Joe Gribble - Darkest Edge

Mark lowered his fork. “No. I’m not.”

“Why not?” Alicia asked. “She was your only relative, wasn’t she?”

“That’s true. But I hadn’t seen her since I was about seventeen. I don’t even know where she’s buried.”

Alicia dug into her purse and pulled out a piece of paper, folded in half. She slid it across to him. “That’s the obit. She’s in Valley View, near Xenia.”

Mark stared at the piece of paper, but didn’t take it.

Alicia finally quit waiting for Mark to take the paper and left it on the table. She went back to her salad. “You should visit. Close the chapter. It’d be good for you. I promise.”

Mark downed his drink. He looked across at Alicia. He could tell her heart was in the right place, though she really didn’t understand his situation… his relationship with his sister was, well, complicated. He reached forward and picked up the obituary. He unfolded it, glanced at the short paragraph. Not much there. He was mentioned as ‘left behind’. He folded the paper back up and put it into his jacket pocket. He looked over at Alicia again. “Thanks. Maybe I will.”

Young Mark peered through the bars on the door’s window. It was too dark to see inside. He tried the doorknob. It twisted easily in his hand. He pushed the door open, then tentatively stepped inside.

The short hallway was empty except for a pair of doors on the left and another pair on the right. Young Mark stepped farther in, toward the doors on the left. A strong breeze, in an otherwise calm evening, slammed the door behind him closed, dousing the short hallway in near darkness.

Guided by the dim, sunset light seeping through several tinted windows, Mark opened the door on the left and stepped through. Unlike the previous halls he had explored, doors only lined the hallway in this building on one side. Various types of complicated medical machinery sat scattered throughout the hallway, silently waiting for patients to treat, or abuse. He saw a single door down the hall was partly open. Young Mark headed for it. Slowly.

The door knob to this room was unusually high up, almost eye level. He heard noises beyond… deep breathing. Beeps. Chirps.

Mark pushed the door open and peered inside. A bright, overhead light was reflected throughout the shiny, stainless steel room. The walls, ceiling, floor… all appeared to be polished steel.

Mark looked up into the bright light hanging from the center of the room. He shaded his eyes, and the rest of the room started to come into focus. A bed with chrome rails sat in the center of the room. There was a patient on it, covered in a white sheet, eye level with Mark. The nurse, same black rimmed, cat eye glasses, was on the other side of the bed, her face hidden behind a sterile, gauze mask. She monitored some kind of breathing machine, whose bellows inflated and deflated in rhythm with the patient’s chest. A tube ran from the machine to the patient’s mouth.

Mark watched the patient. He had a sheet pulled up to his chin, eyes closed. A white cloth hung from a stand, masking the room beyond the patient’s forehead. Mark could see shadowy motions on the cloth, betraying movement beyond it.

A dark stain, the size of a coin, appeared on the hanging linen. Mark watched as the stain grew, dripping slowly downward, burning bright red. The patient’s eyes moved beneath his closed eyelids, then opened, staring off into space. Mark jumped back when the patient’s mouth opened in silent agony. Then the patient’s eyes swung down, staring, boring right through Mark.

Beyond the hanging linen a figure rose… a doctor, also wearing a surgical mask. He clutched a bloody scalpel. He looked straight at Mark, then pointed the scalpel in his direction. Mark could hear the doctor say something.

The nurse turned in the direction the doctor was pointing. She stared right into Mark’s eyes.

Mark was frozen in place, unable to move as long as the nurse stared at him from behind her glasses. Mark heard the doctor talking again. The nurse turned to the bellows machine and switched it off. The patient heaved for air. Deep, struggling, futile breaths.

The doctor moved from behind the patient, shifting the scalpel to his other hand, the one closest to Mark.

Mark still couldn’t move. He watched as the doctor slowly approached, blood dripping from the scalpel down his gloved hand.

The patient gurgled a last breath, jolting Mark from his trance. He turned and ran back down the hallway. He heard footsteps slap the ground behind him. He raced through the inner door and crashed into the closed outer door. Mark pushed against the door, but the now howling wind outside held the door tightly shut. Mark struggled, pushing with all his might. The footsteps behind him grew closer. The door behind him slammed shut. He glanced back, saw the doctor closing the short distance between them, scalpel raised high. Mark gave the door in front of him a final, desperate shove.

The door gave way, slamming open into the windswept, raining, darkening night.

Young Mark ran into the darkness, lightning flashing through the rain. He headed for a line of trees and glanced back. The doctor was now running, almost on top of him. Mark crashed into the trees. He slipped, tripped over downed branches, then fell. Face first. He rolled over onto his back, holding his arms over his face as the shadow of his pursuer towered over him. Mark opened his eyes and found he was…

…lying face up in the grass near the sidewalk.

Mark picked himself up and brushed himself off. He looked down at the bottle in his hand, brought it to his lips and poured the remaining liquid down his throat, then tossed the empty bottle into a nearby alley. The lights of the hotel appeared ahead. He staggered forward.

Dr. Drexel stepped into the conference room and closed the door behind her. She checked the room. The others were all there.

The elder, balding Dr. Winston Fraze sat on the far side of the conference table, near the large video display. Dr. Elizabeth Ermil sat in a wheelchair near Dr. Fraze. Her thinning, gray hair draped loosely across her shoulders. Both Fraze and Ermil were well into their seventies. Sitting at the head of the conference table was Dr. Hans Drexel, whose unkempt mustache dripped into his mouth. Still spry for his age, Hans had mostly black hair with a single grey streak near the middle of his brow which ran all the way to the back of his head. He hopped up when Natalie came in. “We’ve been waiting for you, dear.”

Natalie turned the lock on the door. She met Hans with a hug.

After they embraced, Hans returned to his seat at the head of the table, and Natalie took a chair at his right, across from the other two doctors. “I really did hope we would be able to close down before this happened,” Natalie said.

“We all knew it could happen,” Dr. Fraze said.

“It had to happen, eventually.” Dr. Ermil agreed.

Dr. Natalie Drexel picked up a remote and pushed a button. The video monitor jumped to life. It showed her office from an upper corner perspective, video from a surveillance camera that recorded all transactions in her office. In this view, Mark sat across from her desk while Ellen could be seen running the camera behind Mark. The audio was turned off.

“That’s him?” Dr. Fraze asked.

“Yes,” Natalie said. “Mark Wilcox. A reporter from Chicago.”

“He suffers,” Dr. Fraze said.

“His eyes. They’re tired,” Dr. Ermil agreed.

“Yes. He blacked out earlier. He’s not sleeping, I prescribed Temazepam.”

Hans Drexel pointed his finger. “He looks familiar. I had a patient once… a case of severe depression. Suicidal.”