Dark Rooms: Three Novels

by Douglas Clegg

  "It's really an atavism," Dr. Glennon said. "A throwback. No doubt thousands of years ago, in various cultures, they knew about it. But of course, they didn't have the science."

  "You kill. You kill each other," Julie whispered. "You kill your own children. I didn’t even know you had children, Eleanor.”

  Eleanor began to look at the revolver as if she might reach over and grab it at any moment. Julie grinned. She was happy to feel that she had power in this situation.

  “You’ve been in the Stream, Julie,” Eleanor said. “You know how life and death are definitions of the imperfect human brain. There is no death. There doesn’t need to be. We can change how human beings exist. We can alter the course of the future.”

  “Not all of you come back, though. Not everyone does, right?" Julie said.

  "Sometimes there are problems." Dr. Glennon shrugged. "Sometimes bad things come back."

  Eleanor made a small noise as if annoyed by Dr. Glennon's candor. "Well, it's true," he said. "She might as well know. But most of the time it's fine, it's just fine."

  "Am I even talking to a dead person?" Julie asked, looking over at Eleanor again. "Have you died yet, Eleanor?”

  “I guess there’s no reasoning with you,” Eleanor said.

  And then, Hut came around the corner with others behind him. People she didn’t know—three or four of them. The redheaded woman from the video was there. Gina? Was that her name? She stood back with a middle-aged man who had tortoise-shell glasses on and thinning hair.

  “More zombies,” Julie said.

  “Baby,” Hut said, moving toward her too rapidly. He looked well-rested. He seemed healthy. He wore one of his favorite T-shirts and blue jeans, and didn’t look like he was in his forties at all. He looked better than she remembered him looking. Life was in him. New life.

  “No, Hut,” she said. She raised the revolver. “I saw you shoot Michael Diamond.”

  “He’s not dead, though,” Hut said. “He’s somewhere safe now. He won’t harm you again. And he won’t harm us. He's a dangerous man, sweetheart.”

  “If I shoot you, maybe I’ll feel good. Maybe it’s enough.”

  “If you shoot me, will you shoot all of them?” Hut asked. “Will that get you what you want, Julie?”

  Julie took a breath. Looked around at the gathering.

  “Where’s Livy?” she asked.

  Eleanor cleared her throat.

  “Matt’s resting, upstairs,” Hut said. “You can go see him if you want.”

  “You drugged him. You...you killed him...when he was practically a baby. You tested him,” Julie said.

  “What is it you want, Jules?” Hut asked. His eyes seemed kind. He didn’t look like the undead. He didn’t look like a vampire. He didn’t look as if he meant to hurt her. She hated him most for that. She tried to remember Michael Diamond’s words. Things he’d said.

  She tried to remember the feeling of Michael Diamond inside her and being inside him. The safety of it. The warmth. The complete connection between the two of them.

  “I want my children.”

  “Yes,” Hut said. Dr. Glennon looked up at her husband, a question in his glance, as if this were the wrong answer to give the crazy woman with the gun.

  I'll show you crazy, Julie thought.

  “Julie, you’ve been through an enormous shock,” Eleanor said, taking a step toward her.

  Julie pointed the gun toward her. “Back, Eleanor.”

  “Nell, please,” Hut said. He stood still, his arms outstretched. “Julie. You’re the love of my life. I hated being separated from you. I've hated all this. But...when you recover from what I came back from...it's confusing...there are things you need to relearn. Like recovering from a stroke. It's rough. Otherwise I would've come to you before.”

  “You came to me at night,” she said. “You Streamed or you broke in or you did something. While I was sleeping.”

  “In your dreams, you told me you wanted me,” he said. “I asked, and you said yes. I wanted to be with you. The way that I could. In the Stream. Together.”

  “I said 'yes' because I thought it was a dream,” she said. “Anyway, I don't care. I don't care about any of it. Where’s Livy? I want to see her.”

