by Chris Page
“Here,” he said, passing it to Henry. “A down payment.”
“I don’t show you anything until—”
“I get it,” Jake interjected. He felt drained raising his voice. He slouched in the booth. “I’ll get the rest by the end of the day. After work, I’ll come down to you. Got it?”
Henry nodded while pocketing the money.
Jake slid himself along the cheap plastic cushions to leave. “You going to eat that?”
Without looking back at his food, he said, “All yours,” and stood to leave.
He made a brisk walk back to the office, clutching his jacket against the cold. The chilly, fall breeze made like a river between the tall buildings in downtown Willow Brook. It raged against the passersby, each in their own protective postures, hunched backs, self-embraces, bent knees, half-jogging. None of them interacted with one another when the wind picked up, as they might have on warmer days. Jake’s pace slowed, tired from his own rush. He opened up and let the wind slam into him. He was mostly numb anyhow, the lack of appetite became a lack of diet became a lack of sensation in his extremities, already drained of heat on their own before the season’s cooling could affect him. The cloaked citizens of Willow Brook rushed by him, to and from errands or lunch, while he strolled. He felt mucus running down his nose. He let it flow over his lip. He tasted it, a metallic, unexpected flavor. He wiped it on the back of his glove and found blood again.
“Shit,” he muttered. He pulled a handkerchief from his coat pocket and cleaned it before entering the office. He passed through the wall of heat on his way up the stairs, but the chill remained in his core, where he believed it might stay. He would be warm again that evening, when he arrived home to light a fire with drink.
He exited the stairwell onto his floor and immediately caught Sean Buchanan’s eye from across the room. The empty hole in his stomach growled as he watched Sean make his way. Jake just waited for him at the door, resolved to weather the chit chat there and not extend it by encountering his boss in less trafficked areas, like his desk, or Sean’s office. Someone would come along and interrupt at the entrance.
“Have a good lunch, bud?”
Jake nodded. “Can’t complain.”
Sean smiled. “Where’d you go?”
Jake threw a thumb over his shoulder. “Just the burger joint at the corner. Sometimes you just need something cheap to hit the spot.”
Sean tapped his belly as though indicating he knew, despite lacking extra weight. He was neither heavy, nor toned. He simply was. It irritated Jake to be in the company of someone so lacking in character. “Say, was that Henry I saw you walk out with?”
“Sorry?” Jake stammered, then caught himself. “Oh, the IT guy, yes.”
Sean chuckled. “I don’t remember any of their names, either.”
Jake offered a weak smile and nodded.
“Having some tech issues? You don’t have to take them out to get the job done, you know. Just let me know, I’ll put the fear in them. Gotta have my team tip top.” He patted Jake’s back.
“I appreciate that,” Jake said. He kept the details to himself, hoping the conversation would run out of gas.
Sean leaned in. “So? Everything good?”
Jake nodded. “Tip top.”
Sean stared on with a frozen expression, his fake smile, his tiny eyes, watching Jake without movement. Then it broke with a sigh. “Alright then. Well, you let me know, alright? Hey, want to grab a beer after work?”
Jake was quick. “Ah, I can’t tonight.”
Sean lifted a hand. “I already know. The missus. Don’t sweat it. We’ll grab a drink another night soon. I think we could both use a little unwinding. You seem a little tight,” he gripped and massaged Jake’s shoulder, “just want to make sure my top guy’s doing alright.”
“Thanks, Sean.”
“Sure thing, bud.”
He kept his hand on Jake’s shoulder another moment before dropping it to Jake’s back, tapping once there, then walking back to his office, tossing a couple more greetings at underlings on his way. Jake watched the door shut behind Sean before making his way back to his own desk. He slouched down and booted up his computer, intent on wasting the remaining hours. He’d spend them eagerly anticipating the night’s lesson. The tool would help him find professional assistance. He’d read about their ads on the dark web, professionals for hire. You no longer had to know someone who knew someone. Their illicit services were a few clicks away. Jake just needed to be shown which clicks to make. He spent the intervening hours running back through email correspondence with Aaron Burrell, familiarizing himself with the voice, the word choice, the manner, the man.
