Return to Darkness Read online

  Bonzo the cat is here, decapitated, the hatchet Lou Scully used in my dream (now for a second time) lying alongside it.

  I cry out, stagger back, not at all expecting what I’m given here. Seconds before pulling back the blanket, part of me actually believed that nothing would be found…or at the very worst I might discover a fresh pool of blood, which would be frightening enough.

  But this?

  Finding Bonzo the cat dead, clearly by the man from my dream, my former associate Lou Scully, whom I all along never considered a player in Ashborough’s grand scheme, turns everything up a notch. I have to assume now Lou’s involvement, and I wonder when he’s going to make an appearance. Oh, if he does, I’ll make sure he doesn’t get out of this alive.

  “Fuck you, Lou,” I say, staring at Bonzo’s head.

  Maybe he’s trying to tell you something, Michael.

  “Like what?”

  The little man in my head doesn’t reply. Even he doesn’t have all the answers.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  First thing that crosses my mind is, I’ve got to capture the rabbit. Just as the deer was brought in a manageable state for me to convince someone from the Washburn clan to sacrifice it upon the stone, now I’m presented with a woodland hare, reclusive and nearly impossible to capture in the wild by someone with no hunting skills, here for the taking. It’s all part of the grand scheme, I’ve come to learn. Things happen here for a reason in Ashborough. And this is one of them.

  I quickly shut both doors to the bedroom, trying desperately to ignore the burning pain in my wound, the headache, the chills, the body aches, the bruises. Shit, I’m a mess. But again I remind myself that this is a fight to the death—either I bring my daughter back, or die trying. Way I figure it, I’m about halfway there, on both accounts.

  There are two pillows on the bed, the one closest to me and the other with the rabbit crouched next to it. Slowly…slowly, I reach over and grab the closest one, trying not to disturb the frightened animal; with the doors closed, the rabbit isn’t going any farther than under the bed, but in my shattered state, that might prove to be the perfect hiding spot for it. I yank the pillow out of the pillowcase, shuddering at the Velcro-like sound it makes as it tears away from the splotches of dried blood on it. The rabbit cowers against the headboard, ears flattened down against its head, one big eye bulging wetly as it sizes me up. I can imagine how it feels, drowning in a similar ocean of distress, having been forced into a strange place, far away from home, with crazed monsters out to get it.

  With a quick leap, I lunge across the bed...

  …my scar, it’s tearing, I can feel the blood, the pus, oozing from it…

  …and grab the rabbit by the scruff of its injured neck, just as Lou had Bonzo in my dream. The rabbit fights in my grasp, fires rising in its tortured eyes. I hold on for dear life, roll over on my back—right on top of Bonzo’s head and perhaps on top of Christine’s desiccated afterbirth—and shove it into the pillowcase. The rabbit puts up a quick and rather heated fight, clawing and biting at the thin fabric, but soon tires and falls motionless inside its eight-hundred thread-count prison.

  Now all I have to do is keep the damn thing alive.

  The next fifteen minutes are spent dressing my wound. Pea-sized blobs of pus oozes from between the torn stitches, and the entire circumference of the jagged edges is ruby red with infection. If I were in my office treating this situation under normal circumstances, I’d be forced to admit the patient for twenty-four hours while the wound is attended to in a sterile environment and the infection is treated with proper antibiotics. Here and now, I simply do the best job I can using my meager supplies, sewing in another twelve stitches, dousing it with another healthy dose of iodine and covering it with gauze and tape. A couple of Percocet, a thousand milligrams of penicillin, chased with a quart of water, two milligrams of Xanax, and a life’s worth of prayers, and I am good to go. I hope.

  My body is dirty again from having rolled in the bed, so I clean up with a few alcohol wipes, then throw my tee and sweatshirt on and drag the pillowcase downstairs, unable to stomach the scene in my bedroom anymore, and hoping that I’ll never have to go in there again, God willing.

