Personal Effects: Dark Art

9

I wiped my bleary eyes. I gulped a mouthful of The Brink’s awful coffee. My office chair creaked like something out of a B movie, an undead creature slowly opening its own coffin.

Okay, shake it off, I told myself.

I stared blankly at the stack of artwork I’d collected from my patients last week. Scraps of torn paper mingled with larger sketches and paintings. Insects. Sharp teeth. A gingerbread house in the forest. A birthday cake with cartoon dynamite sticks for candles. A penis, apparently made of rusted metal and barbed wire. A blood-soaked mother holding her drowned child.

I wasn’t up for this today.

I was preparing to digitally scan the art and post it on Brinkvale Psychiatric’s new website. Doctor Peterson’s recent hospital-wide memo about the site had been an obnoxious thing, banging the drums for “positive promotion for our excellent facilities” to evangelize our “world-class reputation.” Excellent wha? World-class who? Naturally, Peterson had tapped me to administer its Art Therapy section.

And so here I was, placing Bloody Mary’s painting on a flatbed scanner, transforming her trauma into ones and zeroes. The thing whined and whirred. My mind wandered, back to my own trauma.

I stared into space, past my giant ceramic coffee mug, eyes on the CRT monitor, but unfocused. The memory needled behind my eyes: baby Lucas screaming, Mom screaming, light bulbs bursting, the dark man howling. Tumbling, breaking, tumbling, bleeding, tumbling, blood running into her left eye.

And now there was blood on the monitor before me, oozing down the lined glass, bright and wet and glimmering.

I bolted back in my chair, screaming. The old chair’s wheels squealed rusty laughter. My coffee mug somersaulted off the desk and shattered on the floor. I slapped my palms against my redrimmed eyes.

Blood, no, can’t be real, can’t.

I pulled away my hands and swore.

The digital scan of Bloody Mary and Baby Blue stared back at me. The woman in the painting was drenched in watercolor red, nothing more.

You’re going crazy, a splinter of my mind said. I blinked, shook my head. Make a date with the Cheshire Cat, grin the grinnn of the—

No, my rational self interrupted. You’re sleep-deprived. Anxious.

“Thank you, Spock,” I whispered. A wave of reassurance swept over me, followed by more doubt.

“Am I losing it?”

I suppose I would’ve heard a reply were it true. I snatched a roll of paper towels from my art supplies and yanked off far too many sheets for the job. I wadded the towels, dropped them onto the spreading mess, tamped them with my Vans.

Can’t this be over before it’s started? I thought. Can’t this be a dream? Can’t the Invisible Man be nothing more than a con man looking for a quick buck?

Maybe he was, but at this point the stranger was a more reliable source of information than my own father. That knowledge had tormented me all last night, and during the train ride here. The doubt, the damage… it was in my capillaries, piping into me, deeper and deeper. My father was a liar, that much I knew. But to what extent? How far did the rabbit hole go? He was falling far from grace, and I needed to salvage something, something truthful from our sidewalk conversation last night. Something to save him, in my mind, in some small way.

Does that make sense? I needed to believe him, believe in him. He’s my dad. You can’t just give up on your dad.

I gazed at the monitor. Mary was drenched in blood. Last night on East 77th, Dad said my stranger had flayed his wife, cooked her flesh, and paraded in public, covered in her blood. That had been, what?

“Twenty years ago,” I said.

Yes. Twenty years ago. Something that grisly must’ve made big headlines back then, I realized, which meant folks older than me would remember it. People can’t help but recall creep-show oddities like that—just as they rubberneck at the sight of a smashed car on the highway.

I needed someone’s memory. I needed this to save myself from going crazy with doubt, to save my trust in my father. Even with last night’s evidence pointing to the contrary, I needed to give him one last chance.

I stepped to my desk, picked up the walkie-talkie all Brinkvale employees are ordered to carry. I switched its dial from the open, nearly always quiet emergency frequency to the maintenance frequency.

“Malcolm,” I said. “You there? It’s Zach T.” The ’talkie crackled.

“Yep.”

“Gotta talk for a few minutes. Where are you?”

Pause.

“Library. Messy. Always messy.”

“Right on,” I said. I grabbed my satchel by the office door. “Stay put. I’ll be right there.”

It’s criminal, what’s happened to Brinkvale’s library.

