembered the feeling within the Stream. She could not deny that. She had felt...wonderful and terrified, as if it were something that...her soul had known existed. Diamond believed in the soul. The hu
man soul, inviolate. Not to be violated. Not to be played with. The soul’s journey along the Stream after death. After life. Beyond life.

  Something in her brain began to fade, as if she no longer could tell the difference between dream and reality, and words and images came up to her, trying to draw her back from what she saw in front of her, trying to make her close her eyes and return to the Stream that Michael Diamond had taken her into with him.

  Hut stood there in a white shirt and khakis, the revolver from the metal box in his hand.

  “Don’t scream,” he said, softly. “The kids are probably waking up now. They heard the shot. Even the neighbors, although it’ll take a little while to identify where this came from. Shhh.” Then he bent down and took the knife from Julie’s fingers, and put his foot against Michael Diamond’s throat. “Look at him. He’s dying. But he can’t die. But he can suffer. He can go towards death. But in three days, he’ll come back. Once you pass the test, Julie, you can’t die ever again.” Then he leaned closer to Julie. She could feel his breath, which was sweet. “If you let me inside you now, I can take all the pain away,” he said.

  She stared at him, feeling as if she were surrounded by ice.

  “This is shock,” he whispered, stroking the side of her face gently. “Do you want me inside you?” Hut asked. “If you let me inside you, Julie, I can take away hurt.”

  She felt his consciousness come into her and suddenly, she felt sleepy and tired as if she’d been given a sedative. He was stroking her on the inside, altering the pain, softening her confusion, making her black out.

  As she sank down into a dark oblivion, she thought of Livy and Matt, and she wanted to claw her way up from the darkness for their sakes. Please, Livy. Please, Matt. Don’t let your Daddy near you. I don’t know what to believe. I don’t know if I’m really here or if my mind is gone. Please God, help my children. Please Michael. Please someone. Hut please don’t hurt them. Don’t let this be happening.

  Part Four

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  1

  The headache blasted into the back of her scalp. Jesus. I have to tell Dr. Glennon that Darmien is like an axe. Christ, I’ll never take it again.

  Her eyes opened. She looked at the clock. It was after three.

  She began to get fragments of memory back. It was dreamlike and vague, but then she felt terror clutch at her. She got out of bed and went down the hall to Livy’s room.

  Her bed was empty.

  Then, to Matt’s room.

  First, she called the police, talked to the sheriff, but midway through speaking, she could tell that he was patronizing. “Julie, I’m sorry. Have you checked with the schools? With anyone? Could they possibly be somewhere together?” Then, he said, “All right. I’ll send someone by.”

  She demanded Detective McGuane’s number, and when she got it, she called and had to leave a message on his voice mail. She spoke slowly and as coherently as possible. She tried not to bring up everything that Michael Diamond had told her or shown her. She was beginning to doubt herself by the end of the message.

  She finally went to the kitchen. The knife was on the floor. She picked it up and put it in the sink. She thought she saw something under the cabinetry on the tile. She reached down and felt around to see what it was. It was the revolver.

  A police cruiser came by, and she met the two cops outside. She worked hard to retain her composure. She didn’t tell them everything. She watched for their reactions to her story. She didn’t say “my dead husband,” and she didn’t say “psychic.” She just told them that some crazies broke in. That she passed out. That there was a gunshot, and she had the gun. That her children were missing. They wrote some things down and told her to wait at home, keep the doors locked, keep the phone line clear.

  But as soon as they’d left and she returned to her house, she got the revolver and got into her Camry and drove down to the perimeter road of the lake.

  2

  She drove slowly on the opposite side of the lake. The house in her mind had been a large one. It had a seventies-style architecture—rectangles and squares and too much glass. She stopped in front of several of them, but each time, it just didn’t seem right.

  And then, she saw the house, with a circular driveway in front.

  She had been there. She remembered being there, but she could not remember who lived there. Why she had visited it. Had it been another dream? She remembered Matt’s video of the house clearly now—he must have been in the canoe. Maybe with his father. A Boys’ Day Out. Matt must’ve held the camcorder up and just videoed the back of the house on the lakeside.

  And here she was, at the front. She parked on the road and walked up the driveway. She did nothing to conceal the gun in her hand. She stepped off the driveway onto the slate walk that went around the side of the house. It was an enormous house, and although it had huge glass windows, the shades were drawn. She went back to look at the lake, and then to look at the house.

