We Let The Dark In: Chapter One

Here is the very first chapter of my very first novel. Please leave a comment and let me know if it hooked you and you would like me to post additional chapters. I hope you enjoy!

CHAPTER ONE

There I was, at my favorite part, within those first few blissful seconds when the tip of the blade parted the seas of my flesh, like Moses, leading my damned soul to the promised land of fuck all. The hairs on the back of my neck stood in salute to the higher power of the sweet sting. The ghosts of a trillion insects cascaded from my face, down my limbs, escaping through my fingertips and toes, skittering their tiny legs all the way down as my free hand white-knuckled the armrest. My former patients, the drug-addicted, used to reminisce about the euphoria they experienced after plunging a full syringe of tar into their veins. I figured this would be the closest I would ever get to that ecstasy. It was the only way I had found to stay the haunting, guttural crackle of my victims as their last frantic breaths escaped their lungs. My eternal nightmare that had plagued me since I was a murderous little boy.

Drug addicts were the absolute worst. They would relapse more often than not, and many overdosed. It wore on me, accepting all of their promises, counting on them, only to find them toes up in the morgue. With my new patients, it’s a lot of the same empty promises, but I have yet to have one tech addict die under my care.

The door to my office shook as someone on the other side pounded it. The tip of my blade sank deeper into my torso, ricocheting off my ribcage, then flying from my hand and bouncing off the stiff, low-pile carpet.

“Dr. Brooks, Daniel Liebowitz and his mother are in the waiting room. They’re thirty minutes early. Should I send them in?” asked Molly.

I cupped my hand over my mouth, blowing air through my fingers, trying not to yelp in agony. “Five minutes,” was the first thing that came to my tiny brain, then spilled regretfully over my lips. There was blood on the carpet, blood on my pants, impossible amounts seeping from the wound on my shirtless body. How was I going to clean all this up in five?

Shadows of Molly’s twin pumps shone through the slit at the bottom of the door for longer than I liked. I imagined her ear suctioned to the cool, smooth surface of my office door, listening in to see what I was up to. She had been my receptionist for only two months. She was picking things up quickly, but I couldn’t see her working for me much longer. I could tell by the gossip she regurgitated every morning that she was nosy, and in my life, nosy Molly was a potential threat.

I searched around the room for a remedy. I thought about yanking the drapes from the windows, wrapping them around the wound, and treating little Danny toga style, but didn’t think that would go over well.

I thought, maybe I should make a run for it. Book it out of the front office, like lightning, through the waiting room, down the emergency stairwell, to my car in the parking garage. A mere blur to Molly and the Liebowitzs. Maybe they wouldn’t notice the trail of blood I left behind. Maybe I could clean it in the morning before anyone arrived.

I found myself standing in front of the massive south-facing window.

I could just jump. That would probably be the simplest solution.

I watched my reflection, right hand in my pocket, circling the edge of the ring within it, running my index finger over the setting of tiny stones. I looked like a ghost. I worked out regularly and ate well, so my body was strong and sturdy, but my eyes were sunken, my skin pale, face skeletal and withdrawn. The anxiety and depression, when at its worst, always made me look like this. I hated it. No matter how hard I tried to counteract it, what was on the inside always seeped through to show itself.

My colleague, Karen–, whom I’ve known since grad school–, has tried more than once to sit me down in her chair, despite my objections. She always says she knows there’s something inside me that needs to come out.

She has no fucking idea.

I know just how that session would play out though: Karen asks me all the right questions, and I let her scrape the surface, just a taste, but I lie about the rest. Then she diagnoses me with dysthymia and tries to throw whatever pills she’s currently sponsoring at me, plus some others to counteract their side effects, and some more to counteract the counteracters.

Fucking psychiatrists.

My vision focused away from my reflection and onto the iconic South Congress bridge, three stories below, stretching across a small section of the Colorado River known as Lady Bird Lake. It was dusk, and the 1.5 million Mexican free-tailed bats that called the hollows of the bridge home would take flight soon.

I took time to stare out this window every evening and watch the bats begin their hunt, painting the skies with dancing swaths of black. I felt a connection to these creatures—hunters of the night, not because they wanted to be, but because that’s how they were raised. It was in our blood, whether we liked it or not.

I had worked hard to be what society wanted me to be, what Brenda wanted me to be. But all the tailored suits and degrees hung tactically behind my desk couldn’t hide what was inside, what people felt deep down when they looked into my eyes. The inkling, the warning, that something just wasn’t right.

I turned back toward my desk and saw my dress shirt hanging from the back of the chair, and draped over it, my tie.

