The Dark

by Andrew Neiderman

  “Good. Okay. Have a good night’s sleep.”

  “You, too, honey.”

  “Good night.”

  “Good night,” she said, and hung up.

  There were shadows in this house; there were shadows outside. But suddenly she no longer was afraid of them.

  18

  Carl Thornton reached her at the office toward the end of the day. She had gone to the hospital to have lunch with Grant and had met with his doctors, who told her he would be going home after another day. Buoyed by the good news, she attacked her work with familiar vigor. It really did feel like a cloud had been lifted.

  Before Carl called, however, she received a call from Father Dimmesdale.

  “You’ve done well,” he told her.

  She explained what had happened, but he didn’t seem a bit fazed.

  “It’s what happens. You met the fiend and drove him away,” he insisted.

  When she hung up, she wondered if he wasn’t right. The mere thought of it put ice in her spine. How could an intelligent, well-educated, and successful professional woman in the nineties believe in such fantasy, the fodder for horror movies? Carl Thornton, fortunately, she thought, came to her rescue. He told her to meet him for a drink at O’Healies. He was there waiting for her at a booth when she arrived.

  “Why did you choose this place?” she asked as she slid in across from him.

  “I know it’s a favorite lawyer’s hangout. Why?”

  “Nothing. Just that. . . I met that man here. He pretended to be an attorney.”

  “That figures.”

  “Why?”

  He ordered them drinks and then sat forward. His face was taut, serious, his eyes a bit narrow.

  “Using one of those timeworn expressions, we have what we might call a loose cannon,” he said. “Every profession—lawyers, doctors, teachers, police—has a built-in good ole boys’ club, Maggie. We all cover for our own, even if it means lying, distorting evidence, ignoring, literally burying the truth sometimes. I guess it’s a form of professional paranoia. No one wants to be tainted by someone else in his field, and everyone fears the wrath of the public or the tendency of the public to treat everyone as if he or she were the same as the bad apple.”

  Maggie shook her head.

  “I’m not following.”

  “Cops cover up for bad cops because they don’t want people to think all cops are bad. It’s the same for lawyers, doctors . . . we all need a certain amount of blind faith in order to function, keep our clientele, as it were.”

  “What does this have to do with this man who calls himself Jules Bois, Carl?”

  “I spoke first with Michael Sacks, one of Henry Flemming’s associates, who told me about this patient who went by the name of Thomas Forcas.”

  “Yes?” Maggie said.

  “According to Michael, in the beginning, Henry was skeptical about him and tracked him back to a Doctor Theodore Denning in San Francisco, a psychiatrist of some note. He’s published a number of articles in prestigious journals and lately has written a book on psychogenic fugue, a book I believe came out of his experiences with a patient named Colin Barret.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Are you hungry? This might take a while, and—”

  “The thought of eating makes my stomach do somersaults.”

  Carl nodded and continued.

  “Colin Barret is Thomas Forcas, a.k.a. Jules Bois,” he said. Maggie sat back.

  “So, he’s a patient who’s been to a few psychiatrists and each time he gives them a different name?”

  “He’s more than that,” Carl said, “which brings me back to professional paranoia.”

  Maggie held her breath. Was Carl going to confirm Father Dimmesdale’s theory?

  “What do you mean, he’s more?”

  “He’s a psychiatrist himself, Maggie,” Carl said.

  She sat back, not stunned and shocked by the revelation as much as she was frightened by it. From her own experiences with clients who had been treated by psychologists and psychiatrists, from counselors of all ilk, and from Grant’s stories and professional activities, she had, as well as most people she knew, developed the belief that people who were trained to get into our deepest thoughts, unwrap our most secret subconscious images, and somehow get us to face the truths about ourselves were modern-day wizards, professionals with power, talented, blessed, educated, whatever . . . they had mental weapons as deadly as guns and knives. They could cause people to doubt their loves, their hates, the wisdom of their own lives. They could influence great changes, and of course forensic psychologists and psychiatrists could literally determine an individual’s fate and freedom.

  It was as if Carl had told her about a psychotic policeman or a psychotic brain surgeon.

  She smiled and Carl’s eyebrows lifted.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “In a sense I’m relieved,” she said.

  “Oh?”

  “He’s not Satan, even though I’ll swear to the day I die that I stabbed him in that apartment.”

  Carl laughed.

  “No, he’s not Satan, but I would venture to guess that he thinks he is.”

  “Really? What else do you know?”

  “I spoke with Doctor Denning. At first he was reluctant to say anything, of course, but once I explained and described it all, he relented and agreed to join me in this. . . pursuit, I guess you could say.”

  “Why don’t you just go to the police? They would believe you before they would believe me, and now they will believe most of what I’ve said,” she declared excitedly.

  “We’ve got a problem with that.”

  “What?”

  “First, as you know, what went on between Colin Barret and his psychiatrist is privileged information, and second, what am I going to tell them? You’ve already had that experience with Detective Hartman. There’s nothing concrete, no smoking gun. A man who is brilliant when he is a psychiatrist manipulates people to do bad things? None of the people really understand what’s happening to them. You interviewed Dunbar and saw that for yourself. You don’t have to be a psychiatrist to understand the problem, but even if these victims understood what had happened to them, what’s their defense? The Devil made me do it?”