When I first visited this cavernous room three months ago, I’d been amazed by its endless oak bookcases, curved walls and spectacular chandeliers. The room was designed in the art nouveau style, all sweeping lines, brazen and optimistic. The Brink’s library was a paradox, a place that shouldn’t exist in such a hard-cornered, utilitarian building.

But my amazement had immediately soured. Most of the bookshelves don’t contain real books at all. The once-colorful murals painted on its walls are peeling like sunburned skin. The chandeliers are encrusted with rust and endless, ancient cobwebs. This subterranean cathedral was cursed by unsound architecture and sinful neglect. Patients rarely ventured here.

It was a lost, heartbroken place.

The library was maintained by Ezra Goolsby, a man as old and wretched as The Brink itself. The geezer had worked here for decades. Rumors about Goolsby abounded at The Brink: he’d suffered a stroke that made him physically incapable of smiling; he was a “true” Morlock, living in a small room behind the library; he had once been a Brinkvale patient… it went on and on.

Worse still, Goolsby cared less about books than the people around him. But the man was a news junky, a periodical fiend. So while The Brink’s library was a tragedy, its collection of bound newspapers and magazines dating back to the 1960s was awe-inspiring.

I entered the library, on the lookout for the grim codger. I heard the distinctive slop-slosh of a mop plunging into a metal bucket, and followed the noise. Malcolm was near the room’s imposing main desk, the place where Goolsby typically reigned over his bibliofiefdom. Malcolm looked up, gave a low-key salute.

I enjoyed being in the presence of this man. Malcolm Sashington had serenity about him, a “let it ride” vibe that I appreciated, particularly in this madhouse. Whenever I saw him, I was reminded of locksmiths and secrets.

“How goes, Zach T?” he said. He tugged the mop from the wringer and flopped it onto the tile.

“Hangin’ in there by my fingernails,” I replied. My eyes ticked around the library, glancing through the rows of bookcases, across the large tables near us. “Where’s the old man?”

“Gool’s not here. Leaves as soon as he sees me. Were I your age, I’d think he’s got a problem with me. Old enough to know better. Goolsby doesn’t hate black people. Goolsby hates everybody.”

I laughed. It echoed against the library’s curved walls.

“Sounded like you needed something,” he said, patting the walkie-talkie on his belt. His hand jostled the large metal hoop next to his radio. The keys there clinked. “Kinda urgent. You here to call in that favor?”

About a month ago, I’d gone topside to catch a breath of fresh air… and caught a whiff of something else altogether: Malcolm toking up on his dinner break. In typical cucumber-cool style, Malcolm hadn’t freaked. But he had asked me if I’d snitch. My reply had brought me a boon. A Malcolm Favor.

“I don’t think this compares, but you be the judge. You got a good memory?”

Malcolm worked the floor with his mop. “If you’re lookin’ for history, talk to Goolsby. He’s The Brink’s elephant. Never forgets.”

“Goolsby eats human souls,” I snorted. “And it’s got nothing to do with The Brink. Come on. You got a knack for remembering things or not?”

“How far we goin’ back?”

“Twenty years.”

Malcolm let out a low whistle. “Slippin’ into favor territory. Let’s find out.”

“All right. I don’t know when or where this happened, but it was probably in the city. Guy kills his wife, paints himself with her blood.”

Malcolm leaned against his mop handle and gave me an insultingly bored look.

“That’s it?” he asked. “You’re gonna have to do a lot better than that, Zach T. Wouldn’t even make a condo association newsletter in that town.”

“Would it help if the guy was a crazy vet, and ate her skin?”

My friend nearly yawned now. “Son, lots of vets came back with lots of problems. Dime a dozen. You’re looking at one, dig? So watch what you say about those who serve.”

“A veterinarian,” I replied. “Dude cuts her up. When she dies, dunks himself in her blood, streaks the town.” I grimaced. “He cooked up her skin and ate it like bacon.”

The mop stick banged against the floor like a gunshot.

“Oh hell yes,” he said, his eyes wide. “Not twenty years back. Thirty”

“Thirty?” I asked. “But that doesn’t… Are you sure?”

“Hell yeah. Super Bowl Twelve, kiddo. Cowboys versus Steelers. I can’t tell you who won that game anymore, but I remember opening up the paper that morning fully expecting to see a story about my man Harvey Martin and the Cowboys’ ‘Doomsday Defense.’ Instead, we all got that story on the front page. Nearly puked in my Cheerios.”

