That Dark Place Read online

  Maybe I should.

  Drew knew he was able, having been taught by his mom the proper usage of the chemicals in the basement’s darkroom. He was sure of the process. It was somewhat complex, but he’d assisted his mom enough times for it not to be difficult.

  Just a little time consuming, he thought.

  He turned around and looked back down the hall of memories. His reluctance to bring his mom’s unknown pieces of work into the light of day had always, and only, been a by-product of the grief resulting from losing her.

  He crossed his arms and held himself, struck with the realization that the pain of his loss had finally—mercifully—morphed into a sort of low-grade melancholy.

  Her absence had become tolerable, no longer a source of daily depression.

  After a minute of deliberation, he dropped his arms and walked to the display case. The decision had been made; he knew that he could, for the first time, look upon the final photographs she’d taken.

  He’d just passed an emotional milestone. A sense of relief filled his heart, intermingled with anticipation for whatever he would discover on the film.

  If the pictures were any good—which, of course, they would be—maybe he’d select a few of his favorites, enlarge them himself, and display them on the walls of his condo.

  For no one else to see.

  He couldn’t help shaking his head at the irony.

  Drew lifted the latch of the wood-framed case and opened the door. His mom had always enjoyed calling it her “legacy cabinet.” Musty air wafted from within. It spoke to him of how long his mom had now been gone.

  He realized he was finally letting her go. The thought produced a pang of guilt.

  His chin fell to his chest and he sighed a deep sigh.

  How quickly emotions shift, he thought.

  Life had ultimately resumed without her in it. And though he didn’t like it, he knew that such was the case with anyone’s departure.

  Drew reached in and retrieved the five rolls of film.

  He suddenly felt alone … again.

  Alone in an empty house of memories. Alone as the owner of a lonely condominium in the suburbs. Alone with a sequestering job that paid well but didn’t fulfill any emotional needs. Alone with a….

  He sighed again.

  Alone with a life of porn.

  On-screen lies—people pretending that what they were doing in front of the camera was the ultimate in life satisfaction—were his escape from everything painful and mundane.

  He’d convinced himself that it was a decent enough trade. Certainly, it was better than taking drugs or alcohol to numb his emotions. And, unlike introducing intoxicating elements into the blood stream, there were no lingering after-effects to make the following day painful.

  Not hangover painful, anyway.

  Just the craving; the mental itch that begged to be scratched again and again.

  And again.

  For the first few years of his indulgences, he’d have denied that pornography was a requisite element in his life. But he’d long ago stopped trying to fool himself; he was fully aware that he was shackled to it.

  He was a slave to indecent, sexual pleasure.

  Oh, sure, he’d tried a few times to resist his master’s incessant demands. But a mere two or three days of going without always resulted in an endless mental parade of self-created fantasies and an insurmountable craving for physical relief.

  He didn’t want to cave to the idea that he’d never be free again, but.…

  Drew shook his head to clear his thoughts. It was better not to dwell on the subject.

  Back to the matter at hand: the film.

  First things first, though.

  He turned and walked back to the kitchen. Placing the film containers on the kitchen counter, he opened the fridge and grabbed a beer. Twisting off the top, it occurred to Drew that he had not yet checked the mailbox. Of course, there was rarely anything other than store circulars and credit card offers sent to: Current Resident.

  Gotta get’em anyway. May as well do that before I forget.

  Drew exited the house and tipped the bottle back for a couple well-deserved swallows. He walked slowly down the drive, making his way around the curve and to the road.

  He took a moment to look up and down the country route, which was hardly wide enough to allow two cars to pass. There was only one other mailbox that could be seen, and that one was maybe a hundred and fifty yards from where he stood.

  Seclusion. Peace. Aloneness.

  Drew recognized the melancholy that was setting in. Again.

  It usually did.

  For most of his life, he and his mom hadn’t had the ideal mother/son relationship; there hadn’t always been a strong emotional bond between the two of them, especially throughout his adolescent and college years. Drew mostly remembered a lot of striving—her wanting to be the best at something. Mostly, in his mind anyway, she’d been best at neglect.

  But in her later years, she began to show a deep regret that she hadn’t weaved more heartstrings between them. She’d even voiced a time or two that she wished she’d done some things differently as a young woman. What those “things” were, she never vocalized. But he was able to read between the lines. There were always signs of a mother’s regret for failing her son.

  Drew believed there had been too much pride to verbalize specific ways she’d let him down. But on one very memorable, very emotional day, she had clumsily apologized for having kept him at an emotional distance throughout most of her life.

  That was the beginning of quite a few fond memories and a love he wished he’d experienced throughout his younger years.

  And that was enough.

  Then came the pain. He’d received something that he had ached for his whole life, only to have it ripped away through death.

  He forced the train of thought from his mind. He wasn’t going there again. Not today.

  Drew crossed over to the lone mailbox and opened it. He reached in and withdrew the pile of accumulated mail. Without looking at it, he closed the box and walked back to the drive. Once around and past the throng of trees, he tucked the beer bottle between his left arm and chest and thumbed through the envelopes in his hand.