  I tie the top of the pillowcase (the rabbit shudders and quakes inside, easing any concerns for the moment that it might have died), and leave the bundle in the living room next to Christine’s and Jessica’s untouched suitcases, then head back into the kitchen, where I choke down a few slices of bread to help snuff out the medicinal bonfire raging in my stomach. The digital clock above the stove reads 12:15 pm, and it’s here that two unrelated items of interest cross my mind. One is that I’ve slept for a good fifteen hours, and I’m immediately grateful for the rest my body has gotten. And two is that I can’t remember the last time I paid a utility bill here in Ashborough. Not that such an inane thought matters right now, but it makes me wonder if the Isolates are in charge of the town’s goddamned power supply. My (crumbling) mind hasn’t the fortitude to consider such an odd detail though, and I shake away the thought with little effort or regret.

  A few moments pass where I sit in the kitchen, trying to clear my tortured thoughts as the medicine takes hold of my body. My head spins, and I consider trying to kill that with a swig of bourbon, but think better of it. The painkillers should do their job, and the Xanax should numb my fear.

  I need as much strength as I can garner, and despite the persistent whirl of nausea, manage to swallow another slice of bread.

  When I stand, the world waxes and wanes, and I grip the back of the chair for support. All this time I focus in on one spot, and that happens to be the telephone sitting on top of the counter in the foyer between the kitchen and the living room.

  I think of my former job, and the man who now haunts my nightmares: Lou Scully.

  There are a dozen or so former associates at Columbia-Presbyterian that’d be thrilled to hear from me…if, of course, they’re available to take my call. But Lou Scully…he’s the one I really need to get in touch with. Something tells me that, given the turn of events here in Ashborough, he’s gonna be there when I call.

  I just hope it’s for the right reason.

  He can’t be trusted Michael. Everyone and everything that’s appeared in those dreams of yours has come back to haunt you.

  Once the dizziness tapers, I meander into the foyer and pick up the phone. The dial tone here in Ashborough sounds old, as though the communication system here in this isolated (isolated, ha!) part of the country is still—and perhaps forever—mired in the past.

  I call Lou’s office—the number is still strangely embedded in my head. It rings once, and gosh be darned, Lou picks up.

  “Hello…”

  He doesn’t say the word questioningly…it’s spoken in a mindful manner, as though he knows quite well who’s calling him. And why.

  “Lou…”

  Without hesitation, Lou’s tone converts into that of feigned surprise. “Michael, it’s about time you called.”

  “Could’ve called me, Lou.” I keep my tone dead serious. I sound pissed, and hell, I am. No playing games here. I want to get to the bottom of it all. Now.

  “Well, Michael, you know how it is, and I’m guessing you’ve been just as busy up there with all of Dr Farris’s patients, as I’ve been with mine.”

  “Yeah…” I want to tell him how busy I’ve really been over the last nine months, but for now bite my tongue. Last thing I need is for him to suspect a problem and hang up on me. “Lou…I need your help.”

  There’s a moment of hesitation, and in this time I can hear him take a deep breath, as if he may have expected it to come down to me calling him for help, but was hoping all along it wouldn’t.

  “What’s the problem, Michael?”

  “You don’t know, Lou?”

  Another pause. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Michael. How can I? We haven’t spoken since you left, and honestly I figured you were either very busy or…mad at
me for some reason.”

  “I have been busy Lou…busy trying to save my family from those motherfuckers in the woods. You know what I’m talking about, right Lou?”

  “Michael…for the love of God, what’s going on up there?”

  I think back to the Lou from my dream two nights ago, how he’d shown up in my office, his eyes glowing gold...

  I did not know, Michael. The Old Lady had me. She came to me in my dreams and threatened to take my son away from me, showed me images of him lying in an alley with a gun in his hand and a bullet hole in his head. I dreamed of her every goddamned night until I couldn’t take it anymore. She told me that she wanted you, Michael. You…

  “You know what’s going on, Lou.”

  “Michael, what’s gotten into you?”

  The Lou Scully from my dream had said, I’m here to save you Michael…to take you away from all that has tortured you.

