Дж. Хатчинс - Personal Effects - Dark Art

“Yes.”

The silence lasted no more than five seconds. It felt like a day.

“Drake said I was marked,” I said. “Me and Lucas and Dad. And my girlfriend.”

Henry’s eyes ticked across my body. He squinted. He nodded very slowly.

“Did you find,” he asked, “what you were sent to find?”

“I… I don’t know. I think so, but it doesn’t make sense. A photo and a letter from Big Brother. The monster was protecting them, like a watchdog.”

I shivered then, recalling the Dark Man’s fingers shredding my skin.

“And why doesn’t that make sense?” Henry said.

“Because what I found basically nullified the only thing going for me in the Drake case. I thought someone else murdered all those people. A Russian. Why did Drake send me there? I didn’t gain anything. Poof, there’s the proof, not true.”

Henry squinted. “It had a vested interest in protecting them. Maybe there’s more power in what you found.”

“And maybe Drake sent me there to die,” I said. “He knew his son would be there, knew the Dark Man would be waiting and hungry. I was ‘marked,’ after all. Double cross, kill the threat. I’m the only one, perhaps ever, who’s gotten this close to… to curing him.”

I sighed. “I think… I think I beat it,” I said. “It saw the photo of the Russian, the man who’d vowed vengeance against Drake. It should’ve killed me, but it vanished.”

Henry took a deep breath and exhaled. He shook his head as slowly as he’d nodded a minute ago.

“Know this, son. Things like the Dark Man are never ‘beaten.’ There’s nothing in this world that can beat them. They’re hired guns. They leave when they’ve done their job.”

“You said you were there, back then, when the Dark Man killed Mom. You told me we were under attack. You saved Lucas, you said. It was beaten. It left. How?”

“It did what it was told to do. It took a beloved of Will’s, just as Will had…”

He stopped.

“Zach, if it’s gone, then you found its secret and put it to rest. Whatever was in that house was the key. The Dark Man has absolutes. It must do what it was born to do. The powers that control these monsters, the terms that govern when an unholy contract has been fulfilled—those are rarely absolute. If it’s gone, its contract was fulfilled. You did it. I’m proud of you.”

I scrubbed my face with my damaged hands, exasperated.

“But I don’t know what to do now,” I said. “Everything I’ve done to help Drake has had… heh… catastrophic results. And now he’s getting pulled from The Brink. I’ve got—”

“Three minutes,” the guard said.

“—I’ve got no reason to care,” I continued. “I know this. I’ve done everything I can think of, I’ve broken every rule there is to break, I’ve gone emotionally and ethically bankrupt, and look, just look at me. Finally, I’m as banged up on the outside as I am on the inside. This is a job, just a fucking job , and no job’s worth this. But.”

I looked at him, anguished. Could he possibly understand?

“But he’s my patient, Henry. Does that make sense, what that means to me? No matter what happens in the trial, no matter what happens to him once he leaves The Brink, I want to help him now. I need to. I… I can’t…”

“…let it go,” Henry finished. He gave a serene, bittersweet smile, and lifted his eyes skyward. “That’s why I’m here, Zach. Couldn’t let go. Will finally got his wish because I couldn’t let it go. It makes more sense than you’ll know.”

Goddamn it, I had so many questions about that day. About the twenty years that had come and gone. But there was no time.

Always running out of time.

“What’s left?” I said.

Henry leaned even closer to the glass. “The Dark Man is an entity of vengeance, son. That’s what it was built to be; it never learned to be this way. It is what it is. Absolute punishment, retribution that’s as compassionless as the sin that brought it here. But is the Dark Man your roadblock?”

“No. It’s Drake. His insistence.”

Henry nodded. “He wants the blood washed from his hands. Not for the crimes he’s accused of…”

I blinked.

“…but for the ones he’ll never be accused of,” I said. “Red Show.”

I finally understood—and my heart ached with the understanding.

“I should go,” I said. “But I’ll come back. If you’ll have me.”

For the first time in the twenty total minutes I’d spent with him, my uncle’s face brightened and beamed. He smiled.

It looked like his first smile in twenty years.

11:30 AM, the scuffed Eterna on my wrist said.

I strode through The Brink’s employee parking lot with newfound purpose, sucking in the crisp air, nodding at the gorgeous autumnal spectacle that was Primoris Maximus. And now my feet clomped up the limestone front steps of the hospital, my hands tugged open the two metal doors. I had steel in my veins, and an old friend riding shotgun in my head. I needed his brazen lawlessness, his steel, for the endgame.

I stopped in the doorway. Malcolm stood inside our sorry lobby, his mop in hand. He saw me and gasped. I shrugged— No time to explain —and glanced at the glimmering tiles. A yellow sign read, CAUTION: WET FLOOR.

“I owe you a bottle of Grey Goose, right?” I asked.

Malcolm nodded dumbly.

“What… what the hell happened to you, boy?”

“I owe you two bottles now,” I said, moving past him. My mud-spattered Vans left a trail of footprints across the freshly mopped floor.

“Sheeeeeit,” Malcolm said.

I passed the scratched window of the Administrator’s Office, heading toward the elevator. Lina Velasquez’s cat’s-eye glasses rose from her computer screen, and her eyes met mine. Her taut face went pale. She peeped a tiny scream.

I kept walking.

Behind me, I heard her slapping the glass, her rings clack-clack-clacking.

“Taylor!” she cried.

“It can wait,” I said.

“Taylor! Muy urgente!”

I turned the corner, not listening.

More gasps from coworkers as I passed the break room. I heard a coffee mug shatter on the floor.

The elevator doors were directly ahead now. I walked faster down the long corridor, reached them, jabbed the metal “down” button with my thumb. It gave a loud, satisfying thwack! against the panel.

Dr. Peterson’s voice called from behind me, his perfunctory staccato filling the hall. I’d never heard him raise his voice before. I’m not sure anyone here ever had.

“Zachary!”

The lift beyond the doors began to whine, heading to the attic. I turned around.

The elderly man stood at the corner of the hallway, fifty feet away, his round face glowing pink from the dash to catch up. His belly rose and fell. Peterson’s eyes were wide, worried and owlish behind his glasses.

At The Brink, zue give a hoot, I thought, and began to chuckle.

The noise died in my throat when another man turned the corner. He loomed behind Peterson like a Brooks Brothers grim reaper, an ill omen. The source of Peterson’s worry.

“Dad.”

Yes. There to personally oversee the transfer. Behind him stood an NYPD cop, undoubtedly the armed escort for said transfer. The officer’s walkie-talkie snarled incomprehensible dispatch fuzz-speak.

Across the tiled void, my father’s face was a grim amalgam of disgust, disappointment and determination. He and I were gunslingers again, like we were in the 67th Precinct parking lot, widescreen duelists. Peterson turned and began to say something to the cop.