The Woman in Darkness

by Charlie Donlea

  She stayed at the window while she watched the car approach, and only when it stopped with no sign of the driver leaving the vehicle did Greta turn from the window and head down the stairs. A moment later, she opened the front door and walked onto the porch. The car was parked at the front of her lot, the driver sitting behind the wheel. The windshield reflected the blue sky and maple trees to prevent a clear look at the person behind the wheel. Greta waited until finally the driver’s-side door opened. A thin woman climbed from the car, a hooded sweatshirt drooping from her frail frame. She lifted both hands to her head and pulled the hood down.

  “Sweet Jesus,” Greta said, bounding from the porch and down the steps. When she reached the woman, she hugged her tightly.

  The woman whispered into Greta’s ear.

  “I need your help.”

  Greta backed away, taking Angela’s face in her hands. She had the appearance of an alopecia patient. Her eyebrows were missing, and the lashes on her lids were present only in random clusters. Scratch marks climbed her neck and stretched beyond the collar of her sweatshirt. Greta remembered a similar appearance from when she had first met Angela at Bayer Group, but today’s version was severely pronounced.

  “We need to call the police. People think you’re dead.”

  “No. We can’t call the police. We can’t call anyone. He can never find us. Promise me, Greta. Promise you’ll never let him find us.”

  CHAPTER 28

  Chicago, November 1, 2019

  RORY PUSHED THE APPEALS LETTERS TO THE SIDE AND PULLED IN front of her the stack with Angela Mitchell’s name scrawled across the top. The pages chronicled her father’s search for the woman after she disappeared in 1979. Rory had been reading these pages the morning Celia found her in her father’s office. She had been scanning the names of the people her father contacted during his search when Celia showed up with the safe-deposit box’s key.

  Rory forced the rest of it from her mind—the idea that her father was subtly trying to keep Thomas Mitchell in jail—and concentrated only on that which was in front of her. There was something ominous about seeing proof that her father had been searching for Angela Mitchell. Catherine Blackwell’s notes left little doubt that it was true, but some part of Rory refused to believe it. Now, as she sat staring at her late father’s notes that recorded his search for Angela, she could no longer deny it. The woman was out there somewhere.

  Rory read about her father’s trip to St. Louis to talk with Angela’s parents. She read about his visit to Catherine Blackwell’s house on the north side of Chicago. She read about his trip to a psychiatric hospital where Angela had been treated when she was a teenager. Rory pored through her father’s investigation into the whereabouts of Angela Mitchell with a rabid thirst for details, turning the pages with fervor and frenzy until she came to the name of a nurse—the nurse who had driven Angela Mitchell away from the hospital on her eighteenth birthday. Rory’s vision funneled until a strange kaleidoscope of images danced in front of her when she saw the woman’s name: Margaret Schreiber.

  She had trouble breathing, her lungs heavy with panic and confusion, unable to expand or contract. Her father had been searching for Angela Mitchell, retracing her life and following her past to a juvenile psychiatric hospital—where she had been befriended by the woman Rory had believed her whole life to be her great-aunt, but whose identity had been blurred by the adoption papers and birth certificates. None of it registered in Rory’s mind. Her confusion could be chalked up to denial, but she knew it was more than that. She had been trained to see things others did not. To root through details of cases and reconstruct a picture of events that was invisible to others. But discovering a connection between Greta and Angela sent her mind spiraling. A deep ache started below her sternum and rose like bubbling lava from the crater of a long-dormant volcano. Rory couldn’t remember the last panic attack she’d had. It would have been as a child. It would have been before she found the healing outlet in the upstairs room of Greta’s farmhouse.

  She swallowed the rest of her Dark Lord, hoping the fluid would physically wash away the rising fear, and that the alcohol would dull her senses. She ran to the refrigerator and popped the top on another beer, stood in the darkened kitchen and raised the bottle to her mouth. In a few swallows it was half gone. Dizzy, she stumbled to her den and clicked on the lights. She stared at the china dolls that lined the shelves. The room was a replica of the farmhouse and she hoped the sight of the restored dolls would dampen the panic that coursed through her body.