  “You can’t right now,” the red-haired young woman said from the back of the hall. “She can’t,” she added, turning to the middle-aged man with the thinning hair. “Can she?”

  “Oh my God,” Julie gasped, nearly losing her balance, trying not to crumble on the inside with the thought of it. “You killed her. You already killed her.”

  Everyone remained frozen in the room for a moment.

  “She’s only sleeping,” Hut finally said, gently. “You have to believe that.”

  He motioned to Dr. Glennon to move out of the way.

  “It’s all right,” Hut said. “Julie, let’s go upstairs. She’s upstairs now. You can be with her.”

  5

  At the open door to what she had assumed would be a bedroom, Julie glanced back at Hut, close behind her.

  She kept the revolver ready, because she was determined that somehow, some way, she would see Livy and Matt through this.

  Her life didn’t really matter anymore. Her children were all that mattered. She could shoot at least two of them if she had to, and it might buy enough time to get Livy out to the car and get her cell phone in the glove compartment and call the police as she drove away. If she believed in what they were doing, they wouldn’t really hurt Matt. They couldn’t, not if it was all true.

  If it was true, Matt had already resurrected from the dead. Once the police came back—and she’d tell them that they had kidnapped her children — she wouldn’t tell the police about psychics and resurrections and Ability X, Y or Z.

  She would be sane. She would stop this, somehow.

  She had a pang in her gut—as if the bond of marriage still existed and was causing her pain. He’s a murderer. He’s insane. He’s a zombie. He’s a psychic vampire. He’s not even real. He can’t be. But even if he is, he believes everything he says.

  Hut said, “Let me tell you about life after death. The only way to overcome it is to have the talent and knowledge, and 99.999 percent of human beings don’t have it and never will. And many of those who have it never use it. I suppose a few have, and have been elevated to the level of gods. But there’s no God, Julie. No matter what Diamant told you about the human soul. There’s no soul except for life in the flesh. The brain is the seat of power. In science, we just didn’t know how well it could regenerate itself. Turn itself back on, if you will.”

  "Why even listen to you? You’re a liar. You and your doctors from hell.” Julie glanced into the room, but could not yet bring herself to go in.

  “Every obstacle, Jules, contains the seed of its own destruction. Within my being is something more powerful than the horizon we call death. It’s not any goony theory of magic or miracles. It’s simply a process that can most likely be described scientifically. My only understanding of it is that I have it. That my brain didn't die when my body did, and that there is something that comes from my mind and manages to overcome what you and others call death. I wasn't really dead. Maybe no one is, but the poor bastards don’t have the ability to summon themselves back to the world of the living. And so, they rot and putrefy. But my mind communicates life, back into me. Back into my bones. Into my flesh. Not from magic, not from the spirit world. But from an ability that others have. Others have and don’t always even know they have it. It’s like a vacuum. Sucking at you. Drawing you away. Drawing you out. It’s passing from one state of consciousness into another. It’s the body that rots. Consciousness can move molecules. Consciousness can raise the dead. I’ve done it. But I’m still not sure how it happens. I resisted death. Three days is all I needed. Three days to remain dead, for my consciousness to grow strong again after the point of weakness of the physical death.”

  “You’re talking, but I hear nothing but bullshit,” Julie said, but
the truth was, she heard it and she hated him and this house and these horrible undead people but the last thing she wanted to do was step into that room.

  6

  But she finally did. She went in, feeling as if she were entering a dark cave. The narrow bed pressed up against the far wall. Candles were lit around the child’s bed, and some of this Inner Sanctum’s members were there—a man of about thirty with thick blond hair sitting on a chair near the shuttered window, and a teenaged girl who had a Sony Walkman in her hand and earphones in a halo over her head. She drew them off, looked at Julie, then at the blond man, and then at Hut.

  “Christ,” Julie said. She had lost the nervous feeling, knowing she had a purpose here that was not about herself. That was not about weakness. But she saw Livy’s hair poking out from the covers, falling across the small pillow, and the shape of her body beneath the covers.

