Lisa Unger - Darkness My Old Friend

“He can’t let me go,” said Marla.

When had she started to let it waste her like this? Even her doctor wasn’t sure what was wrong with her. She took something for the pain and weakness in her joints. One doctor had posited that her visions were something like ministrokes or TIAs. So she took something to prevent those episodes-which clearly it didn’t. She wasn’t supposed to drive, and she did only when something was really important, like her visit to Jones Cooper the other day. There was something for her stomach pains, diagnosed as IBS. Then there was the pill to help her sleep through the night. Her cholesterol was through the roof, even though she hardly ate. They gave her more medication for that.

“Mom? Are you taking all these pills?” Amanda had asked last year. She’d come to visit Eloise-without the kids. Her obligatory visit, which was actually worse than if she didn’t visit at all. Eloise could hardly stand to see herself through Amanda’s eyes. But her daughter was so kind, so vigilant about gifts and cards and flowers on Mother’s Day. The children sent Eloise crayon drawings. And it was unspoken between them that Amanda endured her visits to Eloise the way she did her yearly trip to the dentist, something anticipated with distaste, obligatory, and mercifully brief.

But yes, she was taking all those pills on her little schedule or as needed. Lately she’d been wondering what would happen to her if she just stopped taking them. Maybe the legion of things wrong with her would march in and sweep her away.

She looked into the mirror and saw that Marla was gone. She was aware that they were on the access road into the Hollows Wood. It was narrow, barely a road at all, just a rut between trees. Ray brought the car to a stop.

The road ahead was wet, the dirt turning into thick, gooey mud. The rain was coming down, just a drizzle. But the sky was that kind of gray that looked as if it would never be any other color again.

“We have to go on foot the rest of the way,” said Ray. He regarded her with a worried squint. “Can you do it?”

She didn’t bother being indignant. “I think so.”

“It’s not far. But the old girl isn’t going to make it through that muck.” He patted the steering wheel. “Or if she does, she won’t make it out again.”

As soon as they exited the car, they heard voices. They followed, Eloise holding on to Ray’s arm over the wet and unstable ground. Her yellow rain boots were ugly against the brown, made a slurping noise in the mud. By the time they reached the clearing, they saw four men in uniform digging into the earth. A few other men in heavy black slickers stood around watching. With the dead trees and the rain, the scene was as grim as a funeral. Eloise shuddered.

“Cops,” said Ray. He said it like one might say “termites”-with surprise and dismay and a dread of things to come. One could forget that he’d been a cop himself. “What are they looking for?”

“I bet they’re looking for Marla.”

“No,” he said. “How would they know about the Chapel?”

There was a flash of something in the trees across the opening. And then she saw him-too big, too tall, as his mother had described him. Clad in black, his long, dark hair hanging wet and ropy, fists clenched at his sides, he looked ghoulish. When he’d first come to see her, he’d looked sweet and bookish. He’d had his long hair back in a ponytail, wore those cute wire-rimmed glasses, was dressed neatly in jeans and a blue T-shirt. He was much like she’d remembered him as a boy, quiet, soft-spoken. The man she saw through the trees made her heart thud with fear. Eloise was about to point him out to Ray. But she was interrupted.

“I got something.” The voice rang high-pitched with alarm. It disturbed the air. Some large-winged birds above them flapped away. Then Jones Cooper was coming up behind them, clearing his throat so, Eloise guessed, as to not take them by surprise. Ray turned around to look at the other man.

“All of a sudden, it’s Grand Central around here,” said Ray. He didn’t even bother to conceal his dislike, which took the form of a sneer. Eloise couldn’t remember what it was with the two of them. And she didn’t much care-two old dogs with a bone between them.

“It has been a while, Muldune,” said Jones. Eloise noted how he did always try to be polite, even when he was annoyed. She wasn’t sure if this was a good trait or a dishonest one. She looked again across the clearing in time to see Michael slipping away into the dark between the trees. She still didn’t say anything; something held her back.

The three of them started walking toward the group of men who stood around looking down at the ground. As he approached, Jones asked, “What did you find there, son?”

The man in uniform was just a boy, with a smooth, unlined face free from stubble. He looked pale and stricken.

“Detective Cooper,” the boy said. Did everybody in this town know Jones Cooper? “I think I found bones.”

They all looked at the hole in the earth and saw the shock of white against the dark of the soil.

“Okay,” said Jones. He put up his hands. “Step away and stop digging. Call Detective Ferrigno and get some crime-scene techs out here.”

“Don’t tell them, Eloise. Please.” Marla again. Just her voice, loud inside Eloise’s head.

“It’s too late,” she said. And everyone turned to look at her with grim faces. That was her last awareness of the scene.

Marla sat up from the dirt and brushed herself off. For someone who’d been buried for more than twenty years, she looked remarkably well coiffed. Except for that throat, which was a mottled black and purple.

“He was supposed to spend the night with a friend. I should have known he’d come home. Cara was asleep. You remember how she slept like the dead, don’t you? Once that child was asleep, I had a solid twelve hours before she’d open her eyes again. Mack was working late, grading term papers in his office at the university. I had been looking forward to that time to myself all week.”

She stood up. “That’s what you lose when you’re a mother and a wife. You lose time to yourself. Your time is never yours again, is it? Not really.”

She sighed. “Anyway, it was nothing, what he saw. I had a friend over. As I confided in him about my life, I cried. My friend moved to comfort me. That’s what Michael saw. That’s all, I swear. But the rage in that boy, like all his life it had just been simmering, waiting for a reason to blow. My God. Why was he so angry at me?”

But then Marla was running and Eloise was high above her. It was like a satellite image she couldn’t zoom in on. She couldn’t get closer as she watched Marla darting through the woods. Two large forms gave chase, until one of them gained on her and took her to the ground. The other form came up behind, and there was a fight. Marla ran again, disappeared into the Chapel, while the two men engaged in a vicious physical battle that left one of them lifeless on the ground. The one who remained standing went after her again.

But that was all. Eloise came to on her back in the field with Ray and Jones looming over her.

“Eloise, are you okay?” asked Jones.

Ray helped her up, less concerned. “What did you see?” he asked.

“She said there was someone else there that night. A friend, not a lover,” Eloise said to Ray. She didn’t care about Jones, what he thought of her, whether or not he believed her. She leaned against Ray.

“He was here, watching the dig, Ray. Just now, in the real world.”

“Who?”

“Michael Holt. I saw him run off. Go after him.” She pointed in the direction she’d seen him run, and Ray took off, leaving her alone with Jones.