  Rory needed to occupy her mind with something other than thoughts of Greta and her parents and how they might be linked to Angela Mitchell. Having just completed the restoration of Camille Byrd’s doll, she had no current projects to work on. She opened the chest that sat in the corner and pulled out a doll she had purchased at auction. It was tattered and ruined and would take a great deal of skill and concentration to restore. Rory sat at her workbench and tried to analyze the damage, but her mind would not take the bait. The usual lure of the doll’s needs was trumped tonight by the discovery that Greta had known Angela. Her go-to method of skirting a panic attack was failing.

  She left the den, grabbed another Dark Lord, and ran out to her car. She pulled from the curb with her headlights bringing to life the dark and empty Chicago streets. She drove without thinking. She knew the address from the file. It was on the north side. She took side streets and tried to control her speed. She was in no condition to be behind the wheel, both from too many Dark Lords and because she was not in her right mind. Twenty minutes later, she pulled past the bungalow where Angela Mitchell had lived in 1979. The houses were close together, and the entire block was silent and dark, with only front-porch lights shining in the darkness.

  Rory stared at the front of the house for a few minutes, sensing the strong connection she had felt since first learning about Angela Mitchell. A relationship had formed, like with the subjects of the crimes she reconstructed, between her and Angela. Rory felt an obligation to find the woman. To let her know that there was someone who understood her struggles and her pain.

  Pulling past the house, she turned the corner and crept into the alley behind the home. A chain-link fence protected the small backyard of Angela Mitchell’s previous residence. A detached garage opened into the alley. Rory stood from her car and walked in front of it. She stared at the back of the home. She wondered what had transpired here all those years ago, and how it was connected to all the people in her life.

  The car’s headlights cast her shadow along the pavement of the alley, her legs forming an inverted V. As Rory stared at her shadow, she sensed something inside her, something tugging for her attention. She could not place the feeling or determine why the sight of her shadow gave her such a chill until she realized that the headlights threw a silhouette on the ground in the exact same way Thomas Mitchell designed his A’s in his perfect block penmanship with no crosshatch—Λ. Then it occurred to her. As she stood in the dark alley and stared at her shadow, she realized that she had not only come to Angela’s home, but to Thomas Mitchell’s as well. The revelation hollowed her chest and gave resurgence to her hyperventilating lungs. But it was impossible for Rory to understand the real reason for her clairvoyance. She was standing in the exact same spot where Angela Mitchell stood forty years earlier, just as determined to uncover what had happened to the women who went missing that summer as Rory was today.

  The back-porch light came on and caught her attention. Then the kitchen window flashed with light from inside. The rear door opened.

  “Can I help you with something?” a man yelled from the door frame. “Or maybe I should call the cops and see if they can help? Or maybe I’ll come out there and utilize my Second Amendment rights for someone trespassing on my property.”

  Jolted by the sudden confrontation, Rory turned and hurried back into her car. Her shadow darting and then disappearing.

  “Get the hell out of here!” she heard the man yell as sh
e climbed behind the wheel. She pulled out of the alley, sideswiping a trashcan in the process.

  CHICAGO

  May 1982

  FRANK AND MARLA REMAINED ON THE COUCH AS GRETA TOLD HER story. Marla leaned forward when she asked her next question.

  “Angela Mitchell was never killed by her husband?”

  “No,” Greta said. “But he would have killed her if she hadn’t left.”

  Marla took a quick glance at her husband, then back to Greta. “What happened to her?”

  Greta hesitated.

  “Where is she, Greta? And what does it have to do with our adoption?”

  Greta shook her head, looked over at Frank as well.

  Frank nodded. “We need to know everything, Greta. I made a promise to help you, but we both have to hear the whole story.”

