Дж. Хатчинс - Personal Effects - Dark Art

As Rachael, Lucas, and I walked the East Village streets in silence, a war raged in my brain.

The rational and irrational sides of my mind screamed at each other, one-upping each other in vitriolic arguments and counter-arguments. This is textbook paranoia, my Spock-side said. When the mind looks for patterns, it finds them. The Dark Man is a delusion; it’s always been. The emotional side of me—the part that powered my sketches, that spoke through my art—insisted that an unholy thing was set to feast on my friends and me.

Unprovable, Spock said.

That’s what the atheists say, came the reply, but God’s still up there.

I smirked, nodding at this. I was quoting Henry, my uncle-who-never-was. Henry had been put away for a crime he said he didn’t commit—a crime my heart didn’t believe he could commit. Twenty years ago, the Dark Man had been paid, paid in blood, and had destroyed my family in the name of vengeance.

Vengeance for what, I did not know. But I knew it was back. I’d sensed and seen enough today to finally understand that.

And I knew, with steel-bladed certainty, that I wouldn’t let that fucker harm my family.

You’ll find the path, Uncle Henry had said. Or the path will find you.

Oh, yes. In this eclipsed world, the path blazed bright.

I strode between them, my hands in my pockets, wincing at the wind.

“We have to talk about this,” Rachael said. “Make sense of what happened tonight. Explain it. We have to understand those photos, and that effed-up phone call. Coincidence. Timing, bad timing…”

I wrapped my arm around her waist. I think I loved her more right then than I ever had. There was Rachael, her purest essence bared on a Manhattan street corner: my better half, the brains of our operation, looking for answers.

“You’re right,” I replied.

Lucas glanced up from the sidewalk.

“Dude, there’s no way I’m going back to your apartment.”

I threw my other arm around his shoulder, drawing him close. What happened at the apartment had been terrifying… but for Lucas, I think our father’s actions had somehow been worse.

“Don’t sweat it,” I said. “You guys head on over to Stovie’s. It’s a few blocks away and I bet the power’s on over there. I’ll go get Drake’s map and cell and meet you there. We’ll talk over burgers and brews, sort it all out.”

My brother’s face brightened. I grinned back at his thousand-watt smile.

Rachael nudged me.

“Z. Babe. What about the dark?”

I looked into her eyes. The wind gusted, again.

“We all have to face our fears at some point,” I said, and kissed her.

Autumnal leaves swirled around us, skittering against the sidewalk.

Tktktk.

The kitchen match scorched to life in my fingers as I stood in the front doorway. Our living room flared in a dance of amber and shadow. I picked up the nearby scented candle and lit it. The thing flickered feebly, beating back the black.

I made quick work here, harried by the surroundings.

Drake’s bizarre mural map went into my back jeans pocket. I slid his cell phone and the rest of the personal effects into my canvas satchel. The Brinkvale files went in, too. I thought of where I was headed and considered liberating Lucas’ pen flashlight from his backpack. Instead, I retrieved our stocky Maglite from the kitchen tool drawer.

I scooped up my pencil and small Moleskine sketchpad from the steamer trunk. I tore out a page, placed the pad in my bag.

There. Nearly ready now.

I stopped at the end table by the front door, bending low to write my note by candlelight. They’d hate me for this, and I loved them for that.

Dear Rachael and Lucas,

For the past four days, the “Dark Man” has been a fiction for me, a boogeyman myth painted in rumor and shadow. An unreal thing.

And yet, somewhere in the unreality of today, I found reality. Belief. I don’t know if the Dark Man is a tangible thing, a monster capable of murder… but I realized tonight that if it is, I will not let it hurt you.

I love you—I’ dore you—more than the world. You’re my tribe. So I’m going north, to pull its gaze away from all us… to just one of us. Me.

Drake’s map, a thing that was undoubtedly drawn by his subconscious (and I know a little something about that, don’t I? hee) leads to his son’s home. Answers wait for me there. Answers, I think, from Drake himself.

Is Amazing Grace trying to redeem himself? ‘Was blind, but now he sees?’ I don’t know… but I hope that whatever I find ends this. I hope it saves him. I don’t know what I’ll find there. I don’t think Drake knew when he drew his map. But there’s something important there; the secret to all of this, I hope.

I’m sorry I don’t have the courage to tell you this in person. I’m sorry I know you well enough to know what you’d say.

If The Dark Man is real and hunting us, it’ll come for the person coming for it, the man driving on the red road, toward the map’s black moon. I’m going there, and I’ll be back soon.

I blew out the candle, locking the door as I left.

The countless, shimmering confetti lights of the city finally relinquished their hold on the passing landscape, allowing sleepy suburbs and townships to emerge on the horizon. Then they, too, disappeared in the Saturn’s rear window… and all was dark. Inky penumbrae of trees and hills now blurred past the windows, illuminated briefly by the high-beams, now gone. The moon glowed like a spotlight, fat and full.

I drove, alone.

I wasn’t alone.

The beast was here, slithering in the back seat—I could hear it, the sound of a spoon swirling through cottage cheese, a wet, slurp-swish that rushed from the right side of the car to the left, restless and hungry.

Glancing into the back seat or rearview mirror was pointless. It didn’t want to be seen. And yet it loomed, always invisible, sliding its tongue against its fangs— obsidian razors, Mr. Taylor, tktktk —huffing its gelid breath against my neck.

I twitched, wide-eyed, hands frozen to the steering wheel. The Saturn’s heater was set to high. It blew cold air.

The car sped on, northward on the interstate. I craved distraction from the sounds behind me. I fiddled with the radio, tapping the “seek” button with a trembling finger. The manic side of me—the side that had split this morning as Emilio’s skull split against Brinkvale tile, the side of me now drinking the Dark Man Kool-Aid, glub-glub-glub, refreshing ice-cold India ink, it hunts best in the pitch, paid in blood, ohhh yeahhhh— wasn’t surprised by the music that slipped through the speakers.

Blue Oyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper.” Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition.” The Doors’ “This Is the End.”

I barked a crazed laugh when Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust” hissed through the static on the FM dial.

“I get the fucking point,” I said.

The radio snatched another station. A wicked, never-ending cackle roared from the dash. I shrieked. Vincent Price laughed on and on in his timeless walk-off from the Michael Jackson song “Thriller.” The Dark Man, it seemed, had a sense of humor.

It’ll play, Mr. Taylor, play with you like…

“…a cat plays with a…”

Tktktk.

I switched off the radio.

“Grih-grih,” I muttered. I squeezed my eyes shut and opened them, focused on the road ahead. Watched the highway’s dividing line tick past the car hood.