Malcolm stooped to pick up the mop. He stared into the bucket’s brackish water.

“Mighty hard thing to forget,” he said finally.

I nodded. “Cool, that’s enough.” I turned, now striding through the corridors of bookshelves, searching for the proverbial needle in this moldering haystack. I was surrounded by endless green books, each as tall as a man’s arm, all identical save for the handwritten notes on their spines.

(TIMES) AUG—SEPT 1984.

(POST) JAN—FEB 1985.

I moved from case to case, shelf to shelf, finally finding (TIMES) JAN—FEB from thirty years ago. I hefted the book from its dusty slot, and brought it back to one of the tables.

If Malcolm was right, then Dad was wrong. I didn’t want Dad to be wrong.

“Last chance,” I hissed, flipping through the pages. Headlines, halftone photos and ads screamed by, time capsules of 1978 and ’79: “Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water…”… Investigation Continues In French Tanker Explosion… “We can do whatever we want. We’re college students!”… More Bodies Found In Gacy Murders… “Ain’t nobody can fly a car like Hooper!”

Finally, there it was, January 15, and there he was. The “Bloodbath Killer.”

The face in the mug shot looked nothing like last night’s Invisible Man. Not even thirty years (twenty years, I thought, Dad said twenty years) of hard time could’ve made a difference.

My stranger was Caucasian. The Bloodbath Killer was Asian.

My fingers dug into the yellowed paper, tearing it from the book.

I slumped into a chair, tossing my satchel onto the table, ignoring how the clunk reverberated around the room. I glared at the ripped page in my hand, barely reading the story, finally spotting my father’s name near its end, listed as a first-year associate. That was lawyer-speak for a lowly “assistant to the assistant” position. Last night, Dad pulled a memory from the earliest days of his career and ad-libbed. Lied.

“That’s what he said back then, too,” Dad had said. “That’s why he bathed in his wife’s blood. To finally become ‘visible.’” But no such detail was mentioned in this news story. And why should it be? It wasn’t true.

“Dad, you son of a bitch.”

Tears, bitter and bright, filled my eyes.

“Hey Zach T,” Malcolm said. He sat down across from me. “You okay, kid?”

“Past twenty-fours have been pretty rough,” I muttered, wiping my eyes. “A real clusterfuck. Everything’s different now.”

“You talkin’ about that blind man in Max? Martin Grace?”

I groaned. “Yeah, sure, why the hell not? I’ve been finding truths and lies all over the place. Grace is a frickin’ ant in amber. Doesn’t have a past, and doesn’t have a future—not without my help, anyway. He’s spent so long flogging himself for things he didn’t do, he thinks he deserves it. He doesn’t.” I sighed. “None of us deserve it.”

Malcolm tapped the weathered pages. “What’s this have to do with…?”

“Oh, it doesn’t,” I said. “Not really. This is just my motif for the day, ‘it ain’t what you thought it was, kid,’ life’s way of taking a crap on you while you’re down…”

I shrugged, suddenly fed up with myself. “Sorry. Rambling. Usually not like this.”

“I know you’re not,” Malcolm said. He leaned back in his chair. “So. You want some free advice?”

“Shit, I’ll pay for it at this point.”

He laughed.

“You ain’t Charlie Brown, I ain’t Lucy and the doctor is most definitely not in. I don’t know what’s going on with you or that blind man, or that”—he nodded to the paper in my hand—“but I know the sight of a man who’s been beamed by more than a few curve balls.”

I let out a knowing heh.

“Listen. People are smart,” he said. “People usually know what they need to do at times like this, they know it in their hearts, but they gotta hear it from someone else. So I’m not going to say anything that’ll surprise you.”

I nodded.

“Okay.”

Malcolm smirked, his face suddenly young and impish. He reached beneath the table, and pulled out his key ring. It clattered onto the table. Malcolm placed his hands on either side of the ring, palms flat against the wood grain.

“We walk a straight line, brother. Day after day we walk straight lines because it’s easy to do that, because we need to do that, because it’s efficient.” He winked. “Preee-dictability. Right?”

I opened my mouth, but Malcolm slapped his palms against the table. I watched, befuddled to the bone, as he then banged out a thunderous drum roll. The keys between his hands trembled on the surface.