  As suspected, junk mail. Well, except for one piece.

  He pulled a small envelope out of the stack and turned it over. It was handwritten, and it was addressed to his mom.

  Darlene Parks

  14517 Rural Rte. 133

  Hallisburg, OH 44069

  The return address was from someone—a name—that he vaguely recognized: Bernice Williams, from out of state—Arizona.

  Drew managed to tuck the junk mail under his arm with his beer bottle and opened the envelope. Out of it, he pulled a three-page … no, a four-page handwritten letter. Immediately, he felt as though he were about to intrude on his mom’s privacy.

  He dropped his hand to his side, letter unfolded, deciding to get to the front porch before reading it.

  He climbed the three steps to a wood porch that was encompassed by a railing supported by simple round balusters and was painted white. The railings themselves were a robin’s-egg blue, matching the trim around the house. They, and the shingled overhang above, were supported by four attractively lathed columns.

  Drew sat down on one of the two wooden rockers—also painted robin’s-egg blue—that she’d bought from some Amish restaurant a few years before she’d passed away. He placed the bottle and the other envelopes on the porch floor, lifted the letter before him, and began reading.

  The woman who wrote the letter had obviously not known of his mother’s death, apologizing for the length of time it had been since she’d last sat down to write to her old friend.

  Friends since high school, apparently, Bernice Williams had intended with the letter to catch his mom up on a year and a half of life that had passed their relationship by.

  Nothing about the
letter was remarkable. It was just sad that his mom had not gotten to read it. Sadder still, was the fact that he was going to have to convey to Bernice Williams that her lifelong friend was no longer alive.

  He glanced at the last page and decided against reading it. Folding the letter and placing it back into the envelope, he leaned his head back against the chair and began to slowly rock.

  Drew closed his eyes. Back and forth. Back and forth.

  Death. What does that mean? Is she dead dead? A nonexistent type of dead? Will I be?

  Somehow, he couldn’t justify the idea in his mind; it just seemed too final. But neither could he justify the idea of a literal heaven or hell. The idea of such places seemed too much a religious construct, something to which he’d never given serious consideration. He did not, however, want to believe that death was the period at the end of life’s earthly story.

  Finis. Finir. Final. Done.

  Gone.

  He opened his eyes and got up. Battling the weariness from all the emotional derailments that had littered his afternoon, he tucked the envelope into his back pocket and went back into the house. He still had five containers of his mom’s heart that he had to bring to life.

  Chapter 11

  B

  rent and Tara sat alone on their back deck, mostly empty plates and cups scattered over the glass-top table before them, and watched as the final rays of sunlight turned the scattered clouds into brilliant, merging spectacles of pink and orange.

  “Looks like rainbow sherbet up there, doesn’t it?” asked Tara. “Oh! Don’t forget, we’ve got angel food cake and strawberries.”

  Brent laughed. “You really don’t like my six-pack abs, do you?”

  Tara couldn’t help but laugh. “Hon, you no longer have six-pack abs to like or dislike.”

  Brent looked at her hard, willing her to take that back. But he couldn’t quite force his smile away, so it was pointless.

  “Well, I’m not fat.”

  “Nope. You haven’t gone down that road yet.”

  “Yet?”

  “Do you want cake or not?”

  “Is it healthy?”

  “Brent, you just ate a double bacon cheeseburger. It’s at least as healthy as that.”

  “Okay! Okay! Yes, I’ll take some cake.”

  Tara grinned as she got up and began collecting plates, flatware, and cups. Brent got up and put together his own stack to take into the kitchen.

  There was something about late family dinners on a Friday evening. Lots of laughter and conversation. Even the teen girls who had their vehicular freedom seemed to enjoy sticking around … at least until sticking around apparently got “boring.” Jenna and Elizabeth had decided to rush off to see a movie in nearby Macedonia.

  As for the others, Jamie and his friend Zach, who had eaten with them, headed down to the “cave”—the finished basement—where a flat-screen and a gaming console awaited. And Amy? She had earlier been invited to a sleepover at her friend Kasi’s house. She was the only family member who hadn’t partaken in the “burger feast of greatness.”

  Placing the dinner clutter onto the counter, Brent opened the dishwasher.

  “Dirty, right?”

  “Yep.” Tara turned on the sink and began rinsing off some of the residual food from the plates. “So, now that we can ‘adult’ for a little while, how was work?”

  “Not bad. Eldredge and I spent a good part of the early afternoon doing foot patrol on Main Street.”

  “And by that, you mean that the two of you left your desks and went for an afternoon walk.”

  “Woman, does your snarkiness have no end?”

  “Nope. No end at all.”

  Brent grinned. “Anyway, he and I had some good conversation about the work environment. It’s great having his perspective.”

  “I’m sure that having him as a sergeant is a big help too.”

  “It is. He and Tracy are invaluable.”

  “Speaking of Tracy—I haven’t asked in a while—but anything new about him and God?”

