And what could she possibly be cleaning in their bedroom by slopping around in a bucket of soapy water?
Darian stopped again. Framed pictures of he and Cynthia and Debra stared at him from both walls of the hallway, their history together frozen in time and sitting in judgment over him, detached spectators watching to see what he might do next.
He moved slowly down the dim hallway, stopping long enough to glance into Debra’s bedroom. Nothing out of the ordinary there, everything in place just as it always was, just as it should be.
A wave of cold swept through him. It was decidedly colder here, upstairs. He shivered but kept on, doing his best to ignore it. Darian had been perpetually cold since that night in the forest a year before. Even in the dead of summer he’d been chilly most of the time.
Three more steps and he’d be at their bedroom doorway.
Again, but for the sounds of water splashing in a bucket, silence overtook the house.
* * *
Nana emerged from the bathroom just as Seth was nearing the end of the hallway. He stopped, looked back at her. “Are you all right?”
With a quick, nearly dismissive nod, she joined him at the top of the stairs. “Is Raymond—”
“In the window seat watching the snow,” he told her. “And whatever else he sees out there.”
She gazed into his eyes knowingly. “You could stay with us.”
“I can’t, I—you know I can’t Nana.”
She took his hand and together they descended the stairs to the landing below. The old house was quiet, but Seth could barely make out the sounds of a television newscast coming from somewhere nearby, probably Rolf’s study. A reporter’s voice was describing something about a violent incident in a town near Boston.
Nana realized he’d heard it and said, “It’s been all over the news today. A man in Dedham murdered his entire family with an ax then put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger. That was this morning. This afternoon a woman walked into a restaurant in Revere and slit her throat from ear to ear in the middle of the dining area. They say she was crazy, heard voices in her head, saw things. She’d told some friends apparently, and they’d begged her to get help. She didn’t and this was the result…or so they tell us.”
Seth ran his hands through his hair. “How can this really be happening?”
“They talk of wolves, these people on television,” she said softly, as if she hadn’t heard him. “The politicians and the clergy and these so-called journalists, all those we’ve been raised to believe we should trust. They use it as metaphor, of course, with their usual flair for mistakenly thinking themselves clever. They talk of wolves that will tear us apart and destroy us, and yet, those posting the warnings are themselves wolves. Who will protect us from them? They speak of individuality and freedom, the power of the individual, and yet, should a true individual ever emerge, he or she is systematically discredited, made the fool, dismissed and disenfranchised from the alleged mainstream. So true individualism isn’t really celebrated or even desired in our world, is it? It’s a disingenuous fairy tale ideal, told to people who themselves will never be individuals; a distant dream they can imagine happening somewhere else to someone else. A Shangri-La that never was and never will be anything but a broken promise and a concept that once put into the real world can never truly be allowed to exist, much less flourish, because God help us all it might just work. No, fall in line. That’s the order of our day. Follow, obey, be the same—the same ideals, the same beliefs, the same approach, the same religion—the same, always the same, nothing varied or out of step, rather a uniform world where one is either a cooperative slave to the state or its sworn enemy, with no middle ground existing between the two. Conform, play the game, do it the way everyone else does, don’t vary, stick to the program, be a member of the team. Free thought, diverse thought becomes traitorous thought. Thoughtful dissent becomes a campaign of terror, violence and servitude to some faceless, vague antichrist. They talk of wolves, these antichrists who claim to protect us from evil. And we follow, Seth. We follow. Heads nodding, guns blazing and flags waving. Bigotry, ignorance and hatred disguised as mindless patriotism, nationalism and a supposed spiritualism as corrupt as the horror it spawns and the truths it will stop at nothing to conceal and destroy. Death, destruction, greed, hatred and fear—always the fear—because none of it can exist or grow without fear, the fuel that keeps the wheels turning and the machine alive.”
Seth nodded gravely. “These are dark days, Nana.”
