Where Darkness Dwells (26 page)

Now, as he made his way through the back stretch of his new property, accompanying children fraught with worry over missing and murdered loved ones, he couldn't help marvel at how things could change in such a short period of time. Arriving early at the library, he'd gather the newspapers collecting at the door, bringing them inside. He'd open the window blinds, and as the morning sun bled through the dusty slats, he could imagine opening the library every day until his working days ended. Those quiet moments when he had the library to himself, when he could hear the slightest creak or sigh of a floorboard as he walked, he knew those times were over. His life had taken a different course.

"So, how's your mom doing?" He wanted to speak with the children, but their shared subject matter was limited. He didn't think it appropriate to bring up Ellie's dead brother. He had thought about Jane Fowler intermittently since he had first seen her on the night he discovered George Banyon's body. There was a hard edge to her, life having worn away any smooth angles.

"She's fine. Just a peach," Jacob said sourly.

As their clothes got heavier with rainwater, Cooper came to a conclusion long in coming: Jane Fowler was an attractive lady. While usually not a difficult conclusion at which to arrive, Jane was different. She didn't possess Thea Calder's starlet beauty. Jane's face was prematurely lined and somewhat plain. Her hair was dull and disorderly, while her eyes were cold and severe. But the way she walked, while assured and almost aggressive, was still graceful; he saw grace even with her nerves stripped raw during their search for Jimmy. She was authoritative, and controlling, but circumstance had forced her into that role. Thea Calder thrived in that environment. For Jane, it was a duty.

"Don't think being kind to us will in any way open her eyes to the likes of you."

"Jacob--" Ellie said, embarrassed.

He could only guess Jane's smile would sparkle in her eyes, reflecting outward, touching everything with a gentle hand. He could only guess, considering he had never seen her smile.

"I was just trying to be polite." He glanced at the boy and then looked at the field ahead, but he still felt Jacob's glare burning through him, ferreting out Cooper's intentions for his mom. Feeling threatened. Doubly threatened. Jane was both his parents.

For a boy to grow up without a father must have been a terrible thing to experience. Since Cooper's father had always worked exhausting hours, it had often felt like his mother had raised him alone. When his father was home, their interaction was limited to barked orders and submissive compliance. He never understood the man, could never figure out what he wanted from him. Cooper had tried to please him, but his efforts never seemed enough. He didn't approve of the way he dressed, the way he spoke, the career path he had chosen.

Some of Cooper's fondest childhood memories were the uncommon moments when his father would invite him to sit on his knee. In his gruff voice he would regale him with nostalgic tales from his youth, when he ran loose through the untamed docks of New York City. His gruffness would soften with wistfulness, but in hindsight, the stories were nothing more than cautionary tales intended to keep him focused and obedient. His father would emphasize his only reason for running loose through the docks--having angered sailors or half-drunken policemen chasing him--was that he had no mother to come home to. At this point in the tale, his father's voice would inevitably lose its softness, even its gruffness, becoming a dry rasp of a thing. His eyes would sheen over with tears. He would struggle to keep his emotions in check as he would once again tell the story about his mother. The same words spoken, unchanged in all his tellings, about how she had died in 1892, crushed under the weight of a faulty tenement wall. A victim of the overcrowded, wild metropolis.

But Cooper's father had lied. All of those times, all of those tellings, his fondest memories of his father, all lies.

"Cooper?" Ellie called out.

From the age when he still sat on his father's knee, until the fateful day when Cooper arrived home from work a mere year and a half ago, his father had lied.

"Hmm, yes?" he said dreamily.

"Are you okay?" Ellie asked, concerned. The sun had broken through the remnant gray cloud cover. Birds once again twittered away, happy for the storm's passing.

"Just thinking is all." He continued walking with Ellie at his shoulder, feeling a wet spider web break across his arm as they cleared a thatch of scrub trees. He wiped his arm clean against his shirt.

To this day, the memory was crystal clear. His father had been away to Philadelphia on business. After braving the snow-swept, congested street on the way home from the library, Cooper stomped the slush from his shoes on the doormat and pulled off his winter coat. He heard his father speaking in the parlor. A log snapped with moisture under a stoked fire. Quite distinctly, he remembered rubbing his palms together for warmth and thinking he would catch up with his father and enjoy the parlor's warmth. He remembered hoping he was in a good mood.

But when he entered the room, the new fire banked high behind the fireplace screen, Cooper found his father speaking quietly with an old woman seated in a wicker-backed wheelchair. Hunched over, white hair pulled back from her face, a constant tremor shook through her left side. When Cooper made eye contact with her, a smile swept over her whole countenance--not just her mouth--but in her eyes her smile gleamed, in her cheeks a healthy glow warmed her drawn cheekbones.

He was struck silent but managed to return her smile. Seeing a Negro woman in their home had thrown him for a loop.

"Father, a guest?"

"Yes, a guest. A very special guest."

Cooper approached the old woman, extending his hand. Her touch was bone-dry, her ashen skin cold against his palm. He could feel a slight tremor all the way through her right hand.

"I'm Theodore Cooper."

He could sense his father shifting anxiously from one foot to the other. It was foreign sounding coming from him. Unsure and nervous.

"Velma Fortune. Nice to meet you."

"Likewise."

She held his hand firmly, almost desperately, much stronger than he expected. He was finally able to pull away, turning back to his father.

"Your trip went well, I hope."

"We finalized the new distribution contracts. The expansion should go as planned."

"I'm glad to hear it," he said, not absorbing any of it. "Well, I should get cleaned up. You know how dusty books can be. I'll let you get back to your guest."