  The sometimes-short-fused Tracy Larkin was a man that Brent knew he could trust with his life, but he’d been a source of off-and-on frustration for years.

  Larkin had also been a Millsville cop before winding up alongside Brent at the Pittston P.D. He was a good man, faithful to doing what was right. Proof of that had been his willingness to put his job on the line to protect the lives of people he didn’t know, in a town outside of his lawful jurisdiction.

  Ultimately, like Brent, Tracy had lost his job in Millsville, which certainly spoke volumes about the man’s willingness to pay a high price for others’ wellbeing. His stoic avoidance of a singularly important conversation, though, was maddening to the extreme.

  “No, not really. He just doesn’t see the need. Of course, he’s not looking very hard. Any time that John or I mention something about God, he takes a comedic sidestep out of the conversation. So, now we’re just praying.”

  Brent suddenly realized he hadn’t asked about Tara’s “project” in a while. “So, how are things going with Stephanie?”

  Stephanie O’Leary was a woman who had been part of a large murder plot in Pittston a few years back, which didn’t go quite the way she had expected. The coven, of which she’d been a leader—a high priestess, in fact—had turned on her and made her the “sacrificial lamb” on their altar of blood, all in an ill-fated attempt to resurrect an ancient dead religion that had promised them immense power and wealth.

  The woman nearly had a knife driven into her ribcage, but a state police officer’s bullet found its way through the temple of her high priest—and lover—a moment before the downward plunge of the deadly blade.

  For three years now, Tara had made it her mission to befriend the coven leader, despite the nastiness that she’d visited upon Tara in the days and years before.

  “Oh, you know,” Tara began, “she’s still not wanting to accept that I was right in my choice to leave witchcraft back in my teens, though she’s certainly come to terms with the fact that her own choices were wrong. She might not be practicing demonic stuff anymore, but she’s still resistant to Jesus. Lately, I haven’t pressed. I’ve just talked with her.”

  “I don’t suppose much changes on her side of the conversations.”

  “No, not much. She complains about all of the politics and childishness of the other inmates. I try to bring to her some details of outside life that she might find interesting. What’s interesting to me, though, is how much detail she wants. It’s like she wants me to wax poetic.”

  “I guess that makes some sense to me,” Brent said. “She’s a woman of some sophistication. She was groomed for decades to be a leader. She speaks differently than most people that we’d meet. Sort of ‘high-brow’ speak, if you will. I think she probably values your ability to speak at her level and provide more detail about things that interest her. After all, she only gets to receive a visit from you once a month.”

  “I think the same thing. It’s so curious to me. I still feel a little bit of disdain from her. It’s like she appreciates spending time with me but doesn’t actually like that it’s me that she’s spending time with.”

  Brent chuckled. “Sounds about right. If someone else would visit her and provide her the same level of educated conversation, she’d probably ditch you for the sake of not having to deal with any future Jesus conversations.”

  Tara arched her right eyebrow as she reached down to place a plate in the dishwasher. “So, she doesn’t like me; she just likes the mental stimulation I provide. Yep. Sounds about right.”

  “Still seeing her tomorrow?”

  “Yep. Tomorrow at noon. I won’t be back until after six o’clock … if she allows me to spend the full three hours and forty-five minutes with her.”

  “Well, let me know if anything new comes of it. I’ll have something ready to eat when you get back.”

  “Keep praying for her
.”

  “I will,” said Brent. “And you keep praying for Tracy.”

  “I will.”

  “You know, it’s been a few days since we’ve done any praying together. We really should.”

  “Well, we’ve got a whole living room to ourselves.”

  “Shall we?”

  “We shall!”

  SATURDAY, AUGUST 2

  Chapter 12

  T

  he darkness surrounded Brent like a blanket. He remembered being here before. Many times before.

  Maybe.

  The mental fog began to clear, and bits and pieces of what was happening to him began to make a little bit of sense.

  Almost.

  No, it wasn’t his first time. It probably wouldn’t be his last, either. He’d been in this place as a youth.

  Why now, as an adult?

  The place of his nightmares.

  There was very little to recognize, but as more clarity came, Brent realized he knew the place nearly as well as an inmate must come to know his own prison cell. There was recognition without him being able to see; at least not very much.

  He looked down at his feet. He stood barefoot on a blackened, squared-off timber.

  Wood. Yes. I remember that.

  He looked at his hands. Empty. He turned them over. Nothing remarkable … except that he was able to see them.

  Looking up, there was no discernible source of light that should allow him to see anything. Turning around, he looked for a horizon, anything that would give him some perspective in the monstrous void that was now his home.

  Nothing. Nothing, except that he could see railroad ties extending before him; a platform on which to walk, should he be so inclined.

  He wasn’t.

  It crossed his mind to call out, to see if he shared this lonely place.

  He cupped his hands around his mouth and called out, “Hello!”

  Not a sound. Not the slightest of sounds from his mouth. Not even the sound of expelled air. He knew instinctively, though, that he was neither deaf nor mute. The cavernous void wasn’t allowing sound to travel, just like outer space.