Deep in the Darkness (13 page)

"Thanks, hon. We'll probably have lunch out too, after the park." She walked over and kissed me, and like that all was back to normal between us. Then I wondered:
Did she call into town for an OB/GYN? That would be her next step.
I was going to say something about this but decided against it for now. I got one reprieve and didn't want to spoil the moment. This doctor knows a great many things, including the tempestuous pregnant-female/hormonal symmetry, and believe me, that doesn't need prodding with any size stick, especially when all biological waters were calm. So I let
that
sleeping dog lie by smiling and waving before she went back upstairs to get changed.

In five minutes she was out the door, and I was alone.

I stepped outside on the front porch and watched as Christine took the mini-van to the end of the driveway. She made a left turn and disappeared down the road, the exhaust leaving a wispy trail of smoke in its wake, like the tail of Aladdin's genie. The sky was saturated with blue, the temperature pinning a stunningly dry eighty, so said the porch thermometer. Despite the fatigue in my blood, I could still easily admire this beautiful summer day in Ashborough. Sometimes the incredible contrast of Ashborough to Manhattan can be alarming to this city boy (like last night), other times it can be truly luxuriating, like now. I stood there taking deep breaths, forgetting in the span of these few moments the transient worries of my life, that is until the clock in the living room chimed nine and whisked me away from my reverie. I had my first patient in fifteen minutes so I forced myself back inside and drank a cup of coffee, staring at the pile of dishes in the sink that needed cleaning. I walked over, turned on the faucet, then peered out the window at the loose tarp caught at the edge of shed, the open door of the shed, and the bloody trail leading into the woods.

I
went into my office to check out the schedule of appointments. Today's first patient was due in at nine-fifteen—about another five minutes. I'd examined her once before, a mid-thirties woman by the name of Lauren Hunter who had dyed blond hair, expensive jewelry, and smooth nutty skin. She'd made it quite apparent that she was more than available—cocoa eyes all deep and dreamy and pointed in my direction; low cut blouse; a mile-wide Colgate smile—and I defended myself by making my happy marriage just as obvious, you know, talk about the kids and the family vacations we never took. Her complaints of stomach ills magically evaporated once Ashborough's new physician became virtually inaccessible (I say 'virtually' because here she was again making another appointment; I wondered if she was actually sick this time).

The remainder of the schedule was light, another appointment after lunch, then two more later this afternoon. I'd noticed through Neil Farris's records that the Summer months ran a bit slow—after the initial flurry of meeters and greeters, this was proving to be true. Traffic the rest of the week was going to be light as well.

I waited inside until about nine-thirty, then, assuming Lauren Hunter to be a no-show, slipped out the side door of the office. I walked to the front of the house and looked across the road to make sure she wasn't pulling in late. The coast was clear (my father used to say that to me when I was a young child, after checking my dark bedroom for the bogeyman before I went to bed). So I went into the garage and grabbed the metal lawn thatcher (best tool, I figured, for disseminating the bloody ground), then walked back to the shed, much more briskly than I had last night after retrieving the tarp. Once there, I surveyed the scene.

The brownish ghost of a bloodstain remained in a wide circle amidst the matted grass. Standing up close, it possessed a fouled mocked-up look, as if someone had added another quart or so of blood later on, long after I'd gone to bed. From there a swath journeyed up into the woods, lines of blood thinning out across the soil, about ten feet away. They disappeared just beyond that, near a thicket of saplings. Hesitantly, I walked over to the shed and peered through the door. Even now, beneath the bright morning sun, darkness reigned inside. Still, there were a few gaps between the rotting slats—and the open door of course—that allowed enough light through for me to see that there was no baby deer. Just a brownish stain, with no streaks. Whoever took
it
had picked it up and carried it away, nice and quickly with no intention of being seen.

Until this moment, everything had been peaceful, nice and quiet. A typical morning, just as Ashborough liked it. The birds were serenading. The trees quietly whispered beneath a gentle breeze. Somewhere, far away, a dog barked.