“But see?” he called over the noise, pounding harder now. “Shit happens! Earthquakes, curve balls, meteors from space!” I watched, mesmerized, as the keys bounced and skipped, slowly marking a drunken path toward the edge of the table, toward Malcolm’s lap. “Can’t walk a straight line in a earthquake, can ya? Well?”

“No!” I hollered. I couldn’t help but grin. This was ridiculous library theater, a wind-tunnel “Afterschool Special.”

“NO!” Malcolm cried, smiling. “Then what do you do?” The keys clinked merrily, dancing ever-onward toward the edge. Malcolm glanced from the keys to my face, his brown eyes now insistent. “What do you do, Zach T? Life’s giving you lemons, life’s sticking it in and breaking it off, it’s got the ground shakin’, and if you can’t walk a straight line cuz walking a straight line is suicide, then what do you do?”

The keys were a half-inch from the edge now. Now a quarter inch. My hand snaked out, and snatched the ring just before it plummeted from view.

“You improvise,” I said. The keys were heavy and strangely comforting in my hand. “Do the unexpected.”

The janitor nodded.

“That you do,” he said. “If the world is throwing you curve balls, learn to pitch. Learn the rules. Fire back.” He nodded again to the newspaper story. “I bet it’ll work for whatever you’re dealing with there. Shoot, I bet it’ll work for that blind man, too.”

I tossed the keys to him. “Learn to pitch,” I said.

“Yep.” Malcolm scooted his chair away from the table. I watched him shuffle back to his mop and bucket. “You learn the rules, know how the dance goes, then you improvise. Dig?”

“Dug,” I said. “Thanks.”

I walked toward the library’s curved doorway and the spartan hall beyond. “So. That favor. Did I just call it in?”

Malcolm looked up from his work and grinned.

“Hell no, Zach T! You ask me something that’s easy-peasy to remember, and then you give me a chance to scream like a banshee and raise holy hell in Goolsby’s castle. I nearly owe you another… favor for the good times.”

…He shooed me with his hand. “Go on, git.”

I returned to my office on Level 3, feeling a bit like my old self. Malcolm’s advice would be good for handling Martin Grace later that day—in fact, I thought a had a solid improvisational curve ball to blast at the blind man this afternoon. Dealing with my father… that was a different story. I filed him away in my mind, buried myself in my work, anything not to deal with it.

Avoidance, yes. I knew it then, but couldn’t put forth the effort to care.

I scanned my patients’ artwork and posted it to The Brink’s website. I made mid-morning rounds, briefly checking in with the patients with whom I’d worked yesterday and chatted with their psychiatrists, promising to file paperwork by day’s end.

And then I was off to work with today’s patients. These were the high-risk, disturbed, violent folk. The people probably destined to spend the rest of their lives here.

These devastatingly ill patients resided on the eighth floor of The Brink, the level dubbed “Golgotha.” The only thing separating Level 8 from New York bedrock was Level 9, “The Sub,” home to the boiler room and storage.

Perhaps Level 8’s nickname was meant to be optimistic. After all, Golgotha was where things were at their worst for Jesus Christ, and yet he rose from the dead, good as new. Perhaps the name represented transformation; a beginning.

I couldn’t think of it in such terms. The patients here were treated with as much dignity and care as possible, but this was where The Brink’s dark legacy breathed on. This was Golgotha, the place of the skull, where crazies were sent to die in the dark.

I spent some time with John Palmetto—aka Lore—a patient here since the 1980s. Palmetto had drawn inspiration from local urban legends, using those stories like cookbook directions to kill eleven teenage girls.

I painted for—not with, but for—Diana Ellis, a woman so obsessed with the mutilation of human flesh that she’d spent two summer days in her Erie County farmhouse kitchen performing home-brewed autopsies on her family… and had then amputated her own arms. Brink-folk called her June Cleaver.

I worked with a half-dozen Golgotha patients, and even through these sessions—positively harrowing by yesterday’s standards—I tuned out the crumbling surroundings and found solace in Malcolm’s advice. I found my footing. I improvised. It helped.

I took The Brink’s elevator back to Level 3 to grab my lunch.

Dr. Nathan Xavier was waiting by my office door.

“Taylor, you look like shit.”

It was clear Xavier took perverse glee in saying this. He grinned his plastic Ken grin, then primly straightened his spotless doctor’s coat. I brushed past him, unlocked the door and hurried inside. The room still reeked from this morning’s coffee spill. He followed me.

“You’re killing my buzz,” I said. “What do you want?”