“They’re all dark days, my love. It’s why we cling to those moments of joy and bliss so desperately, because joy is many things, but rarely abundant. Those exceptional glimpses and fleeting sensations of wonder, love, clarity, joy and freedom—real freedom—are so powerful precisely because they’re so scarce. And it’s been this way for a long time. This is nothing new, this darkness. It’s only more out into the light now than before, more legitimate in appearance somehow, which in itself makes it even more repugnant and evil. We’ve hurtled toward this place and time for hundreds of years, and we’re finally reaching our destination, our end not in a final scream of fury but in a bored, apathetic, inconvenienced sigh.”
Seth paced about, wringing his hands as they had begun to tingle and fall asleep. He felt lightheaded and even more exhausted than before suddenly. “Is it some kind of invasion? Little green men in spaceships? Demons, angels, what?”
“No one above the age of four or five with a fully functional brain and even the sparsest ability to understand the laws of physics truly believe in little green men and spaceships from other planets flying about in our skies, do they?” Nana reached out and gently took his wrist to stop his pacing the way one might grab hold of a jittery child. “This is no invasion, Seth. They’re already here, and have been for thousands of years. I believe they were here long before we were and will continue to be long after our kind is gone. We serve a purpose and that purpose is ending, changing, becoming a purpose of theirs rather than ours, because ours makes no sense and has no bearing, no eventual resolution, just an unending caravan of greed and arrogance.”
“And their purpose is better somehow?”
“Not to us. But as their purpose becomes ours, our metamorphosis begins. Think of it as emerging from a dark chrysalis, we become something else, a new and darker version of ourselves better equipped to survive in a new and darker version of the world. The susceptibility of human beings to the very real presence and power of evil is nothing new, but there’s always been a saving grace, a return to our senses even at the very brink of self-destruction that has always rescued us. Now the darkness has found another of our weaknesses, and in exploiting it succeeds, as the growing oppression and tyranny it so desperately seeks to control us with, rises. And it is in succumbing to that weakness that our true nature emerges, both good and bad. More worker ants are born but so are more rebels, prophets and saviors, because in the end there are no monsters, Seth, only varied versions of ourselves. In the end butterflies are still caterpillars, but were the process reversed, if the beautiful butterfly became the caterpillar rather than the other way around, the difference would be more than simple aesthetics, wouldn’t it? In the end it would be more profound than that.”
Seth took her face in his hands, leaned in and kissed her on the cheek. “You’ve always known this was coming, haven’t you? It’s why you’ve lived your life the way you have.”
“I suppose it was selfish, but I’d always secretly hoped I might pass away before this all began. Yes, I knew. I knew because Raymond told me.”
“And you believed him.”
“Even though you wish you didn’t, and every fiber in your logical being tells you not to, don’t you?”
Seth dropped his eyes to the floor.
“Raymond’s a prophet, Seth. I’ve known it since he was a young child.” She took his hands in hers, held them down between them. “We’ve all known it, even you.”
“And if you’re wrong?�
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“I’m not wrong.”
“But if you are, Nana. What then?”
“Then we’re all just frightened children hiding under our covers at night.” Her hands gripped his a bit tighter. “And sooner or later, despite how hard we may fight it, we’ll all eventually drift off to sleep and let night take us. All of us, Seth…all of us.”
CHAPTER 26
By the time Seth had returned to the streets of Boston most of the day was gone. Though it was still light out the early darkness of winter was on its way, and the sky had turned a deep and vast gray. The snow covering the city was fluffy and full, the flakes plump and tumbling from the sky with exquisite beauty. He’d once loved the snow and all its grandeur, but that was before the night at the cabin. Now it just made him uncomfortable. It didn’t frighten him, as Darian had admitted, not exactly, but produced in him an uneasy feeling more akin to sorrow and doom.
He rolled to a stop at a red light not far from the office. A smattering of lights had already come on inside many of the buildings a bit prematurely, and people were bustling about on foot and by car in an attempt to either get home or out of the city before the storm got too out of hand.