  The blond man’s face betrayed nothing but caution. He half-rose up in the chair, and then, seeing Hut, sat back down.

  Eleanor’s voice behind her. “Now, Julie, you must be exhausted. Why don’t you just …”

  “I’m not your patient anymore,” Julie said. “Talk to your Great God Hut.”

  “He’s not a—” the blond man began, and then silenced himself.

  Julie said to herself: Don’t be afraid. You don’t matter anymore. They don’t matter. All that matters is Livy. All that matters is my little girl.

  “You’re ghouls, aren’t you?” Julie whispered. “I’m not even sure if you’re human.”

  “Good grief,” Eleanor said. “Julie, this isn’t mysticism. It’s pure science. It’s just a science we didn’t know about.”

  “I don’t need to hear about this death cult anymore,” Julie said. She had that one thing left in her. She had hope. Maybe Livy was alive. They’d only had her one day, after all. Not even a full day.

  “It’s reality,” Eleanor said. “It’s not a cult.”

  “It’s not therapy, either,” Julie spat back. She pointed the gun at the teenaged girl. “Get away from my daughter.”

  “Julie,” Hut began, but silenced himself.

  She fought to keep her eyes from welling with tears. She went over and sat at the edge of the bed.

  “Livy,” she whispered softly. “Livy.”

  “She can’t hear you,” Eleanor said. “The auditory nerve is—”

  “Shut up, Eleanor,” Julie said. “Just shut up.”

  Julie felt a hand on her shoulder. Eleanor. Old friend. Comforter. Therapist. Monster.

  Julie shrugged her away.

  “My God,” Julie said, barely able to get the words out.

  Minutes seemed to pass as she turned the words over in her mind.

  She’s dead. They did it. They killed her.

  Her own father...

  She hadn’t really believed it would happen. She hadn’t believed in her heart that it wasn’t all fantasy. That it wasn’t all mumbo-jumbo. PSI. Ability X. Resurrection. Death Cult. Project Daylight.

  Then, her voice returned. “My God. She’s dead. She’s dead. You already killed her, you really killed …” Julie murmured, covering her face, the tears breaking from within her, a dam burst, and she couldn't see when she brought her hands away from her eyes, tears nearly blinded her. “Monsters! Monsters!”

  Hut’s voice, “Death's a state of consciousness. She's not dead. Not in the way you think.”

  “You sick perverted bastard," Julie thought she said, but wasn’t sure, because she felt knocked out, wiped clean, somehow destroyed by the knowledge of her daughter’s death.

  “Three days,” her husband said, his voice far too reasonable and understanding. “You can’t believe the lies Diamant told. You can’t, Julie. Matty wasn’t right. Mandy and I were too much to produce a child that worked. Two Ability X’s should never bring children into the world. Livy will work, because in you, like most people, the gene doesn't get switched on right.”

  Julie reached out to touch the edge of Livy’s hand.

  “It’s science,” the blond man said. “Pure and simple. It’s a truth that’s been locked away.”

  “Locked away by crap mysticism,” Eleanor added. “And just plain ignorance. There is nothing but animal life. We are animals. But we’ve developed the ability to take this beyond our lifetimes, Julie. Our single lifetimes. To wipe away thousands of years of ignorant mysticism, of this ridiculous magical thinking about life and death.”

  Someone else chimed in, and then someone out in the hallway, and Julie didn't care to listen anymore. Their voices receded into the dark background of her mind. They babbled on, she knew, but she leaned forward toward her daughter, her beautiful Livy, and remembered the first moment she had known Livy was in her body, and the first moment Livy had cried out at birth. How Hut had helped change diapers, and how Julie had somehow believed that her family was wonderful and that she and Hut were a team, and that Livy was going to grow up to be a doctor like her daddy or a nurse like Mommy or to be an actress like Livy wanted to, or grow into a teenager who would go to her prom, fall in love, go to college, experience the world, travel, and she, her mother, would have all those years with her, would watch her as she grew and changed and became the wonder that Julie knew she would become.