16
_________
The diner was made new by Carrie’s absence, the little details coming back into focus after so many weeks. Months. She wasn’t sure how long it had been, but it appeared long enough to turn over the staff. She didn’t recognize the faces of the waiters, the host, the line cooks. She found herself watching them curiously, the smoke rising off the grill over their sweat drenched faces. They were framed by the counter that separated them from the wait staff. It was a thin rectangle that kept them caged in their positions, slaving over burgers, fries, chicken strips.
“I just…” Jackie’s voice pulled Carrie’s attention away from the kitchen.
She viewed her friend out of focus. Carrie’s eyes stared listlessly through her, letting Jackie’s features fall out of relief. There was the crooked mouth, her short, dirty blonde hair, her roundish face, but all were made fuzzy by Carrie’s indifferent gaze. At one point in their history, Carrie had considered Jackie chubby on her way to fat. Now, she looked normal. Even if she had gained ten pounds. Jackie was Carrie’s age, yet Carrie had always perceived her as older. She was more conservative, traditional, and suburban. Despite her ugly divorce and lack of children, Jackie exuded all the composure of a middle American, middle class mother. Maybe she’d been jealous of Carrie’s family. Carrie shrugged off the thought, disinterested.
Carrie sighed. She leaned back in the booth and let her body sink a little into its cushion. “Jackie, I know you’re concerned about me. I don’t know what to tell you.”
“Tell me why, Carrie. Why are you doing this?”
Carrie crossed her arms, half out of anger, half from exhaustion. “Doing what?”
Jackie lowered her head. “You’re spiralling. You keep going on these walks through the forest, you don’t seem to care about anything else.” Jackie turned her head to the side. “Certainly not your friends.”
Carrie wanted to roll her eyes. She wanted to question her friend’s sympathy. Instead, she reached a hand halfway across the table and laid it down between them. “Jackie, I care about you. I’m just…” She pulled her hand back and slumped, “...tired.” Her eyes fell to the picked over cobb salad resting before her. She had mashed up the hard boiled egg into the greens. She didn’t like the egg, but couldn’t help idly playing with it while she awaited Jackie’s conversation. Now it was ruined. She scowled. “I don’t care what you think,” she muttered.
Jackie’s mouth opened in shock. “What?”
Carrie lifted only her eyes, her chin resting against her chest. “I said I don’t care what you think. I don’t care what anyone thinks.”
She watched the muscles in Jackie’s face tighten. “You really think you know what you’re doing. You really think there’s a point to it. Carrie, you’re grieving, can’t you see that? I mean, for Pete’s sake, it’s been a year!”
“Eight months, two weeks, three days. From last physical trace of Benjamin.”
Jackie’s face went blank. Then she exhaled. “And you think he’s still out there?”
Out there. The words conjured the imagery of the forest’s dark pathways again, the crooked branches, the eerie calm.
Her eyes darted around the room. She felt something sinister settle into her.
The man had kept her hand in his, nearly dragging, but she was
willing. When they crossed over into the tunneled path, she felt his presence guiding him.
“Carrie?” Jackie’s voice fell behind the swell of forest ambience, somehow both loud and silent. In the center of Jackie’s chest, she saw the tunnel open up and watched herself enter. There, within the dark space, she witnessed something. She walked beside the man, peering up at his face every few paces. His expression was contentment, and, in spite of herself, she allowed it to reassure her. However, the deeper they traversed, the less light came filtered through the coverage overhead. She lost sight of his comforting appearance. It was too early for night, though it seemed they were walking directly into it. Not through its hours, but through its essence. Its lack of detail, the mystery in its quiet, in its dark. Yet she knew this sensation was given to her by the forest, and she knew somehow without reason she was headed into the forest’s heart. When they arrived, stilling their feet in the unseen dirt of the forest floor, it was black. Not even her own hand was visible when she lifted it. She kept the other firm in his. Then she felt it.