“Oh, just stopped by to drop off some paperwork. I don’t agree with many of your conclusions about Nam Ngo, your ‘Clocktalker.’ I slid my comments under your door.” He pointed at my feet. “You’re standing on them.”

I stared down at the crumpled papers under my Vans. I picked them up. These were carbon copies; the originals had been sent to The Brink’s chief administrator, Dr. Peterson. It is clear that Brinkvale’s art therapist underestimates the psychoses of the patient, it began. I slapped the document on my desk.

“What’s your problem, Xavier?”

“Doctor Xavier,” he said. He glanced around my office, wrinkling his nose. “This place is a sty, Taylor. It stinks.” He nodded at the brown pile of soggy paper towels, still on the floor. “You’re a slob.”

I snatched up the dripping wad and tossed it into my wastebasket. I sighed. My left palm was now soaked with cold coffee. I considered wiping it on my jeans just to appall the guy, but instead I gritted my teeth and took the high road. Again.

“Xavier, what’s this about? Is Brinkvale life so dull that you have to gun after me again? Didn’t we just do this? Peterson’s on my side. His email said so.”

I might not have seen much of Peterson since I was hired here, but two months ago he’d served Xavier a polite smack-down after the young doctor criticized me during a staff meeting. Since then, Xavier’s tormenting was less frequent, but more irritating. Until today, that is.

“It’s about you being a failure,” he replied. “Word around here is that you’re fucking up the Drake case. You’re losing it, cracking up.”

“That’s… that’s not true.”

“You sure? I watched the security footage from yesterday’s session with Grace. You let your guard down, lost control of the situation, and called the patient a son of a bitch. He might be crazy, but Grace was right about one thing: you are an amateur.”

Xavier was spying on me? I clenched my fists.

“You had no goddamned right—”

“And you have no business treating him,” he snapped. “Or anyone else, for that matter. Look, it’s nothing personal, Taylor. It’s merely survival of the fittest… and you’re making yourself an easy target.”

He extended his hand now. His face was wicked and cheerful.

“But hey, congratulations on getting your name in the paper last week. You’re out of your mind, playing the ‘no comment’ card with these reporters. And still, a star is born. Daddy D.A. must be so proud.”

To hell with the damned high road. I shook his hand, gripping it hard. I clapped him on the shoulder with my other hand. I squeezed harder. He squeezed back, growling.

“You’re an asshole,” I said.

“And you won’t be here much longer to say so,” he replied.

I released him, fuming. Xavier grinned again, took a tiny bow, and stepped out of my office.

I slid into my desk chair, wondering how long it would take Xavier to notice the palm-sized coffee stain on his lab coat.

I was opening my desk drawer to grab my lunch when someone else knocked at the door. I looked up. The stranger wore a business suit and a brown raincoat. I immediately thought of Karl Malden in those old American Express ads: Don’t leave home without it.

“Are you Zach Taylor?” he asked.

I nodded. I was tempted to point at the plastic plaque bolted to the door. Xavier had pissed me off. I was sleep-deprived and famished. I just wanted some time to myself, and to prep for my session with Grace.

The man passed me his business card.

“Roland Smith, from Lifeplan Medical Alliance,” he said. “I’ll take just a minute of your time. I’m here about Martin Grace.”

I stole a quick glance at the card. An insurance rep. I’d dealt with a few of these company men before. They’re nice enough, but in the end, they’re here on behalf of my patients’ insurance companies—which means they want to ask questions about liability and payouts, things better suited for the Dr. Petersons of the world.

“I’ve got a lot of people asking me about Mr. Grace these days,” I said. “If I gave every one of them a minute of my time—and honestly, people just say that, they want a lot more than a minute, don’t they?—I’d be here until next leap year.”

“Hey, 02-29,” he said, smiling. “That’s my son’s birthday. Cool, huh?”

“Yeah,” I replied, and it was. But I wasn’t the guy Roland Smith needed to talk to. And I was hungry, for Pete’s sake.

“Look, I know you want to know about Mr. Grace’s condition, but—”

“How’s he doing?” Smith asked. His voice sounded concerned, but his brown eyes were inquisitive.

“I can’t tell you that,” I said. “It’s a patient confidentiality issue.”

Smith nodded. “Lifeplan Medical Alliance just wants to know his status, considering next week’s trial. You understand.”

“I do, but we both know I’m in the clear here. You want to talk to an administrator about this.”