"But son, she came to see you." His voice cracked under the weight of the last syllable.

Once again he met Velma's gaze, and for a moment, for just a fragment of a second, she looked familiar, recognizable. Then it was gone just as quickly.

"Theodore, this is your grandmother. She's come to live with us--"

"Cooper?"

"Oh, I'm sorry Ellie. Did you say something?"

"Yes. We're here," the girl said.

"Really?" Cooper asked, bemused, looking around the wooded surroundings. He didn't know where they were, but he was certain he didn't see a house. "Where might this fabled Greta be?"

Jacob laughed, not saying a word. He pointed at a sprawling tree ten feet from where they stood, hooking his finger skyward, waiting for Cooper's sightline to follow his gesture.

A spiral stairway encircled the tree trunk. A wide plank platform sat at the summit of the stairs thirty feet above the ground. The building's walls were tarpaper, and he could see the corner of a closed hinged door. All nestled neatly among the ancient tree branches as if a part of the tree itself. He caught a whiff of a familiar aroma. He couldn't quite place it, not in the strangeness of this place.

Ellie tugged on his sleeve before starting up the spiral stairway. "That's cornbread, Coop. Greta's famous for it. Come on. It smells fresh from the oven."

19.

Charles Banyon wanted to die. He had snapped like a twig when he saw the Fowler boy. Seeing him Underground had surprised him, had stoked his underlying anger into a heated rage. Before he knew what he was doing, he'd brought a rock down on the boy's head. Then the nigger landed a couple wallops with his huge fists. His buddy, Ogie McCoy, went off hollering, bringing back a group of men to pry him from his back. They pummeled the bastard, dragging him off to some dark corner Charles didn't want to know about. He'd heard the nigger screaming, but tried to block it out. He never desired to witness anything like that, or anything else that happened in the Underground, but he supposed unsavory sights were his price to pay.

His anger had gone, leaving in its wake a desperate sadness.

When he'd stumbled away from the wreckage of Jimmy Fowler's body, his skull was seeping blood. A lot of blood.

Yeah, he'd snapped; Jimmy was dead. Dead and damned.

Leaving the body behind, Charles had rushed to the hooch still and its flowing silvery oblivion. He'd filled an empty wine bottle with its liquid succor, and immediately commenced in emptying it down his gullet.

He didn't know when he started crying, or how he'd scraped his knees bloody. The bottle now nearly empty, the cave wall he leaned against seemed to spin a contorted whirl.

Regret. Mindless, aimless, stupid Goddamn regret. Smashing the Fowler boy's skull, just another regret in a lifetime of regret. He'd end it all; he lived and breathed to end it all, if only…

Mabel…

Jimmy Fowler would never leave this place, this eternal hell. He used to come over to the house all the time, even staying overnight when the boys were young. George still got along with Jimmy,
HAD gotten along with him,
he reminded himself. But his recent visits had been few and far between. George had been embarrassed of him, embarrassed of the booze-swilling bastard he had become. Elizabeth was not so much embarrassed as ashamed. Charles would see it boldly articulated in her face, unshielded by her youthful honesty. Mabel existed within Elizabeth. Whenever his daughter would cast her shamed eyes on him--her steadfast expression altogether too old for someone her age--he felt his wife staring at him through her eyes.

Mabel, let me be. Let me end this misery. This loneliness.

He tipped the bottle, emptying the last quarter of the bottle into his waiting mouth, the far-off candlelight setting the bottle aglow. The earth seemed to pitch beneath his feet, throwing him violently into a rock wall. The bottle shattered in his fist as he crashed, the glass fragments tearing deeply through skin and ligaments. Pain lanced his palm.

He closed his eyes, hoping to black out. Even if his eyes had remained open, madness would blind him, and if not madness, then burning self-hatred would certainly do the trick. He rubbed his slurred-numb and bloodied hand across his chin and wasn't surprised to find it coated in vomit.

He was staring at the doorway when he opened his eyes. The rough log door he had constructed by his own will and labor. A new bloody handprint was smeared along the edge, as if someone fought being placed on the other side. Behind the door a small cubby of a room. No lights, no water or food or anything else a living person would need to survive.

I've ruined everything. I can't do this without you.

He pressed his bristled cheek against the door, ran his fingers down the grain. He heard a stir from the other side. A low growl muted by the door's imposing thickness.

I was a coward. Couldn't bear to live when you didn't. I've done this to you.

He slumped to the floor, splinters digging into his face. The floor beneath him seemed to steady, the earth itself with its incessant spinning having slowed. His nausea, while still present, leveled off. He was sobering.

The growl intensified, becoming a howl. Her nails dug at the rough wood, seeking escape. He had done this. This madness, this cowardice.

"Ch-cha-chaaa," Mabel moaned, trying to articulate his name through her undead lips. She slammed against the door, repeatedly, rhythmically, a mocking heartbeat. Four inches of wood separated them. For all his good intention, it could have been a mile.

He didn't save her in time. Mabel died giving birth to Elizabeth. He could vividly remember the tension leaving her grip as he stood by her bedside. Her hot skin had cooled, and as it did, something slipped away from her. Her soul, her essence? Naming the sensation was pointless. She had died, yet he still brought her to the Underground, carrying her in his arms, her head lolling lifelessly, her birthing blood soaking his clothes. He had known about the tunnels. All his life the knowledge had been there, in the periphery of everyday, spoken about by his father and uncles, all of whom had toiled in the mines. He'd never given it a second thought, had never desired to seek the root of the mystery. Not until Mabel died. He had known about the Underground's powers and had brought her here and now she was this… this monster.