Lisa Unger - Darkness My Old Friend

“Are you okay?” he asked again.

“I’m okay.”

He looked after Ray, seemed to consider giving chase himself. But he stayed rooted. Others had arrived. She saw more men moving into the clearing.

“It doesn’t seem like this whole thing, whatever it is you do, is very good for your health,” said Jones.

She didn’t know how to answer him. No one who wasn’t another psychic, or her daughter, had made that observation before. This is killing you, Mom. You need to walk away from it . In fact, no one seemed to notice her at all. For most people it was only about what she could do for them.

“He’s using you,” said Jones. He was still looking off in the direction where Ray had gone. “You shouldn’t let him anymore.”

She was about to protest. But she found she didn’t have it in her. “He’s my friend.”

She sensed that he was about to make some kind of comment, but then he moved away from her and toward them, the other men, with a quick glance back. She turned and exited the clearing, heading back toward the car. There was nothing left to do for Marla Holt; she wouldn’t visit Eloise again. Eloise couldn’t help her anymore.

Michael ran through the wet woods, branches slapping at his face, roots tugging at his feet. His chest was tight with effort, his heart an engine running too hot, too hard. When he finally came to a stop at the mine head, he was sobbing. Then, in the next moment, everything in his stomach came up in one heaving orange gush. The sound of the splatter against the ground made him dry-heave until he could hardly breathe. Then he sank against the wooden frame of the mine entrance. After a while his breathing slowed, his nausea subsided. The cool air from the mine shaft seemed to wash out and over him, soothing him.

He’d been coming here his whole life. His father had shown him the way. It was here where he went below the first time, first ventured into that always dark and cool and quiet place. There was no chatter, no traffic, no one else to look on him in judgment, to take stock of him and find him wanting.

It was Cooper who had led them all to that place, brought the police. And Eloise and Ray had been there, too. If it hadn’t been for that stupid girl, tramping about where she didn’t belong, no one ever would have known about him digging out there. Now the site would be lost, or someone else would take credit for it. But no, that wasn’t it, was it? That wasn’t why he couldn’t stop crying.

He pulled himself to his feet and stood at the entrance to the mine. When he first returned here after his father had died, the mine head had been boarded up. There was a city sign on it that declared it condemned. DO NOT ENTER, the sign warned. DANGER. He’d brought a crowbar down and pried it open. The boards lay off to the side, a jagged pile of broken wood and jutting rusted nails.

“What did you do to her?” he yelled into the darkness. It was a wet, solid thing, that darkness. It could come out and grab you, drag you down into the earth.

“What did you do to her?” The question bounced back at him, echoing off the mine shaft’s walls. His words sounded desperate and grief-stricken, his voice distorted and foreign, even to himself.

His own memories of that night were boarded up like the mine. Do not enter. Danger. And there was no crowbar strong enough to break through. All he could remember was the bike ride home through silent suburban streets, the moon high, the houses dark. He left his bike on the lawn, carelessly let it twist and fall to the ground. He climbed the porch step and put his hand on the knob. But that door wouldn’t open, not in his memory. He couldn’t get it to budge. And he was tired of trying.

“All the answers are down here,” his father had told him about the mines and caves. “Down here you can hear yourself think, finally.”

Maybe that’s what he needed to do. Go down. Maybe his father was right. Maybe the answers were there.

“Michael!”

He looked up through the trees. The voice was familiar. Ray Muldune. He was making his way slowly, unsteadily closer.

“Michael!”

Ray was a good guy, but Michael didn’t want to talk anymore. Not to Ray, not to anyone. He lifted his pack from the ground and hefted it onto his back. He stooped his head and stepped inside, into the blessed quiet.

When Cole pulled up to the house, he knew that something was wrong. He just knew. His dad’s car was in the driveway, and his father was almost never home before Claire and Cameron went to bed. Paula’s SUV was gone. And there was something else. He realized as he sat and watched the house that he’d never seen it without the outside lights burning. Paula always had all the lights on, inside and out. I hate the dark , she’d told him. It makes me sad . His dad was always complaining about lamps burning in empty rooms. But Cole liked it. He didn’t like the dark, either.

He forced himself to exit the car, even though he just wanted to keep driving. He should have gone straight to Willow’s. He’d wanted to. But he’d promised Cam that they’d play a game when he came home from school. And Cole didn’t like to break promises to his brother. He closed the car door behind him, and the sound of it echoed on the quiet street. He didn’t pull into the drive in case his father needed to get out or Paula needed to get in.

Cole walked in through the open garage and up the three wooden steps into the laundry room. There was none of the usual chaos to greet him. Usually Cam’s shoes, coat, and book bag were lying on the floor until Paula ran around cleaning everything up. He’d hear the television blaring, Claire crying, or Paula talking on the phone. He’d smell something cooking on the stove.

Tonight he stood in the doorway that led to the empty living room, feeling an uneasiness. It was like the feeling he had when he’d called his mother and found that the line had been disconnected. Or when his birthday came and went and she didn’t call or send a card. It wasn’t like her. He couldn’t imagine that she had some new boyfriend and didn’t want him around, as his father said. But his father wouldn’t lie, would he? Why would he lie?

Cole closed the laundry room door behind him. Again he thought about just leaving. No one tracked him. As long as he left a note for Paula, and as long as he was home by eight to do his homework, she wouldn’t be mad. Instead he walked to the foyer.

“Paula?”

Nothing.

“Dad?”

He had that nervous stomach that he’d had on and off since he went to the apartment he’d lived in with his mother and found it empty. All their stuff-all his stuff-was gone. He hadn’t wanted to cry in front of his dad. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d cried about anything, really. But it had rushed out of him in a wave, like vomit. He’d just started sobbing.

“Where is she?” he’d asked. He knew he sounded like a little kid; he couldn’t help it. “Where did she go?”

“Cole, I’m sorry, son,” his dad had said. “I don’t know. It’s okay, though. You’ll stay with us until we find her.”

Except that horrible, sad sinking feeling had stayed. Sometimes he was able to ignore it, like when he was getting high with Jolie and Jeb, or when he was thinking about Willow Graves, or playing with Claire and Cam. But whenever it was dark or quiet, that ache just spread from his belly and swallowed him whole. Maybe that’s why Paula didn’t like the dark. Sometimes he looked at her when she thought no one was watching and he wondered if she had that spreading sadness inside, too.

On the staircase he picked his way over Cam’s robot dog, a fire truck, a caboose from his train set, and headed up. He heard Kevin’s voice. There was a sliver of low light coming from the door left ajar to his office. Cole stood and listened.