“Yes, of course, but perhaps—”

I tossed his business card on my desk, scooped up my Brinkvale-issued walkie-talkie and stood up. Smith stopped talking.

“See this?” I said, raising the radio. “On the other end of this is a 260-pound security guard who used to be a pro wrestler. He loves his boys more than the world, but I bet he still gets a kick out of cracking skulls. You want me to call him?”

Smith’s face had gone pale. He shook his head.

“You’ll direct all formal inquiries to Brinkvale admin, then.”

He nodded.

“I’m glad we settled this,” I said. “Have a great day.”

The insurance man left. I checked my watch.

“Damn it all,” I muttered. Too late to head topside.

I plopped into my chair, unwrapped my sandwich, and ate in silence.

That afternoon, I was greeted by another B-movie discotheque light show on Level 5. The hallway’s incandescent bulbs still sputtered and stuttered like yesterday, still victims of ancient wiring and INSUFFICIENT FUNDS reports. My stomach churned at the darkness.

I saw Emilio Wallace’s tall form directly ahead, about a hundred feet away, still standing watch by Room 507’s door. He waved at me. The flickering lights transformed the fluidity of his arm into choppy stop-motion footage. He walked quickly toward me, meeting me halfway.

“Yo Z,” he said, and gave me a broad smile. His capped teeth looked disturbing in this light, like blinking Chiclets. He clapped me hard on the shoulder.

I looked closer at Emilio’s face. His Superman chin was covered in a Brillo-pad of stubble. His eyes were a little wild, feral.

“Hey man, you okay?” I asked. Above us lights buzzed on and off. “Dude. No disrespect here, but you look a little hellish.”

“Heh, nope, none taken,” he replied. “It’s… it’s just good to see someone, you know. For hours and hours and hours, it’s been just me and Martin here—t-t-to the max.”

“In the Max,” I corrected. “Martin… Grace? You guys been talking?”

Emilio nodded. “Come on, Z… when was the last time we had anyone in Max? Gotta k-k-kill time somehow. It’s just been m-m-me and Martin, shootin’ the bull.”

I nodded back, and shivered. Goddamn, it was cold down here.

“G-good to see you, is all,” he said. “They gotta get these lights fixed. Mess with your head. Between them and all the OT, I been seein’…”

His voice trailed off. He looked up at one of the lights, then shrugged, helpless.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothin’,” Emilio said. He placed his large hand on my shoulder and gave it a firm squeeze. “Just need some sleep, that’s all. Damned good to see you.”

We walked toward Room 507. Emilio asked about the paper bag in my hand; I told him it was for Martin Grace. I asked Emilio if he’d heard Grace playing on the electronic keyboard I’d left yesterday.

“Nope, but I wasn’t here this morning. That was Chaz. Not sure if he heard anything. Didn’t mention it. Is it important?”

We stopped a few feet short of Grace’s room.

“Might be,” I said. “I’ll find out soon enough.”

“Well, if he doesn’t tell you if he got all Liberace on—”

The lights above us suddenly flashed brighter and quicker than before. A bulb far down the hall—near the elevator—popped and shattered. Sparks and glass fell onto the cracked tiled floor. I gasped. A tiny shriek echoed from the nurse’s station. Emilio gave a low, appreciative chuckle.

“I’ll call maintenance, don’t worry,” he said. “That’s the second one to go today. Listen. Like I said, if he doesn’t want to talk about it, you can always play back the CC tape.”

I thought of Xavier and harrumphed.

“The room’s vidcam.”

“Roger,” Emilio said. He stepped over to the door, unlocked it. “Okay, get to work. Give a shout if you need me.”

He tugged it open. The hallway’s light show flashed wicked shadows into the void beyond. I could see the dark outline of Martin Grace, still in the center of the room, still sitting in his wooden chair. I thought about Malcolm. I thought about improvisation.

My hand slid into the inky blackness, fingertips groping for the room’s light switch. I found it. The room blew up bright, forcing me to squint.

Martin Grace’s eyes were closed. His face, impassive. Dead.

The lights outside the room stopped blinking. Now, there was perfectly steady, innocent incandescent light… everywhere.

Martin Grace was grinning now. Grinning like a crazy person.

I felt a bead of sweat trail down my spine.

“Huh,” I heard Emilio say. I stepped into the room, toward my patient. The door closed behind me.