  It was the one she remembered. It was the one from Matt’s video.

  She felt her heartbeat, too rapid, and a clutching at her throat. She raised the revolver slightly as she went back around to the front of the house.

  She stood at the bottom of three steps that led to the front porch. A slender patch of garden bordered the porch—peonies and pansies and irises.

  She took each step slowly, feeling a thudding on the inside. A gentle shivery wind down her back.

  When she got to the door, she rang the bell and waited.

  3

  No one came to the door. She rapped at it. Waited. The revolver felt heavy in her hand, and she lowered it. She began to doubt her vision. Her memory. Was this the house? Whose was it? Who was the out-of-focus woman from her memory that Diamond’s consciousness had brought her back to see?

  Who would she know who would know Hut? Would know Amanda? Might have known them years before Julie had ever met Hut? He didn’t have many friends outside of people at work. But none of them lived here. Who lived on the lake? Who was it?

  When the door finally opened, she already knew. The name came up to her. A name that Michael Diamond had mentioned.

  Nell. That had been what she was called as a girl in Project Daylight.

  Eleanor, on the other side of the door, looked startled.

  “Julie?” Eleanor asked as if she had expected someone else.

  Julie brought the revolver up, pointing it at her.

  “Where are my children?”

  4

  She stepped over the threshold of the house as if she were in a dream. How could this be real? How could Eleanor, a therapist, for God’s sake, be part of some insane psychic conspiracy? What was she thinking? How was it possible? But possible didn’t matter anymore.

  “Now, don’t get excited,” Eleanor said. “You’re experiencing—”

  Julie cut her off. “I know. Post-traumatic stress blah blah blah.” She kept the revolver pointed at her doctor.

  “Julie, put that thing down,” Eleanor said. “Right now. You're not in any danger, believe me.”

  “Where are they?” Julie asked. "Just tell me. That's all I want to know."

  “Matt’s asleep. He needed rest.”

  “Did you hurt him?”

  “Of course not. He was getting violent. You know how he is. We had to...give him something.” Eleanor spoke as if she were in her office again, dispensing advice and meds.

  “You are so good, Eleanor. Or Nell. Or whoever you are. You are just so damn good,” Julie said.

  Dr. Glennon came out of a room down the hall. He glanced over at Julie, nodding slightly. “Can’t say we didn’t expect this.”

  “I know,” Eleanor said. “Hut’s been careless. And cruel, in my opinion.”

  “Mrs. Hutchinson, please, just think for a minute," Dr. Glennon told Julie. "I know you’ve heard some mumbo-jumbo from that Diamant character. But he’s taken care of.”

  “Did you prescribe him some Xalax? Or Darmien? Something
to make him sleep? Is that what you gave Matty, too?”

  Dr. Glennon held up his hands, slightly defensively. “I know what that man told you, Mrs. Hutchinson. But there’s more to it. Believe me.”

  Eleanor said, “Julie, we had to do it this way. We had to wait until Hut was fully himself again. He’s better than he was. He really is.”

  “You people brought him back from the dead.” Julie was surprised how easy it was to say it.

  “I would’ve thought you loved him enough to want him back,” Eleanor said. “He's got Ability X stronger than anyone we’ve known. He loves you, Julie. Surely, you’d want to be with him.”

  “Not like this,” Julie said. “You’re a pack of monsters.”

  Eleanor shot a look at Dr. Glennon, who went to sit down near the bottom of the stairs. He let out a huge sigh and shook his head, wiped his eyes, and muttered, "We should've never let Diamond get to her."

  Julie noticed sweat on the doctor's forehead. She was scaring them. Just a little.

  "Julie, just put the gun down and give us a chance," he began, but she cut him off.

  “Zombies don't get chances." Julie marveled at the coldness of her own voice. Would I shoot them? Could I? Of course. Easy enough. They're already dead.

  “Oh, Julie,” Eleanor clucked her tongue as if she were dealing with a naughty child. “This is the human brain. It’s not mystical crap like Diamant believed. Project Daylight was a scam. They were trying to find out things to justify war. To justify invasion. To milk little children of their abilities. But we had the ability, after all. We all learned, together. We studied this thing -- this special thing -- we all have. And we’ve put it into action.”