  7

  Julie lay down on the bed, cradling her daughter’s lifeless body.

  Around her, she saw the others draw together in the shadows. She ignored them. All that mattered was Livy.

  She's all that remains.

  Let them burn away, let the world burn away for all I care, Julie thought.

  She kissed the edge of her daughter’s fragrant hair: chrysanthemums and lilacs, musky and sweet mixed together. She didn’t want to think about how they’d killed her. About how they needed to create fear before death to make their ritual work right. She didn’t want to think about her baby crying out for her Mommy while they did something awful and monstrous to her in her last minutes of life.

  Julie closed her eyes, blocked out the others in the room, and held her child tightly.

  Perhaps minutes had passed, or hours. Perhaps she drank the chai they brought her, and perhaps she nibbled on some cheddar crackers that Eleanor set down on a plate with some cream cheese. Perhaps it was a day that passed. She slept, she woke, she clutched the gun, but no one bothered her. No one tried to move her or take her weapon away. She got up once or twice to use the bathroom in the hall, and when she did, she felt them watching her, but she refused to look them in the eyes.

  She had blocked the others out and only knew her child’s body, pressed against her own. She lay on the bed, slept, woke, tried to feel that inside feeling with her daughter that she’d felt with Michael Diamond.

  At some, early morning or late night, Julie felt life stirring in Livy’s body.

  Eleanor’s voice, beyond the darkness of Julie’s mind, “Look. Look.”

  It’s not real. It’s not real. Don't believe it. Don't hope.

  Julie felt the warmth and the pulsing heartbeat along her daughter’s side.

  The slight heat of her daughter’s breath against her cheek. Had she imagined it? The warmth? The trickle of air?

  Eleanor whispered something that almost sounded like a prayer.

  Julie opened her eyes and gazed at her daughter’s face.

  Remembering what Michael Diamond had told her.

  “There’s always hope,” he said. “That’s the last thing to go in life. 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.”

  “But what hope?” she wanted to ask him now.

  And then, his voice was in her head again. Not imagined. Real. Inside her. His connection to her remained, somehow, even among these monsters.

  “The human soul is inviolate, Julie. There is always hope because of that. The human soul is inviolate.”

  Julie tried not to think of Matt. Of how Diamond had said he’d died. Ma
ybe it wasn’t completely true. Maybe there was truth on both sides. Only Livy matters. Only Livy.

  The human soul is inviolate.

  Livy's soul was somewhere in her body. It could not die. There was no death except for the flesh. But the soul had its journey. Michael Diamond had moved elsewhere when he was burned at Project Daylight. Opened another door. Passed into a passageway that had remained unseen. And then, came back. And he wasn’t dead, was he? Not even now? Maybe they’d done something to him. Maybe they’d buried him alive. Or subdued him in some way, but if she could somehow get him to help again...

  But Livy did not have to go through that passage. Not yet.

  She may not even come back bad. She may not be spoiled, the way Diamond had warned. Livy might be the same. She might even be better. Michael Diamond had been better, after all. Maybe Hut wasn’t better in his resurrection. Maybe Matt had come back with slight problems. But it didn’t mean they all did.

  She believed it with a ferocity of emotion. There was no more reason in her life. She had to cling to belief. She had to remember that the world was not all murky darkness. It had benevolence. It had love. It had stronger elements than this Death Cult imagined.

  It had hope.

  Even in this murderous circle, there could be good rising from it. A hand could be uplifted. A hand could be held. They weren’t alone. Livy would not be alone.

  I’ll be there for you, Liv. I will not abandon you no matter what. I’ll help you find your soul. I promise.

  The human soul, inviolate.

  She clung to this idea, as she felt her daughter’s small fingers clutch at her arm and heard the faint growl of a child’s voice.

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