Grace kept grinning.

It was as quiet as a tomb.

I stood still and watched the man closely, not speaking, wanting to defy his expectations. I’d done the predictable thing yesterday, had taken my lumps, learned my lesson. It was time to test Grace’s predictability now.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Taylor,” he said finally. His grin didn’t waver. “What’s in the bag”

I wasn’t surprised by this. I’d expected it. Cool.

“Something for later.”

I placed the sack on the table by the door, next to the Casio. I dragged the other chair to the center of the room, and sat.

“Did you relay my warning to Nurse Jackson” he asked. His voice was low and smooth, a night-drive radio DJ. “About her early date with the maker”

“No.”

Grace’s lined face slipped into a frown. “Ah. Well, I must say that doesn’t sound very gentlemanly,” he said. “Doesn’t sound like someone concerned with the fate of his fellow man. That’s why you’re here, after all, isn’t it? To make a—”

His voice dipped low, dripped with condescension.

“—positive impact on the world. To give something back.”

I crossed my arms, knowing that my chair’s creaks would telegraph this. The man’s head tilted slightly. A ghostly, knowing smirk was now on his lips.

“Behold the indignance of youth,” he began. “It’s no wonder the leaders of this great nation worry—”

“Do you smell that” I asked.

Martin Grace stopped speaking. I watched his nostrils flare slightly, his eyebrows rise, appraising. He said nothing.

I leaned forward, placing my elbows on my knees. “You smelled the jam on my shirt yesterday, and that was only a smudge. Surely you smell this.”

“What,” Grace said. It wasn’t a question.

“Bullshit,” I replied.

I was learning to pitch.

Martin Grace’s face tightened. Twisted. Went crimson, like a cartoon. His knuckles flared white as he clenched his fists.

“Just who do you think you’re talking to? Do you have any idea who in the FUCK you’re talking to”

“I know who I’m not talking to,” I said. “I’m not talking to Martin Grace.”

The man’s eyes opened. He stared at my face, his pine-green eyes burning hot and furious.

“You know what I mean,” I said. “Don’t insult me by saying you don’t. Let’s get a few things straight, Martin. One: No, I do not know who in the fuck I’m talking to. But I’d like to know. I’d like you to tell me who you really are, not who you claim to be. I’d like you to work with me, get talking and playing on that piano, expressing—and helping—yourself, for God’s sake. Two: You were right yesterday. I’m not ‘like the others.’ You’re stuck with me, so lend me a hand here. I’m going to find out one way or another, I really am. I’ll keep digging.”

Martin Grace spat at my feet, missing my sneakers by a half-inch.

“Dig,” he whispered. “Dig all the way to hell. That’s the only way you’ll find me, maggot. I run the red show, the hellshow.”

I had no idea what that meant.

“Who are you” I asked. “Who were you”

The man’s face smoothed over, went cold. At that moment, Martin Grace reminded me of my father.

“You seem to think that if I see, everything will be all right,” he said. “‘Praise the Lord, it’s another Mr. Taylor miracle, he saved The Mole Man.’ That’s what they’re calling me now, you know that, don’t you”

I didn’t. The smile on Grace’s face told me he knew this.

He tapped his temple, drawing my attention to his open, sightless eyes.

“But your mind doesn’t understand. Even if you save me, you’re not going to save me. You’re going to kill people… probably yourself. I’m doing you a favor. Protecting you.”

“You know, I’m getting pretty damned tired of people trying to protect me,” I snapped. “The past is what it is. You can’t erase it no matter how hard you try, or how far you run. What are you so afraid of”

Martin Grace’s head tilted slightly, as if he had heard something. He closed his eyes. He raised his head slowly, the light bulb above him illuminating his lined face. He was handsome and horrifying in the silence.

“Oh, you know,” he said.

The Dark Man, yes—but I shook my head. “I honestly don’t. You’re crippled by remorse for murders you didn’t commit. These visions you had, they have explanations, Martin. Roots from before, from before you were Martin Grace. If you tell me about your life, if we go down that road together…”

I paused. Grace wasn’t listening. He was still smiling up at the ceiling.

“I want you to find peace,” I said simply. “I want help you find—”

“You know… what’s… here,” he said. “I know you do. I can smell it all over you, the thing I’ve smelled on myself every day for ten years now. You’re my midnight kin, my haunted brother, my tormented son. You’ve seen it, you’ve felt it, you know it’s here, been here all along, been close, hosting Black Mass in the corners of your mind, in the corner of every room, behind every closed door, under every bed—”

“Knock it off, man,” I said.

