Lisa Unger - Black Out

“You’re the one who’s always on me about facing down my fears. I thought this might be a good first step.”

“Is it helping?”

“It’s too soon to tell.”

“Take care of yourself, Annie,” he says. This is what he says after every session, but I wonder if I detect an extra bit of concern, a final note of farewell.

The corridor outside the doctor’s office is empty, and I wait in the silence for the elevator. I listen to the electronic beep as the elevator passes each floor on its way to me. I never see anyone in this corridor; no one ever comes and goes from the other office suites. It has never seemed odd before, but today it does. The quiet is total, as though there is no one else behind the other doors.

Maybe I never noticed before because I am always lost in thought when I leave the doctor, but this time I feel a strange unease as I wait for the elevator that seems to take forever. It has paused two floors down and not continued its ascent. I wait for a minute longer, then decide to take the stairs, but when I try the door to the staircase, it’s locked. I guess I don’t have any choice but to wait for the sluggish elevator.

I hear something then, I’m not sure what. It might have been a shout or something falling to the floor. Then there are voices lifted in argument, just a few words, and then it is silent so suddenly again that I’m not sure that’s what I heard at all. It’s then that I find myself walking back down the hall toward the doctor’s office.

Of course the elevator picks this moment to arrive. I listen to the doors open and close as I enter the waiting room and knock lightly on the door to the doctor’s office. There’s no answer, but I’m certain he’s there-I don’t think there’s another exit. I wonder if he’s in the bathroom. I put my ear to the door, wait a second, but I don’t hear voices inside. I knock again. As I do, the door pushes open slightly, and I help it along.

“Doctor,” I say, “is everything all right?”

It takes a beat for the scene to register in my head. The doctor is slumped over his desk, blood pooling on its surface and dripping over the side onto the floor beneath. On the window I can see a high ghastly arc of blood against the sunset.

“Doctor,” I say as I move toward him. My voice sounds like it’s coming from the end of a long tunnel. “Paul?”

I approach the body, battling the urge to run in the other direction. I put my hand on his neck. But there’s no pulse. His skin is still warm, but he is dead.

I try to draw a breath into my lungs, but panic is constricting my airways. My flight response is in high gear; it’s all I can do not to break into a sprint. Then I notice that the door to the bathroom is ajar; the light is on inside. I think I see a flicker of movement, but I’m not certain.

My brain has stopped working; adrenaline kicking, my body takes over. I move toward the exit, keeping my eyes on the thin rectangle of light shining through the opening in the bathroom door. I am not thinking about the poor doctor and the awful way he has died or about who might still be hiding in the bathroom. I am just thinking about getting out of here as fast as possible. I can’t help the doctor, and I can’t afford another run-in with the police.

I start moving backward, my eyes still on the bathroom door. As I do, it starts to open. I find myself paralyzed; I can’t move. I stand and watch it swing wide. She is pale and grim, the young woman I have seen at Ella’s party and standing outside the Internet café. She is soaked in blood. There’s a knife in her hand. Her chest is heaving with the deep, shuttering breaths she is drawing and releasing. We stare at each other for a moment. And then I recognize her. It’s Ophelia.

It’s nearly dark when I wake up in my car in the parking lot of my doctor’s office. The sun has disappeared below the horizon line, and the sky is glowing a deep blue-black. My peripheral vision is almost gone from the migraine I have coming on. I am struggling to orient myself, to separate reality from fantasy. I see her face again, her blood-drenched clothes. I see my doctor slumped over his desk, blood draining from him onto the floor.

I don’t feel the appropriate level of terror, I’m just stunned, numb. I look at my watch; it has been only forty minutes since my session with the doctor ended, which seems impossible given what’s happened. There’s a large bloodstain, still wet but drying quickly, on my jacket. I shrug out of it, crumble it into a ball. I don’t want to look at the blood. Then my cell phone, balancing on the dash, starts ringing. I answer.

“Hi, Annie.”

I already recognize the voice-it’s Detective Harrison. I don’t say anything.

“Just wondering if you’ve had any time to think things over.”

“Why are you doing this to me?” I ask him. My voice sounds hysterical, even to my own ears. I am shaking as I put the key in the ignition and start the car. “Did you do this?”

There’s a pause on the other end, as if he’s registering the pitch and tone of my words.

“Annie, what’s wrong?” he asks me. He sounds legitimately concerned. “Where are you?”

“Why are you doing this?” I say again. It must be Harrison. He has done this somehow. He knows about me and is trying to drive me insane. “For money? You can have whatever you want.”

“Take it easy,” he says. His tone is calm and soothing; he must be used to talking to hysterical people. “What’s going on?”

There’s something in his voice that reminds me why I liked him that first night. Even though he’s trying to destroy my life, it’s almost as though he would put that on hold to be a cop for me in this moment. I’m half considering telling him about the doctor, but since I’m not a hundred percent sure that he’s dead and that it wasn’t me who killed him, I decide against it. I’d be admitting that I’m either mentally ill or a murderer, probably both.

“What happened, Annie?” he says, more firmly this time.

But his voice sounds tinny and distant. I end the call and throw the phone on the seat beside me. I drive out of the parking lot, heading for home.

The small causeway that leads to our island is not heavily trafficked in the evening. I pull over and grab the jacket from the passenger seat, race to the railing, and toss it over. I watch for a moment as it drifts into the water, then quickly get back to the car and start driving again, too fast. The sight of a cruiser hiding in a speed trap encourages me to slow down, to take the rest of the drive at the speed limit.

I wave at the guard as I pull through the gateway to our neighborhood. Lights glow in windows, televisions flicker, and there are a couple of kids still playing in the street even though it’s fully dark now. Everything is so quiet, so normal. I do not belong here. I realize more than ever that I never have.

I park the car in the drive and walk, though I want to run, into the house. As I shut the door, I hear Gray in the kitchen making dinner.

“You’re late,” he calls with a smile in his voice when he hears me enter.

There are candles lit on the table and lobsters in a huge pot on the stove. When he turns to look at me, his smile fades, he goes a little pale. My legs buckle when he reaches me, and I sink into him.

“What happened?” he asks. His frightened expression tells me how bad I look. “What the hell happened?”

I awoke in the middle of the night with a start to the sound of the horses. They were restless in their stalls, agitated and making noise. I’d heard them act like that twice since we’d been there. Once a Florida panther had been spotted the next day on a neighbor’s property. The second time we never figured why they’d been anxious. I slipped from beneath the covers of my bed and walked over to the window. The doors to the barn stood open. Frank’s truck sat idling, the hatch wide, waiting like a mouth. A full yellow moon cast a strange glow.