Lisa Unger - Black Out

His mistake, as he saw it in hindsight, was twofold-not using the sedative he’d brought, because he thought Marlowe was out cold, and putting Marlowe into the backseat instead of into the trunk of the vehicle. Marlowe came to as Gray drove, got loose from his bindings, and attacked Gray. The struggle ended with Gray shooting Marlowe in the face and leaping from the car just before it dove over the side of the road into the Rio Grande Valley below.

I have heard this story so many times. I have asked Gray to tell it until it has taken on a mythic quality, like a story from childhood. As I near the end of the drive and see the roof of the house through the trees, I wonder how much of what he’s told me was true. I don’t know. After my conversation with Alan Parker, everything seems suspect.

When I step into the clearing where the house and the barn and the empty horse pen stand, I am surprised by the condition of the property. It is dilapidated in a way I hadn’t expected. I imagined it repaired after the fire, cared for by the women whom my mother supposedly sheltered during their crusade to save their husbands, lovers, and sons from death row. But two of the upstairs windows are blown out, and though it’s dark, I can see that there appears to be a hole in the roof. The front door hangs off its hinges, the porch has folded onto itself. I hear the mournful calling of an owl in the distance, along with a chorus of frogs. The barn stands intact, but the whole place has an air of desertion-the desertion of years.

There’s an escalation of tension in my chest; the darkness all around me feels like it’s closing in. How have I come to be here? Is this really happening? Was Alan Parker a figment of my imagination? Out of sheer desperation, I start to yell.

“Marlowe!”

I call his name again and again, each time my voice disappearing into the thick, humid air. All the night songs cease, and everything listens to my calls, the desperate baying of a wounded animal. I drop to my knees in the dirt.

I realize then that he’s not here. No one could live in this place, this dead, awful place, not even him. The despair that sweeps over me is so total I am physically weakened by it. I put my forehead to the ground.

And then, kneeling there, my past and present one at last, I remember. I pull myself to my feet. I know where Marlowe is. Alan Parker is right; I have always known. He did need me to find Marlowe-because I am the only person on earth who knows where he might have been all these years. He has not been pursuing me. He has been waiting for me, just where I knew he would be.

I walk into the trees. I remember the way as I move through the thick overgrowth, careless of lurking snakes, ignoring the mosquitoes that feed on my skin and hum in my ear. I’d run if I could, but my progress is slow, pushing aside branches and stepping in soft places where my ankles turn. It seems to take hours, but finally I hear the babbling of the creek ahead. I come to a stop at its banks, and I see it there: the trailer. There’s a light burning in the window.

“With provisions you could live out here forever,” Marlowe told me a lifetime ago. I never imagined I would be here again, not like this.

From the bank of the creek, I call his name. The sound of it fills the night. Silence is the only answer. I am about to call again when he emerges from the trees behind the trailer.

Though he is just a shape in the darkness, I know him. He is not the man I remember. He approaches me, leaning heavily upon a cane and dragging the right side of his body. He moves slowly, as though every step causes him pain. When he draws closer, I can see that he is hideously disfigured, the left side of his face little more than an explosion of skin. I find myself recoiling, moving backward as he moves forward. Those eyes are the same black sinkholes in which I have drowned again and again.

I realize that my entire body is quavering, every muscle tense, every nerve ending electrified. I can’t believe I am looking at him, that his flesh is solid, that he stands on the ground. For the past few years, he has been a specter, haunting every dark space inside my psyche. The realness of him, his physicality, now drains all his power.

“Ophelia,” he says. His voice has an odd, warped quality, but I can still hear the music of my name- O-feel-ya. “You’re home.”

I remember thinking he was the only home I’d ever know. How sad, how empty I must have been to think that. I know what a real home is now. I have one with Gray and Victory. I’ll do anything to go back there.

“No,” I say, unable to take my eyes from his horrible face. It doesn’t even look like skin, more like melted wax. He is a mangled facsimile of the man in my memories. But, amazingly, I still feel his pull, remember how I wanted to please him, how badly I craved his love.

“How did you survive? ” I ask him, my voice just a whisper. “How did you come here?”

Something awful was happening to his mouth, a terrible twisting of his face. He was smiling.

“Back in New Mexico,” he says slowly, “someone found me by the side of the road, near death. I’d been shot in the face, but I still managed to get out of the car before it went off the road.” It seemed painful for him to speak; the words emerged long and slow. “I was taken to the hospital and treated as a John Doe. I was unrecognizable, claimed to have no memory of who I was or where I’d been. When I could move around again, I called your mother. She came for me and brought me back here, cared for me until she died last year.”

I feel a surprising wave of shock and grief to know that my mother has died. In my heart I thought I’d find her here alive and well, still trying to save the condemned. I guess the abused and neglected child is always hoping for a reckoning, some restitution, an embrace that never comes. And then there’s the pain, the anger that she cared for Marlowe all these years after what he’d done to me.

“How did she die?” I want to know.

“Car accident,” he said with a shrug. “Drunk. Luckily, I had enough provisions to last me.”

I’m struck that he doesn’t seem to care at all about her. I’m not sure why I’m surprised. Dr. Brown said once, “He was a psychopath, the worst kind of sociopath. They don’t love, Annie. They can’t.”

I have no way to determine if what he says is true. For all I know, he killed her as he did so many others. Or maybe she’s not dead at all. I don’t know. There’s no time to think about that now.

I can hear his labored breathing, feel his eyes on me. When I look at his face, he doesn’t even seem human. He is vacant. I take another step back from him. I have the thought that he’s not really as crippled as he seems, that maybe this is how he lures people now that his beauty is gone: pity. I imagine him living here on this property, alone, haunting its rooms, walking its woods. The thought of it chills me.

“Who takes care of you now?” I want to know this for some reason-how he’s been living here on this decimated property, this wasteland of my memories. I wonder if someone helps him, if even as he is, he is still able to lure and manipulate and cause people to do his bidding.

“I manage,” he says. “It’ll be easier now that you’re home. I’ve missed you so much, Ophelia.”

His words seem hollow, like lines he’s rehearsed so often they’ve lost meaning. I don’t believe he has thought of me except in the most passing moments. It is I who have been obsessed with him. It is I who have thought of him day and night, plotted my way back to him. He is my sickness, eating me alive like Alan Parker’s cancer.

“I’ve missed you so much,” he says again.

He thinks I’ve come back for him. My hand tightens around the gun. Sweat is dripping down my back, and I can hear blood rushing in my ears. I realize that I’m terrified of him, as though he could somehow force me to stay, as though I could be caught like a fly in a web again, too weak, too powerless to escape him.