I backed out of the shed, leaned the thatcher against the door, then walked over to the birdbath, feeling suddenly giddy. This return to the scene of the crime had me unnerved a bit; after all, I killed a deer out here last night, albeit one seemingly determined to bring my head home to mount on its primitive trophy wall. And then my concerns as to who grabbed the carcasses while I wasn't looking—that had the wheels in my mind skipping gears, and I did my best to battle these bad feelings by itemizing some of the tasks that needed attending to, like filling out all those insurance forms and drug-stock purchase orders piled on my desk. But, alas, it didn't work—it seemed there was plenty of room in my mind for everything. A downfall of being smart.

The birdbath was dry, and I realized now that it hadn't rained for weeks. I could remember only one instance since we moved in where it showered with any merit, and that was a late afternoon thunderstorm that'd transformed the skies into a mean charcoal gray color; it also had a yelping Page scurrying fearfully away under Jessica's bed. I ran my finger along the rough cherub statuette, totally engrossed in thought, thinking for a passing moment that another cup of coffee might go down just fine right now—when a scream ripped through the backyard.

I startled and shook like a maraca, then bolted around as though I'd expected all along some kind of terror was about to take place (Stories of golden-eyed goblins? Animal bodies being dragged from my back yard? That might've had something to do with it). I saw nothing, but a shriek as high and as sharp as a guillotine issued from around the side of the yard. This was followed by the dull thud of something hitting sharply into the house.

I darted around the side of the house and was immediately greeted with blood—at least it was the first thing I became aware of. Blood, everywhere. A lot of it: on the walkway, in the grass, on the shingles alongside the entrance to my office. Then I saw the body, and in a reflexive action shoved my fist in my mouth to keep from screaming.

Lauren Hunter had arrived for her appointment, yes she did. But she'd run into some big trouble along the way. What exactly that trouble was I had no clue, and I could do nothing but stand frozen and stare down at her hoping that some miracle group of paramedics would show up in their bleating ambulance, toting their black bags, IV, and stretcher while rushing to my patient's rescue. That's how it's done in New York—stand back and let the pros handle the situation. Here in this wee little township of curvy back roads and Smoky-The-Bear forests, I was the only show in town, flying solo and manning the cockpit in a plane I couldn't operate very well.

My knowledge and experience in emergency situations is limited—I'm just an internist, my specialties are sniffles and coughs, snot and phlegm. Still, the diagnosis was obvious: in a few minutes Lauren Hunter would meet her Maker. Given her condition, it was amazing that any life was left in her at all. A good portion of her face had been stripped away. What remained was a bloody slab about the size of an Ellio's pizza that ran from her scalp line to her trembling jaw. Her shirt had been reduced to ribbons, a dangling left arm twisted from the socket like a storm-damaged branch. Two shattered ribs swelled through the bruised skin beneath her right breast. She coughed, and blood and yellow phlegm showered out onto the grass. Then she moaned—loud enough to make me jerk back some—and rolled over, both legs twitching much like the deer's did last night—as if charged with electricity. This revealed a large gouge in her waist, and when she shifted, purple-gray organs spilled out onto the cement walkway. A large pink tube wriggled out too. It looked alive, one end leading back into her body like a leash.

In my mind I heard Phillip Deighton say,
the animal can't be dead, Michael. It has to be sacrificed on the big stone.

I became harried and distressed, and I knew for certain that if I'd been forced to say something, only gibberish would come out. It didn't matter anyway, I told myself. Nothing I could say or do would change the fact that Lauren Hunter, a patient under my care, was going to die.

She coughed again. Clotty swirls flew out with such force they spattered the shingles. Amazingly, she kept moving. In fact, she attempted to lean up. Her eyes quivered then opened, the cocoa browns unfocused and stirred with tiny masses of blood. Her head bobbled back and forth like one of those sport-figure dolls, and I finally kneeled down before her, hands at once pinning her neck, mindful of the fact that the shock and trauma striking her body didn't deter the nerves from squirting gallons of pain-juice out.