  “Can you save me, Lou? Can you?”

  “Save you from what, Michael?”

  I look out the partially-barricaded window to the side yard of the house. Icy snow blankets nearly everything…except for the dark spaces between the trees from which the Isolates may very well be perched, peering at me. “From the Isolates.”

  It’s here that the line screeches in my ear, and I feel a slight electric shock in my head that forces me to throw the telephone to the floor. The telephone chimes repetitively, signifying to me that the line has been disconnected.

  I wonder if Lou will try to call back, but decide that the pain of having to lean down and retrieve the phone isn’t worth the effort. I’ve got a more pressing issue at hand, and that’s getting a member of the Washburn clan up to the circle of stones in the woods to sacrifice the bunny-in-the-bag.

  I go back into the living room, feeling less pain in my gut and a bit more energized from the bread I ate. The Xanax has cooled my nerves somewhat, and I figure I’ve got a good couple of hours before I’ll need to get back here and chow down some more meds. The bunny-in-the-bag is motionless, and I gently prod it with my foot to make certain it’s still alive. It hops once, twice, then falls still. Good.

  Grabbing the pillowcase by the knot, I carry it to the front door…and stop. Shit…what am I planning, really, to do here? Can’t just waltz on over to the Washburn’s again (this time with an injured bunny instead of an injured deer) and ask them to join me for a January picnic in the woods. I suppose I could go by, offer up an apology and some assistance in moving the deer back up into the woods. But then, what if Pops-Eddie made his kids get rid of the deer last night? Or this morning?

  No sooner do I decide that my best course of action is to go over there and tell them I saw Bonzo racing up in the woods, that there’s a knock on the door.

  Startled, I waste no time in answering it.

  Blustery air rushes in. Shea is standing there. She’s crying.

  And she’s bleeding.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “My God, what’s happened to you?”

  The girl’s a mess. Her bottom lip is swollen, an avulsion where her lip ring once was bleeding rapidly down her chin. She’s holding a snowball against it in attempt to quell the bleeding, a smart move given the apparent lack of anything else at her disposal. Her face is red, her makeup smeared, and there’s a yellow bruise below her left eye that this doctor knows will be purple in a few hours. I’ve seen this all too many times during my residency at Columbia.

  Someone’s kicked the shit out of her.

  Having seen what the Isolates can do to a person, I know that this isn’t their work. If the creatures had decided to play their sick game with Shea (as they did with Lauren Hunter and Rosy Deighton and countless others), then they would have maimed her, taken a hand or an eye or an internal organ even, and left her to fend for herself in a "get help or die" situation.

  Clearly Shea hadn’t been accosted by the creatures in the woods. This was done most likely by her father, Pops-Eddie.

  “Dr. Cayle…can I come in? Please?”

  “Of course.” I place the bunny-in-the-bag down next to the door, then usher her inside and shut the door behind her. Given her distressed state, she seems not to notice the mess my house has become. “Let me take a look at that.”

  She pulls the snowball away—red like a cherry snow cone—and I examine her wound right there in the living room. Just as I initially thought, it’s an avulsion, the lip ring she sported yesterday now gone, yanked out forcibly through the skin.

  “You need some stitches.” I examine her eye and notice the brow ring she had on yesterday has also been ripped away. The good news is the blood there has coagulated over the small tear in the skin, unlike her still-bleeding lip. The ring in her nose is still present, thankfully, as repairing cartilage is a trickier process, and something I have neither the strength nor time for right now.

  What worries me most are her bruises.

  I examine them closely. When she sees me doing this, she pulls her blue eyes away and tilts her head downward in a defensive gesture.

  “Did he do this to you? Your father?”

  Then she begins to shake her head back and forth, and the tears spill like rain. I hold her close, feeling her trembling in my arms, much like the bunny in the pillowcase must be doing. A strange yet familiar sensation overcomes me at this moment, reminiscent of my dream last night when I held her this very same way: chock full of emotion and intimacy. She cries deeply into my shoulder, and for a moment I can feel her firm breasts through her leather jacket, pressing against my sweatshirt. I can’t help but consider that she’s more than half my age, but it feels so damn good to hold someone, to find a sense of comfort in the arms of someone seeking comfort in me.