“—and you know it’s here—”

“Stop.”

“—right now. With us. Right. Now.”

The light above Grace flickered. I gaped up at it, unbelieving.

“I hate that sound,” the blind man said.

The light buzzed again.

I had a hand to my mouth now. I could feel the blood rushing from my face. I couldn’t help it. I felt slow and stupid, like a child. Frightened. I couldn’t stand, couldn’t think straight. Was it getting colder in here?

“There’s not a single bulb in my apartment, you know,” he said. “Nary a one. Keeps things quiet. Keeps things sane. When I’m alone and I’m thinking about it, it does this. Plays with the lights. It’s not far, never far, is it”

I looked over my shoulder, to the wall by the door. The light switch had not moved from its “on” position. The light above flashed more Morse code.

“The Dark Man, Mr. Taylor. Can you see it” Grace’s voice purred. “Your friend outside certainly can. He’s been seeing it for a day now; it’s been prowling the hall like a panther, driving him mad.”

Shadows splashed across the bare walls as the light went berserk. Could I see it? Christ, could I? Something black there, in the corner? An absence of… everything? Light? Something breathing, shoulders heaving?

Was it real?

Would you be mine? Could you be mine?

“Emilio thinks it’s a vampire,” Grace whispered. He said this as if it were a wink-nudge secret between two friends. I shuddered. “But it’s so much worse than that. Don’t you agree”

He spread his arms, a priest at the pulpit. The light continued to flicker. “This is where the Inkstain lives. You’re wise to be afraid of the dark. It hunts best in the pitch.”

I’d made plans for today’s session. Wanted to rattle him, put a chink in his impenetrable suit of armor. This hadn’t been on the agenda—God no.

“It’s in every exhale, every other heartbeat, every third eye blink, and you want me to set it free? No, Mr. Taylor. That would be unwise. Just do what your father wants you to do. Forget about the blind man, the lost love. Keep him buried in The Brink like he wants, if only for another week, so Daddy can bury him someplace worse. Father knows best. Forever and ever, amen.”

And then the room went dark for a breathless, terrible moment.

Something skittered in the blackness. Millipede feet.

This isn’t happening, I told myself, this is the power of suggestion, bad wires, bad lights, bad, broken Zach, nothing more. There’s nothing else in this

Skitter, from behind. Tktk.

in this room goddamnit, just me and the blind man and

The bulb flashed bright again, steady. Grace lowered his head and looked at me.

I fought every urge to turn around, look for the thing that was never there. I took a deep breath, bit my tongue to focus.

“What… what do you know about my father” I finally asked.

The man chuckled. “Now who’s insulting whom, Mr. Taylor? If you’re curious, ask him, not me.”

He lowered his arms.

“Now are you going to tell me what’s in your bag of tricks before you leave… or will you be coy and make me guess? Because I assure you, Mr. Taylor, our session is over. You’ll stare at me and ask me question after question, and I’ll say nary a syllable. You may be stupid to think you can crack me… but you’re smart enough to know what I say is true.”

And I did. My shoulders slumped. No improvisation from me, no history from him. No. Not in this room.

But what about… outside this room?

My eyes turned to the Casio piano by the door. Learn to pitch, Malcolm had said. I’d soon see if my patient had stepped to the plate last night. And tomorrow, I’d see if he’d play today’s game, too.

I strode toward the room’s table. Grace smiled at the sound of the bag I’d brought today. It crinkled in my hands. I pulled out a long, flat, rectangular box, and a sketch pad. I flipped open the top of the box. “They’re pastels, Martin,” I said. “They’re more than a hundred here. And paper.”

Grace laughed, a full-belly guffaw.

“You’ve giving a blind man crayons? You’re the worst art therapist the world has—”

“You know, I knew you were going to say that,” I replied, and I had. The curve ball was in my hand, small, but finally there. I needed these unexpected maneuvers, if I wanted to evoke something from him, some expression beyond this game-playing. “You’re a one-trick pony, Martin Grace. Let’s see if you have the balls to evolve. Draw for me, blind man. I’ll come back tomorrow to see what you’ve created. We’re going to talk about it.”

He opened his mouth to retort. I didn’t listen. I grabbed the Casio piano from the table and left the room.