It was around her, could crush her, or lift her. It was itself the darkness, but in intention ambivalent, uncaring. For this, it felt sinister, but the longer she spent in its company, holding onto the man’s hand, she learned it had no motives. It was raw in its form then, unsullied by wielding actors. It was like god, without mind, a pure force. She stood in blackness, with nothing of the forest but its sense in her intuition, and the soggy floor beneath her ragged boots. The branches blended their arms into the canvass of lightlessness that enveloped the two of them.
“Speak to it,” she heard him whisper.
She whimpered. A tear streamed her cheek. “What do I say?”
She listened to him take a breath and release it, squeezing her hand on the inhale, and loosening his grip as the breath expelled from his lungs. The sound was pulled into the space and she listened to it hiss into the distance, taken into the black.
Her breath caught.
“You came to lunch, you could at least speak to me.”
The darkness shrank around Carrie then pulled away from her, receding into Jackie’s chest, out of focus across the diner booth table.
She opened her mouth to catch her breath.
Jackie lowered her head. “Are you having a panic attack?”
Carrie pulled deliberate breaths in through her nose and pushed them out through pursed lips. Her hands jittered, but calm slowly returned. She gathered enough of it to respond by shaking her head. Then she swallowed, felt the dryness in her mouth, and took a sip from her glass. When she put it back down, she was prepared to answer with her voice. “No. I’m fine, Jackie.”
Jackie stared on. “I’m not convinced.”
“Well, you don’t have to be,” Carrie snapped. “I’m not alone, anyhow.”
“Jake’s hardly—”
“Not Jake.”
Jackie lifted her head. Carrie let the words spill out of her mouth, eager to shut Jackie up. Instead, she had teased more information and Jackie would become insufferable. She felt a tension behind her eyes. She pushed her finger and thumb into her sockets.
“Someone else?”
Carrie groaned.
“Carrie,” Jackie spoke with a softer voice, “are you having an affair?”
“Jesus, Jackie.” She pulled her hand away from her face and scowled across the booth. “It’s not an affair.” Her voice went quiet, speaking more to herself than her friend. “I don’t even know his name.”
Urgent concern crept into Jackie’s voice like a worrisome parent. “What have you done with him so far? You know, emotional affairs are a thing. You don’t have to become physical to be intimate. Does Jake know?”
Carrie lifted a hand. “Please.”
“Carrie, this is serious.”
Carrie pinched the skin between her eyes. “He’s helping me.” She didn’t know why she was telling Jackie anything. In some way, she was having this conversation with herself. The fact that she was uncertain in the new development laid her bare to inquiry, because it triggered her own curiosity. She was thinking out loud, telling herself how she felt about it.
She felt like an open wound.
She rifled through her purse and found Jake’s credit card. Beside it, a crumpled twenty rested. She could drop the twenty and be free of the situation. She let the card fall back into the mess of things and placed the twenty on the table between them.
She smiled at Jackie. “I’m sorry I haven’t been available—”
“It’s not about being available to me, Carrie,” Jackie interjected with a patronizing tone.
“Same time next week?” Carrie asked, but left without hearing the answer, rushing out of the diner towards her car, then to the only place she felt she could be. It wasn’t safety, or a sense of belonging. It was simply the only place now that mattered.
17
_________
The light in the basement was low. It took Jake several minutes to adjust his eyesight following behind Henry who marched to the back of the floor with the nonchalance of having traversed the dark a thousand times. He wondered how anyone could work like that, zoning out on a screen inches from their face, blaring against the dim background. It required a myopic focus, an obsessive-like approach to one’s work.
Or maybe it didn’t. Maybe, thrust into such conditions, one interacted with one’s screen like a moth, hopelessly buzzing away, yet finding always the screen in front of them.
Jake passed only a handful of employees on his way to Henry’s office. Their eyes were wide and absorbed into their screens. He observed them with a degree of disgust before redirecting his attention towards the enclave at the end of the room. It wasn’t so much an office as a pod of desks sequestered from the rest of the floor in a small offshoot with an open archway. It was small, much smaller than Jake anticipated, but it was vacant. He wouldn’t have to concern himself with discretion. Henry seemed already to know its requirement.