  “Shea…” She continues to hold me tightly, and I do nothing to stop her. “You have to let me fix you up. You need stitches in your lip.”

  She pulls away and gazes up at me with her perfect eyes, big and blue and gleaming with warm tears. A half-smile digs its way out from the misery painted on her face, revealing to me that she’s grateful for and perhaps comfortable with my presence. “Ouch…” she utters, wincing from the pain her smile causes.

  “Don’t...it’ll hurt. Come with me.” I take her by the hand and lead her through the kitchen, then into the hallway that still smells of clean laundry. When we get to the waiting room, I hold a finger up and pace away to close the door to my office, then call her over into the examining room.

  It’s still soiled from whatever went down here in my real-dream—Lou’s muddy feet, the deer on the table, the blood streaks on the floor.

  “What happened here?” she asks. Her eyes float around the room inquisitively, pinpointing every streak of mud and blood, every dead leaf, every deer hair.

  “Remember that deer I brought to your house last night? How I told you I’d tried to stitch it up?”

  “Ah. I see…”

  It’s a lie, but who gives a shit. My goal is to get Jessica and hopefully Christine back safely, and I’ll do whatever it takes to make that happen. I tear away the dirty paper from the examining table that to this day still reminds me of the paper they wrap hero sandwiches in, then pull a fresh sheet from the attached roll over the vinyl covering. “Have a seat.”

  She takes her jacket and scarf off, hooks them on the coat rack in the corner of the room, then using her palms edges herself onto the table. Sitting quietly, she folds her hands in her lap and waits. I can’t remember the last time I had a patient here. It’s been a while, three months perhaps.

  Considering my own condition, it feels odd to be trying to fix up someone else. But I consider it to be a crucial part of my own grand scheme: if I can get Shea up into the woods to kill the rabbit on the center stone in the Isolate altar, then…then what? Would I wait for my daughter to be returned to me? I tell myself to take things one step at a time, and focus on the task at hand: fixing up Shea.

  “This won’t hurt a bit.”

  “Yeah, but what about the stitches?”


  “Those’ll hurt like a bastard.”

  Grinning, I clean the area around her lips and eyes, then give her a couple of painkillers to help numb the pain, both physical and mental. I have her chase that with a thousand milligrams of amoxicillin, all I’ve got left. For a moment I consider my supply of penicillin, now running low, and pray she doesn’t get an infection. I suppose I could place an order with the pharmaceutical distributor in Ellenville, but they’re slow as shit and I’m not planning on sticking around here much longer, regardless of my own festering infection, and the will of the Isolates.

  Till death do we fucking part.

  As I prepare the needle and the stitches, she asks, “What were you really doing at our house last night?”

  I pause…then look at her and see with much pity a girl who’s spent her life collecting wounds from a variety of uncaring sources. I also see a girl who gave herself to me in my dream last night, and in doing so took me away from the nightmare the Isolates injected into my psyche—that of Christine, Lou, and Bonzo the cat. I am so grateful for her, in more ways than I can honestly explain.

  “First, tell me why you came here.”

  “I was looking for Bonzo.”

  Shit. “Really? I don’t believe you.”

  She shrugs her shoulders. “Haven’t seen him since last night. That’s not unusual. He’s a mouser at heart. But we haven’t lived here very long, so I was a bit worried. He doesn’t know his way around yet.”

  “But that’s not really why you came here, is it?” Part of me wants her to tell me what I believe: that she needed to be fixed up because Pops-Eddie has given her a licking, that she needed help. Another part of me wants to believe that she came here to fulfill the fantasy created in my dream last night. I’ve always wondered why we humans take on a curious attraction to a person after we dream about them. I suppose it’s one of those mysteries I’ll never understand.

  “I think you know why I came here.”

  I nod. “Of course.”