  Greta took another sip of coffee and then gently replaced the cup on the saucer. “After Angela told me, I knew there was no turning back.”

  Two days after Angela appeared in her driveway, Greta drove to the reservoir that sat a mile from the farmhouse. Angela followed in her own car. They waited until dusk, until the summer sky was brushed lavender and the clouds caught the remnants of the setting sun on their underbellies and blushed a cherry red. It was just dark enough to provide cover, but light enough to guide their actions. Greta parked a hundred yards from the reservoir, and then climbed into the passenger seat of Angela’s car for the last leg of the journey. Angela pulled her car over the long grass and to the edge of the drop-off that led to the water. They both got out.

  Greta looked around to make sure they were alone; then she reached through the driver’s-side window to make sure the car was in neutral. They positioned themselves behind the rear bumper, dug their heels into the ground, and pushed. When the front wheels crested the bank, gravity took over. Greta and Angela watched as the car careened into the reservoir and disappeared beneath the water. They waited for ten minutes as the water bubbled while the car released trapped air from below. When it became too dark to see the disturbance on the surface, they walked to Greta’s car.

  On the way back to the farmhouse, Greta looked over at Angela.

  “How far along are you?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Have you been vomiting?”

  “Yes,” Angela said, “for a couple of weeks. I thought it was nerves until the doctor called.”

  “Okay,” Greta said. “Probably a month or two. That means you’re due in the spring. We’ll have no problem delivering in my house. I’ve done it dozens of times. Our issue will be keeping you and the baby hidden. We’ll have to file the proper documentation. And even if we skip that process, eventually there will be school registration and life in general. I can keep you hidden. For a while, anyway. Everyone thinks you’re dead. But after you deliver, we’ll have to figure out a long-term plan. Hiding a child is nearly impossible.”

  “He can never know he has a child, Greta. Promise me you’ll find a way.”

  Greta nodded her head slowly. She had no idea how she could agree to something so impossible, but still she said, “I promise.”

  CHAPTER 29

  Chicago, November 1, 2019

  RORY PULLED HER CAR TO THE FRONT OF HER HOUSE, THE passenger-side wheel hopping the curb as she did so. She stumbled up the stairs, keyed the front door, and headed up to her bedroom. She hadn’t experienced such a powerful attack since childhood, and she understood the devastating effects they could have if she failed to stifle it. She fell into bed. Rising above the white noise in her mind—above the revelation that her parents had hidden her adoption, beyond the notion that Aunt Greta was not the person she had always believed her to be, and louder than the incessant whispers that she was due in front of Judge Boyle and the parole board with Thomas Mitchell tomorrow—were the unrelenting calls from Angela Mitchell.

  Atop the panic was the lure of a mysterious woman who was somehow linked to all the people Rory had loved in her life. It was a pull Rory could not ignore. It reminded her of her childhood, when a similar sensation had taken hold of her. She folded the pillow over her head and pressed it to her ears to quiet the whispers that came from within.

  Rory worked to control her breathing. She closed her eyes and cleared her thoughts. There was a process—a way to manage the attacks. She tried to remember the tricks. The breathing exercises that always brought her to a proverbial fork in the road. In one direction was a restless night during which her mind would not cease, with wild and relentless thoughts keeping her awake. In the other direction was the calming lure of sleep and the charm of shutting down her brain, allowing dreams to run effortlessly through the folds of her mind.

  She worked for thirty minutes on her breathing, pushing all other thoughts from her mind other than an image of her lungs expanding and contracting. Finally she skirted onto this other road, the peaceful road, and soon her breathing was deep and rhythmic.

  Rory woke in the bedroom of the old farmhouse.

  It happened every so often. A few times every summer. Aunt Greta would put her to bed, tuck her in, and shut off the lights.

  “Remember,” Aunt Greta would say, standing in the doorway. “Nothing can scare you unless you allow it to scare you.”