Seth barely paid attention to the tail end of a weather forecast on the radio as his mind changed gears in anticipation of his meeting with Bill Jacobs and whatever the hell he wanted. He switched the radio off and looked out the window a moment at a newsstand he’d patronized countless times over the years. The same grizzled old man who always worked there was huddled near the corner of the stand clad in a badly worn knit hat and a coat easily as ancient as he was. He held a steaming Styrofoam cup of coffee in both hands and was gnawing away on the customary already chewed, unlit cigar stub jammed into the corner of his mouth. He looked miserable in the snow and cold. But then, the old man at the newsstand always looked miserable, and at that moment, even such seemingly blasé familiarity and normalcy was comforting.
With no idea who he could trust or what exactly he needed to do next, Seth took a few seconds to ponder the Bill Jacobs situation. Should he even go? Maybe the smarter move was to go get Peggy and just get the hell away from there for a while. What could Jacobs possibly have to tell him that he’d be interested in hearing now anyway?
Then again, he needed to see what was happening at work. Maybe he’d find things different there too, changed and oddly menacing, or maybe he’d find a safe haven instead. Maybe he’d find some answers there.
And what about Ruthie, he wondered, what about her phone call?
His mind was overloading, exhausted and beginning to shut down.
The blare of a horn behind him snapped Seth back into the moment. He waved an apology into the rearview mirror at the cab behind him and drove through the now green light, heading toward the Park Plaza Hotel. Severance was only a few blocks away.
He slowed for a cluster of jaywalkers half a block later, coming to a slow creep so they could cross the street before he reached them. He looked at everyone differently now, with suspicion and uncertainty and—
Something on the edge of his peripheral vision caught his attention. He glanced to the sidewalk on his left. A figure moved through the falling snow, a figure that stood out from those around it, and as Seth focused it quickly became more defined.
A woman in a long and expensive black wool coat and black leather boots walked along the crowded sidewalk with a particularly confident and purposeful stride. On her head was a black beret, her thick blonde hair sticking out from either side of it hanging just a few inches from her shoulders and bouncing in time with each step she took.
Horns blared behind him again, but Seth sat frozen, watching her.
“Doc?” he muttered, astonished.
One car roared around him while two others behind him continued to lay on their horns. Seth pulled as far over to the left as possible but kept the car at a slow roll so he could keep the woman in sight. He drove a bit ahead of her to the first available space on the next block and took it. She was still a bit behind him, though she seemed intent on getting to wherever she was going relatively quickly. He stared at her as she drew nearer.
She stopped on the corner to let a car pass, and her face came into full view. Even from this distance and through the thick snow he was certain it was her. There was something missing, though, something not quite right. Her eyeglasses—the turtle shell eyeglasses—she wasn’t wearing them. But it had to be her. Strange, he thought, he’d never seen her outside her office, and there was something odd about it, the way seeing a teacher outside of a school setting when he was a child always seemed strange. Still, it was her, he was sure of it.
But she was supposed to be in the Cayman Islands for another week, why would she be back already? Had something brought her back? Could she know what was happening? If she did, could he trust her?
He quickly dialed her service on his cell. On the second ring a woman with a bored tone answered: “Farrow and Associates.”
“Yes, hello,” Seth said, “is Doctor Farrow in by any chance?”
“I’m sorry, she’s not. This is the answering service.”
“I’m a patient of Doctor Farrow’s.” Seth stepped from the car and dug in his pocket for change to feed the meter, craning to keep an eye on the woman as she continued on along the street. “I was hoping maybe I could speak with her.”
There was a slight hesitation, and then: “I’m sorry, but Doctor Farrow is out of town. She’s out of the country, actually.”
“Yes,” he said, doing his best to feign sincerity, “I knew she had gone to the Caymans on vacation, I just couldn’t remember if she’d gone for one week or two.”