Henry sat behind the desk facing the archway, his back to the brick wall adorned with printed in-jokes of cats with speech bubbles, various other memes. He lifted his hand gesturing to another worn in chair. Jake swiveled it around and dropped into it, placing himself beside Henry. He watched while Henry rebooted the computer.
“Alright, Mr. Holloway,” he spoke in a low tone. “Are you ready for your introduction?”
Jake panned his vision from the computer screen to Henry’s grin. Lit by the monitor, the shadows of his downturned face, beneath his nose, under his brows, stretched towards his neckline and made for an unsettling image. Like a mask was being pulled away from it.
“Sure,” Jake replied curtly. He pivoted his chair and awaited the movement of Henry’s cursor, presently lingering over the task bar at the bottom of the screen. Then it wiggled, encircled the screen, and settled back down at the task bar.
Jake turned to Henry, grinning back at him. “You seem a little tense,” Henry suggested.
“Long week,” Jake replied. “Let’s just get started, I have to get home to my wife.”
Henry watched him a moment, but Jake turned back to the monitor, unconcerned with Henry’s suspicions. “Sure thing, Mr. Holloway.”
The lesson was brief, and simple. Much simpler than Jake had anticipated. It was like drawing back a page in a book to the next chapter, exposing the next set of events. Like peeling away a thin veneer of technological advancement and social connectivity to something darker, sinister, and malevolent. Henry yielded immense entertainment gleefully exposing Jake to the various postings on the dark web. They were the classifieds of the underworld, ads for sex, for drugs, for weapons. Ads for murder. Jake had been careful not to express his specific interests in front of Henry, who certainly called Jake’s weak pretext. However, with a plethora of vices and crimes appearing before them, Henry had his pick of assumptions ranging from relatively innocuous to outright sadistic. Jake could just as well be searching for a prostitute as he was a hitman.
Ja
ke made a half-hearted attempt to conclude the lesson with an inquiry about hackers, to which Henry scoffed and showed him a handful of wanted ads. Jake said something about knowing the enemy, the specific words of which he forgot as soon as they left his lips. They clicked through them in a matter of minutes, then Jake was on his way, standing out of the chair and donning his suit coat to leave.
“Same time next week?” Henry called after him.
“Think I got it, tiger,” Jake called back without turning his head, headed out of the basement at a quickened pace.
He had services to employ.
18
_________
Her feet fell into place with each step, muscle memory in her legs carrying her along without thought. Each log, every low hanging branch, was accounted for in her unconscious memorization of the shortcut. The thought of having once wandered through the overgrown wood to the meeting point was a distant and nearly unrecognizable memory. Her identity was wrapped around the present. She was the discovery, no longer the discoverer. With each trek into the darkness of the forest, more of that transition became real, replacing pieces of an older, less attuned Carrie. She was aligning herself. This was her rebirth.
The forest opened to the clearing of the intersection. There, like before, rested the sign post, pointing its two directions. She crossed the line dividing the edge of the walkway with the wild of the forest and slowed her pace. She recovered her breath while she planted her hands against her lower back, standing beside the sign. She peered down the pathway that led into the valley and a strange sensation washed over her. The scene played out at a remove, like a dream, but lucid. Everything seemed exactly as it was. The trees, of course, were where they always stood, but so were the leaves, littered upon the forest floor. In her own body, she felt the same little sensations she recalled before meeting the man. The same strands of hair swayed into her vision. Even the wind, with its warm and cold pockets, and the light filtered through the thin clouds, felt as though it were identical down to a molecular level. The collective effect was something like deja vu, but protracted and more defined. As the man walked into view, lifting his arm in greeting, Carrie nearly fell. She didn’t feel faint. Her legs didn’t wobble. It was more dedication to the script she observed repeating itself around her. Instead, however, she stepped away from the sign post and descended the hill.