My knees slid forward and I said to myself,
the hole in her waist...her organs...Jesus Christ!
And all I could wonder was what could have possibly happened to Lauren Hunter. My crazed common sense kept saying over and over,
same thing that happened to Rosy Deighton, same thing that happened to Neil Farris, same thing that happened to...
To think otherwise would be a waste of good thought. Something evil and horrible was going down in Ashborough, and damn the residents here who're obviously accepting it as readily as a hot meal on the dinner table at supper time.

I had to shove those thoughts aside for the moment. More importantly right now was what to do next. I stood and thought about running inside for a blanket, but that would serve in only ruining the blanket. Still, I couldn't just let her suffer. I needed to call for help in spite of the fact that she'd be dead long before they got here. It wouldn't ease her suffering, but it was the only option, given the dreadful circumstances.

I leaned down next to her. "Lauren?"

Her head shook. Her lips puckered like a fish's. She said, "
Ah...puh…ahg
."

"I'm going to help you, Lauren. You just be good and try to relax. Help will be here soon." It was the grandest lie I'd ever told. I waited for the lightning bolt to strike but He never threw it.

Her head turned in my direction. It appeared as though she were trying to look up at me, but there was no way to tell for sure...there was too much blood everywhere. I wanted to get up, get away, perhaps go inside and wait in some dark corner while she writhed herself to death. Instead, her one good arm jutted up like a moray from its lair and grabbed my wrist. A spurting sound came from her throat. Her tongue moved, I could see it flicking around in the swamp of blood and snot in her mouth. Some unclear sounds spilled forth, odd foreign syllables like
dar
and
uug
. I tried to make some sense of them, but interpretation wasn't very high on my
to-do
list right now, plus I was growing more confused by the second. I tried to break free of her bloody grasp. I couldn't. She had quite a grip on me.
Reflexive bodily instinct
they once taught us at Columbia.

They never taught anything like this during family practice 101, Michael.

"Isolates..." she barked, then choked up some lung fluid.

I gazed down at her, in total denial of what I'd just heard. It came out fully intentional, as clear as the skies above our heads. Not as some misinterpreted hack or gurgle. And not as some stress-induced delusion on the ears.
Can't be, Michael. It can't be that she just said that word. No. It was nothing more than some ironic string of nonsensical utterances coincidentally formed into a word that's been haunting you for the better part of twenty-four hours.

She was still looking at me. I managed to ask, my voice barely a whisper, "What?"

And then her voice changed. It was deeper, stronger, not the voice of a woman who lay buried in agony, seconds from death. "They want you...they're coming for you..." Her eyes rolled up into their sockets, revealing bloody ruptures. The corners of her mouth drew downward, as if pulled by invisible strings.

And then my mind went back to six weeks ago, to the day we first moved in. I'd met Phillip for the first time, and he was kind enough to invite us to his home, and despite my encounter with the rusty nail on my front lawn, I'd thought everything was just going to be sweet and peachy here in Ashborough, but then I'd taken a wrong turn while looking for the bathroom in his house and I'd come face-to-face with his monster of a wife, Rosy Deighton, and she spat at me through her black hole of a mouth,
They'll come for you, just like they did for me, just like they did for Dr Farris, like they will for everyone else in this God-forsaken town!

And now, a similar warning from a woman also in distress. Terror shot through me, changed me, made me a different man in a matter of seconds. Smaller, weaker, a man who needed to call the hospital not for the human mess on the sidewalk, but to reserve myself a room in the mental ward, ASAP: I'd been dealt a big blow this morning and needed to check myself in fast.

Instead, I leaned close to her head—her naked bloody head. At this close proximity I could see a tiny slice of white skull peeking through. It looked like an eye. I turned away, said, "Lauren...speak to me. What are you trying to say?"