“Doctor Farrow will be back the week after next, sir, but if you have an emergency or need to speak with someone I can page Doctor Kowalski for you, he’s covering Doctor Farrow’s patients while she’s away, Mister…”
“No that’s fine, no emergency, thank you.” He snapped the phone shut, dropped some change in the meter and moved quickly down the street in an effort to close the gap between them before she got too far ahead of him.
Why was she lying? If she wanted to duck her patients and not be disturbed she didn’t have to lie about leaving the country. Or did they really believe she was in the Cayman Islands? Did she want everyone to think she was, and if so, why?
Seth checked his watch. There was still plenty of time to see where she was going and to make it to Severance before five. He wasn’t certain why he felt so compelled to follow her, but something was drawing him to her. Though her office wasn’t far from there, she was out of place on the street, going somewhere or up to something, and deep in his gut, an instinctual urgency told him he needed to follow her and see for himself.
* * *
When Darian was a step or two from the bedroom he noticed what looked decidedly like smoke wafting about the hallway directly in front of him. But it was too fleeting to be smoke, too thin and wispy. It wasn’t until he was standing fully in the doorway that he realized the smoke was his own breath hitting the cold air.
The bedroom windows were open all the way, the curtains billowing, and on the floor next to the bed, on hands and knees, was Cynthia scrubbing the hardwood floor with a large sponge. Next to her sat a plastic bucket of soapy water.
The walls were streaked and wet where she’d run the sponge along the paint, smudging whatever had been there into dark splotches. But he had gotten there before she could finish with the floor, or adequately disguise what she was cleaning there: blood smeared into large letters that formed three words finger-painted just beyond the foot of their bed.
Let Them Out.
Cynthia was dressed only in panties and a snug t-shirt, both of which were spattered with small bloodstains faded a bland pinkish color, most likely diluted by the splashing water. She looked back over her shoulder at him casually. “I’m almost done.”
Darian felt his bowels clench and nausea rip through him from the pit of his stomach clear to the bottom of his
throat. “Where’s Debra?” he asked, voice trembling.
“It’s OK.” Cynthia resumed her scrubbing. “Everything’s going to be all right.”
His hands tightened into fists. “Where is my daughter?”
“You don’t understand,” she said smoothly. The sponge dropped into the bucket with a loud plopping sound, splashing water over the edges and onto the floor. “Something’s happening…something extraordinary…something amazing.”
It was so cold in there, so cold and dead. Darian felt things watching them.
“You don’t have to fight it anymore,” Cynthia said. She slowly rose to her feet and faced him. The wounds on her arms and thighs now evident, and the large kitchen knife she had used to inflict them tossed onto the nearby bed. “You’re remembering. It’s all right to remember now, Darian. It’s all right.”
He brought his hands to either side of his head. “This is not happening!”
“That’s right.” Cynthia smiled, but it was as counterfeit as the rest of her. “It’s all in your mind.”
“Where is she?” Darian took a step toward her, a rage building in him he was not certain he could control much longer, while memories of the night at the cabin returned to him in a rush, more vivid and exact than he’d ever known or remembered before. Razors of pain fired through his temples and across his eyes in one direction and down along his jaw and into his shoulders in the other. It felt like his head was being slashed to pieces from the inside out. “Where’s Debra!”
Cynthia’s eyes shifted, looked beyond him. Her smile faded.
From behind him a small voice said, “Hi, Daddy.”
* * *
After following Doctor Farrow for a few blocks, Seth found himself in the theater district and heading in the general direction of Chinatown. He stuffed his hands deep into his coat pockets, tucked chin to chest and quickened his pace. For a woman of average height Farrow walked with an unusually long stride and moved so briskly she was nearly at a slow run, but wherever she was going, it seemed she had no doubt of her eventual destination. She looked as if she’d walked this exact route many times before, and though the neighborhood was getting worse with each step, from what Seth could see she seemed completely at ease.
Deep Night Page 27