  Maggie nodded, disappointed.

  “What is psychogenic fugue?” she asked. “I don’t recall Grant ever mentioning it to me.”

  “It’s a dissociative disorder. Unexpected travel away from home or customary work locale with assumption of a new identity and an inability to recall one’s previous identity.”

  “A form of amnesia?”

  “Precisely. Barret was an atypical self-made man. He was orphaned at five and placed in four different foster homes before remaining in one permanently and eventually being adopted by his foster parents, William and Katrina Barret.

  “Contrary to what is more commonly the case with children passed from one familial setting to another, Colin appeared to be stable and was an excellent student. He won an academic scholarship to college and then was awarded a grant to continue in medical school. He never married.

  “A little more than three years after he had set up his practice, he demonstrated the first signs of psychosocial stress. Both his foster parents were killed in a gruesome traffic accident involving a tractor-trailer truck whose driver was drunk. Once again, he was an orphan. Although his psychogenic fugue was relatively brief then, it was, nevertheless, quite dramatic.

  “Barret left home, proceeded to get on the highway and hitchhike almost across country, claiming to be a freelance writer doing a book on Americana.”

  “A book? He gave Grant a manuscript he claimed Henry had been working on with him and he asked Grant to finish the work. Grant was actually working on it,” Maggie revealed.

  “Really. Where is it?”

  “I burned it in the fireplace last night, Carl. It was horrible . . . a justification for evil acts.”

  Carl’s eyes grew small for a momen
t and then he shook his head.

  “Grant might be upset about that.”

  “I don’t care. I don’t want anything to do with that man around us anymore,” she said firmly. “Tell me what else you’ve learned, though.”

  Carl sipped his drink and continued.

  “Two weeks after his disappearance, he returned to his true identity while he was languishing in a motel. He flew back home to return to his practice. He had the presence of mind, however, to seek psychiatric help himself and began therapy with Doctor Denning, who was a little over a hundred miles from his home. Distance gave him a sense of security. He was naturally afraid that his own patients would discover he was in analysis and it would hurt his own practice.

  “The bouts of psychogenic fugue continued periodically, the longest seizure being a few days less than two months. Incredibly, because of his brilliance, perhaps, Barret’s patients continued to hold him in high regard whenever he did function normally, none knowing, of course, that he did have his own psychological problems.

  “However, Doctor Denning revealed that about this time Barret’s disorder was taking on a strange new twist. Although Barret still began sudden and unexpected travel and was unable during the period to recall his past, the new identities he assumed always had some similar characteristics: advising people, influencing them, always to do evil.”

  “The very thing we ascribe to the Devil,” Maggie said.

  “Yes. Troubled by what he was doing, the schizophrenia had a deep effect on him. A part of him wanted to be cured, and a part of him enjoyed the sense of power, this godlike identity. Denning began to find himself in a new relationship with his patient, one of combativeness. In the end he determined Barret needed even more treatment and recommended he see someone who specialized in his problem and perhaps go into a clinical setting.”

  “In other words,” Maggie concluded, “Doctor Denning had grown afraid of his patient and wanted to end the relationship?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that was when he first saw Henry, but as Forcas?” Maggie concluded.

  “Yes.”

  “My God. Does Grant know any of this?”

  “A little. I started to lay the groundwork with him today. I want to take it a bit slower with him, under the circumstances,” he added.

  Maggie took a long sip on her drink and then sat back.

  “What about this Father Dimmesdale? How does he fit in?”

  “Lydia did tell me about him. I called the monsignor, who is a personal friend, and he told me about Father Dimmesdale. Seems he was encouraged to retire after the disclosure of an episode with some young priest.”

  “His sin,” Maggie muttered, “why he couldn’t confront the Devil?”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Anyway, according to the monsignor, who sees himself as more than an amateur psychiatrist, Dimmesdale’s reaction to all this was to develop acute paranoia, seeing Satan everywhere, even in the higher echelon of the church itself.”

  “How did Lydia come to him?”

  “It was the other way around. One of Dimmesdale’s parishioners was tempted to do evil by the then Thomas Forcas, which put Dimmesdale on the case, trailing him to Henry, who apparently just about threw him out of his office. You remember Henry’s attitude about religion.”

  “Yes.”

  “That only served to convince Dimmesdale Henry was in the hands of the Devil. That, combined with what was happening to Lydia . . . well, anyway, the rest you know,” Carl said.

  “But Carl, I swear to you, I drove that sharpened cross into him.”

  “My guess now is you did wound him. Did he say anything right after you struck him?”

  She thought a moment and then widened her eyes.

  “Yes. He said something like ‘You did dip that in holy water,’ and then he collapsed.”

  Carl smiled and shook his head.

  “What?” Maggie asked.

  “He survived the wound, and you might have cured him.”

  “What?”

  “You killed the Devil in him. He probably believed that, especially in light of his survival,” Carl said.

  “But the old lady. Why did she lie?”

