Joe Gribble - Darkest Edge

“What’s that?” he answered, once again moving slowly with the music.

“What’s your most effective physical therapy technique?” she asked. “Say for tight muscles? Lower back?”

“Well, I have several…” Scott answered. His hands drifted lower and lower down Ellen’s back until they rested just above her butt. He began to rub gently. “But they’re hard to describe. I’d really have to show you…”

“Ummm…” Ellen said, leaning in even closer.

Mark sat in the newspaper’s ‘morgue’. A very apt name, Mark thought. He was surrounded by rows and rows of bins overflowing with microfiche copies of past newspaper issues. The darkened room, illuminated by only a few fluorescent bulbs hanging from the ceiling, added to the morbid atmosphere.

Mark had been at his research for a couple of hours. He sat at the nearly ancient microfiche reader, twisting the knobs to scroll through a story he’d found from back in the late ‘70s. His tie was loose, jacket thrown over a chair, sleeves rolled up.

Mark sighed. Another dead end. He pulled the fiche out of the machine and inserted another.

Alicia stepped in from the stairwell door.

Mark glanced over and saw Alicia shiver.

“I always hate coming down here. Have you found anything useful?”

Mark leaned back in his chair. “Just tidbits. Nothing I can use yet.” He waved at the bins of microfiche: “This stuff is ripe for digitizing. Would make it a hell of a lot easier to search.”

Alicia stepped closer to Mark, pulling her sweater closed in front of her. She dusted off one of the old chairs with a tissue, then sat down. “You’re right about that. Got a hundred K? That’s just to get started. We didn’t go digital until about nineteen-eighty. Everything before that is on this film.”

Mark looked back at the screen, glowing in the otherwise dark room. He turned a knob and the image panned across the display. “Guess it could be expensive,” Mark said.

Mark slid the film out and inserted another.

“We stay on a shoestring,” Alicia said. “Enough to stay afloat and keep our folks paid pretty well, but finding money to digitize some old archives that few people use? That’s out of the question. Besides, our business is today’s news,” Alicia waved her hand at the stacks of fiche: “not yesterday’s. You’re probably the first person to come down here in four or five months.”

“Sometimes yesterday’s news sheds light on today’s news,” Mark said.

“True enough.”

Mark pulled the fiche out of the machine, and slid in another. “This is going to take forever.”

“Did Rodney show you the index?”

Mark stopped and looked at Alicia. “There’s an index?”

Alicia shook her head. She stood up and went over to a smaller box and brought it over to Mark. “That’s what I thought… Interns! What years are you most interested in?”

“I started in nineteen-fifty. Anything between then and the seventies might be useful.”

Alicia dug an envelope about the size of an index card out of the box. From the envelope she pulled one fiche out and handed it to Mark. “The stories are indexed by year, title, and date. Should help.”

“Perfect.” Mark slid the current fiche out of the reader and inserted the index.

Alicia laid the envelope on the table beside him. “The rest of the fifties.”

Mark looked over at her and smiled. “Thanks. This will help a lot.”

Alicia peered over Mark’s shoulder as he scanned the index. “How long are you here?”

Mark looked at his watch. “I’d like to keep going until ten or so. That’s when you said you were leaving, wasn’t it?”

“Ten’s fine, but you can take all the time you need. I’ll tell Rodney to stay until you’re done. It’ll serve him right. But I meant how long are you in Dayton?”

Mark continued to scan the index. “Oh. The story is due Monday.”

“That’s not much time,” Alicia said. She seemed to think for a few moments. “Tell you what, write down the keywords you’re looking for and I’ll have Rodney and a couple of the other interns dig into it, free you up to do the real work.”

“That’d be great,” Mark said.

“Just don’t forget, shared credit…” Alicia said as she stepped back toward the door that led to the stairs. “Give Rodney your list on your way out.”

Mark was all smiles as he grabbed a piece of paper and a pencil and started listing keywords for the interns to research.

Young Mark stared down the empty hallway. The sconce lights glowed dimly, giving the dark woodwork a hazy, ghostly glow. The hallway breathed as before, undulating, expanding and contracting at the far end, almost in rhythm with Mark’s own breath.

The doors were all closed. Mark tried one knob. Locked. He felt drawn toward a room near the end of the hall. A sconce light near the door flickered in time with a crackling, electricity sound. The light went out briefly, then came back on and continued to flicker. Mark walked slowly toward the door.

Behind him, a door slammed. Mark jumped. He looked back, but saw nothing. As he started moving forward again the sobbing returned. It started quietly, growing louder the closer he got to the door. Mark paused when he reached the door. This one was ajar, a narrow wedge of light leaking out. He reached forward, hand trembling.

He slowly pushed the door open. The more it opened, the louder the sobbing became. He stepped into a short passageway, well lit by a bare, overhead bulb. The walls of the passageway were dark, wood paneled. They breathed like the hallway. A few feet ahead the wall on the left ended. Light poured from the space beyond. Mark stepped slowly forward until he could peer around the corner.

Inside, he saw the foot of a gurney. The mobile bed had a shiny steel frame on wheels. A thin mattress, covered with a rough blanket, was held a couple of feet off the ground. Mark hesitated, then stuck his head into the room to get a better look.

He saw someone on the bed, a man, under the blanket. His hands were bound by leather straps, the left forearm near the strap covered with a bloody bandage. The patient’s face was barely visible as it protruded from below the blanket and sheets.

An intravenous line ran from a glass jar, hanging from a metal hook, to the man’s arm.

The nurse with the pinafore apron stood with her back to Young Mark, loading fluid from a vial into a syringe.

The man on the bed whimpered, sending a chill up Mark’s spine. “No… no…no…” the patient repeated over and over.

The nurse tried to calm him: “It’s okay, you’ve had this before,” she said as she pulled the syringe from the vial and inserted it into the IV line. “Just relax.”

Mark watched as she pushed the plunger home.

She pulled the syringe from the IV line. “There, nothing to it.”

The patient grew quiet. Mark saw his eyes go blank. If they were focused at all, it was on something far distant.

The nurse turned slightly, forcing Mark to retreat back out of her view. From his new perspective, all he could see were her hands. He watched as she raised one of the patient’s hands, to the limit of the leather binding, and checked his pulse.

The patient’s wrist was limp when she began, but in just moments his hand began to straighten. His hand went taut, then his fingers began to curl inward, closing, tightening, until the knuckles of his clenched wrist turn a pale white.

Mark moved to get a slightly better view. He watched as the patient’s entire body jerked rigid, hands and legs flayed outward. Then, the patient bent at the waist, head rising off the bed, neck tense, ligaments distended, constrained only by the leather straps at his hands and feet. Mark saw excruciating pain in the patient’s face, his eyes bulging, bloodshot. The patient’s mouth opened in a silent scream as the nurse dropped his wrist and stepped up near his head. She pushed hard to try and hold him down.