  Greta would close the bedroom door and Rory would fall peacefully to sleep, the way she always did during her stays at the farmhouse, where the angst and worry had never been able to find her. Rory would typically sleep straight through until morning. But tonight was one of the times she woke in the small hours of night, her body filled with energy that put a buzz in her chest and in her head and in her fingers and toes. She literally vibrated with vigor, overcome with an awesome desire to explore. The sensation had her tossing and turning in bed. The first few times she had encountered this phenomenon Rory fought against it. She kicked the covers and reset the pillows until sunlight filled the window frame the next morning, spilling around the blinds to finally push away the urge to wander into the night and discover the source of her unrest.

  Rory was careful never to mention this feeling of angst to anyone. Her parents sent her to Aunt Greta’s farmhouse to escape the anxiety she felt during the rest of her life—to dispel it, really—and if they knew about these rare bouts of midnight disquiet, they might decide that Rory’s visits to Aunt Greta’s were no longer serving their purpose. She loved her long weekends and summers in this peaceful place, so Rory kept the odd nights of sleeplessness a secret. That, and because describing the middle-of-the-night sensation as anxiety wasn’t quite right. Rory felt no worry when these spells of wakefulness came to her at the farmhouse, only the temptation of the unknown and the call for her to climb from bed and explore its meaning.

  She was ten years old the night she decided to give in to the lure. When Rory woke, fully alert and without a trace of grogginess, the bedside clock told her it was 2:04 A.M. Her chest vibrated with the familiar curiosity she had come to know after many summers at her aunt’s farmhouse. Throwing the covers aside, she climbed from bed, pulled by an invisible need. She opened her bedroom door and endured the whine of the hinges. She crept silently past Aunt Greta’s bedroom, beyond the second doorway that led to the workshop, where the restored dolls stood in perfect rows on the shelves, and down the stairs. She opened the back door and slipped out into the night. The stars shimmered down on her from the heavens, obscured occasionally by thin sheets of shadowed clouds traced silver by the moon. Far off in the distance, a lightning storm ignited the horizon with off-and-on flickers of brightness, delivering a low rumble of thunder minutes later.

  Standing on the back porch, Rory gave in to the pull in her chest. Her feet followed like a magnet drawn to a giant slab of faraway metal. She walked without effort through the field behind the house, found the low, two-rung wooden fence at the edge of the property, and followed it, her hand gliding over its smooth surface as she walked. Near the back of the property, where the fence cornered and turned at a ninety-degree angle, Rory found what was summoning he
r. On the ground, she saw the flowers she had watched Aunt Greta collect earlier in the day.

  Every morning, Rory observed Greta gather flowers from the garden. It was Rory’s job to bundle them with twist ties. Rory always asked Greta about the flowers, and she had asked that day as well. She questioned what Greta did with them each day, and where they ended up. Rory’s inquisitions were met with vague answers. Tonight, however, she found them. The roses had been placed on the ground in a gentle heap, isolated and alone in the back corner of the property.

  Another lightning strike appeared far off on the horizon, adding just enough light to the gray glow of the moon to bring to life the cherry petals. Rory crouched down and removed a rose from the bunch, lifted it to her nose, and inhaled the sweetness. The buzzing in her chest dissipated, and a soothing calm came over her. The feeling of tranquility had always drawn her back to her great-aunt’s farmhouse. Tonight, under the tarnished glow of the moon, she harnessed that serenity in a single rose placed to her nose.

  When another lightning strike brightened the area, Rory bent down and gently replaced the rose on the pile, then turned and ran back through the gray night until she reached the house. She climbed into bed. Sleep came instantly. Throughout the rest of her childhood, and for all the remaining summers that Rory stayed at Greta’s farmhouse, the mysterious middle-of-the-night insomnia never again found her.

  CHICAGO

  May 1982

  “I’M GOING TO QUIT MY JOB,” FRANK SAID. “I NEED TO LEAVE Garrison Ford.”

  “To get away from him?” Marla asked. Her eyes were red-rimmed from crying.