  “I don’t know. He was a charmer. He might have convinced her you were the bad guy and not him. It doesn’t matter now. He’s not dead and maybe, just maybe, his evil nature has been exorcised.

  “Funny,” Carl continued, “a loony priest and a desperate wife drove the Devil out of our Mr. Bois. Well, that’s it. That’s what I learned and now you know it all.”

  “Do you think it really is over, Carl?”

  “Yes. You’ll take Grant home and he won’t remember much of it. Believe me.”

  She felt her body finally relax.

  “Where do you think this madman is?”

  “Wandering about, looking for a new identity. He’s to be pitied now.”

  “I have trouble with that,” she said.

  Carl laughed.

  “Understood.”

  “Thanks, Carl.”

  “Hey, it’s all in a day’s work.”

  Maggie laughed.

  It was the first time in quite a while and it felt real good.

  Two days later Grant was released and Maggie brought him home. He was weak but in very good spirits. After his mother visited, Grant rose from bed and insisted on having dinner in the dining room. Maggie protested.

  “I’m tired of being treated as an invalid,” he said. “The faster I see myself as recuperating, the faster I’ll recuperate. Hospital, doctors, nurses reinforce the image of sickness, weakness, and patients accept that view and don’t get well as fast as they should.”

  “That’s quite a sweeping generalization, Grant. Not everyone is a hypochondriac because of the way their doctors and nurses treat them.”

  “Nevertheless, it’s a big problem,” he insisted. “The power of suggestion can be used positively or negatively.”

  He wanted some wine with their meal and some music. Everything did indeed look wonderful and she was beginning to relax and become reassured herself. After dinner, he said he would return to bed, but he stopped at his den-office and entered. She watched him and waited, anticipating his discovery that his manuscript was missing. Her heart pounded.

  When she heard nothing after a good ten minutes, she went to the den door and peered in. He was sitting behind his desk, just staring ahead.

  “Grant?”

  “Oh. Funny,” he said. “I came in here as if I had something to do, something to read, and for the life of me, I can’t remember what it was.”

  She let out a hot breath.

  “I’m sure it’s not important, Grant. You’ll recuperate, return to work, and the important things will return to your memory.”

  “Yes,” he said. “You’re right.”

  He rose.

  “I guess I’m not as strong as I thought. I’d better get to bed.”

  “That’s very wise, Doctor,” she said, smiling.

  He paused at the doorway.

  “I haven’t told you how much I loved you lately, have I?”

  “No, not lately,” she teased.

  “Well, I’ll make up for it tenfold.”

  “I’ll hold you to that promise, Doctor Blaine.”

  He laughed and rolled his eyes. She watched him return to the bedroom and then she returned to the kitchen to clean up. By the time she looked in on him, he was dead asleep. She fixed his blanket, kissed his cheek, and went out to watch some television. She didn’t realize how tired she was herself until her eyes snapped open and she saw the Letterman show was coming to an end.

  She rose, turned off the set, rubbed her cheeks, and started for the bedroom when she heard the strangest sound. It resembled a clock being wound. Confused, she listened harder and then realized it was coming from the den. She went to it slowly and peered in. The room was dark, but the computer monitor was lit, the glow threw a pool of light over the chair for
a moment giving her the illusion that someone was sitting there.

  Had Grant turned on the computer and forgotten to turn it off when he left? She also remembered it could be triggered on by an incoming E-mail. Cautiously, her heart thumping, she walked to the desk and came around to gaze at the screen. Words were flying across it as they were being sent. She leaned in to read them, and then she recoiled as if a snake had popped out at her.

  The book . . . The Seventh Wave. . . it was coming in page by page.

  She uttered a cry and then she got on her hands and knees and located the computer power cord. With a firm tug, she jerked the plug out of the wall and the computer went dark. Then she stood up and gazed at it. The silence was reassuring, but she was full of trepidation.

  It took her hours to fall asleep. She said nothing to Grant about the phenomenon, but after she had made him breakfast, she called Carl Thornton.

  “That’s too bad,” he said. “I was hoping you actually had rid the man of some of his schizophrenia. But I wouldn’t worry. He won’t be back.”

  “How can you be so sure, Carl?”

  “He moves on to greener pastures. It’s the Devil’s way, so it will be his. The computer was just his way of letting you know you can’t kill him. Fits the profile of Satan . . . arrogant, defiant.”

  “How do you know so much about it, Carl?”

  “It’s my work, Maggie. I have to understand the evil mind. We’re doing an awful lot of forensic psychology these days.”

  “You’d even testify for Satan?” she asked, half facetiously.

  “Hey, everyone’s entitled to a defense,” he said, laughing. “Don’t worry. It’ll be all right.”

  “I wish there was a way to get the police involved in this, Carl.”

  “Somehow, but somewhere else, they probably will be,” he predicted.

  A week later, Grant returned to work. He kept Fay on and the events that had interrupted their lives so dramatically began to fade. Grant never asked Maggie about the manuscript and he never mentioned Bois’ name, except to tell her Bois didn’t pay for his last session. She laughed. It was a healthy complaint.

  One night nearly five months later, she put her fork down at dinner, folded her hands, and sat back. Grant paused, lifted his eyebrows curiously, and looked at her.