It would have to do.

I wrapped the tie around my torso, tight as I could, and made a knot. The door to my office rattled as heavy-handed Emily rapped on it once more. “Dr. Brooks?”

Goddammit.

“One sec, I’m coming,” I said as I parachuted the white shirt over my head and slid my arms in. I fastened as many buttons as I could on my way to the door, then straightened my hair before opening it.

“Mrs. Liebowitz, Danny, how are you doing today?” I asked as I ushered them in.

Emily closed the door behind them, entombing us in my office. I showed them to their seats and just as I reached my chair, the gleam of the bloody blade flashed in the corner of my eye.

I panicked.

I swept my arm across the table, sending a small plastic container of paper clips to the floor.

“Oops,” I said.

I knelt, using my body to block their view, grabbed the blade, and with my pinkie, lifted my pant leg, where I slid my baby into the socket of the sheath she called home. I scooped a handful of paper clips and the container, stuffing them in as I placed it back on the desk.

“Sorry about that. Feeling extra clumsy today,” I said as I dabbed my brow with my sleeve. “Danny, how have things been since our session last month? Any news to report?”

Danny shifted in his chair. “Umm, nope,” he said, unable to look me in the eye.

Danny’s mom, Beverly, nudged him with her elbow and motioned at me with her eyes, ushering a confession. She was pretty. She had the kind of face that made you want to take her to dinner, but not want to make a move because you wanted to get to know her, and you hoped, if you played your cards right, the two of you just might go the distance, and there would be plenty of time to frolic in the sheets in forever.

As a man in a happy relationship, I wasn’t supposed to think these thoughts, but they lived there in my head, nonetheless. I high-five them as they float by, just before I throw a black bag over their head, kick out their knees, and shove them into the pit where I store all my ill will. I hear them all, groaning, begging for their freedom when I open the hatch and throw another unsavory in to rot.

Sometimes I wondered if Danny was switched at birth, or if I was witnessing a Changeling situation. While she was slim and beautiful, he was fat and had dark circles under his eyes. They were shifty too, and even when he wasn’t lying through his teeth, it was tough to hold his gaze. It was common now though, this spectacle of our devolution. This generational canyon that Mrs. Liebowitz, and myself, and all the rest of those our age can’t seem to traverse, no matter how far we stretch our fingertips to save the young from drowning.

We grew up during the age of technology, so we understand the draw—the insatiable pull. Most adults my age are addicted to their phones, but we remember what it was like to be without. Not to be perpetually connected or reachable—to have that space that one needs to be whole. We had that, and now and then, we can recede from the digital mushroom cloud, and taste the silence and the beauty of stillness, of nothing, being everything. The Dannys of the world have never known this. The iPad babies never had a chance.

I waited for him to make the first move, but his face remained fixated on the ground.

“It seems like maybe you have something you want to talk about, Danny?”

He looked up at me, finally making eye contact with those globes, so wet, they looked as if they might overflow at any moment. “I think I may have killed someone.”

Beverly covered her mouth with her hand, trying to hold in a cry, but I could tell this wasn’t news to her, just a shock to hear the words come from her son’s mouth.

“I, uh—I need you to know, Danny, a—and Beverly, doctor, patient confidentiality is expelled once you confess something like this to me. Anything else you tell me, I’m obligated to inform the police.”

I said this in hopes that he would stop, that he would stuff it, just as I stuffed my feelings and secrets all these years. I didn’t want to see Danny under the law enforcement microscope like I was at his age, and I didn’t want that microscope pointed back at me.

“No, no, it’s not like that,” said Beverly. “It was…” She paused for a while, staring at Danny, hoping to find the words to explain, but they never came. “Tell Dr. Brooks what happened, honey.”

Danny squirmed in his chair, then looked up at me. “I went back online. Into the Ally Lobby.” He paused and metered my reaction.

“You promised me during our session last month that you’d stay away from the Ally Lobby, Danny.”

Danny looked down at his feet again. “I know.”

“And the profiles. Did you delete them like you promised?”

“Some of them. Not the good ones, though.”

“Which ones did you keep?”

Danny looked up at the ceiling, racking his brain for the names of his aliases. “Everett, Kevin, Jamal, and Blair.”

“Why did you choose to delete the others, but not those?”

“They’re part of me. The others were no big deal, but when I got to each of these, I just couldn’t do it. They need me to survive. I need them.”

“Danny, These Aliases aren’t you. You don’t need them. And these people you’ve built relationships with don’t know the real you. They think you’re a grown man, a surgeon with your own practice; one of them thinks you’re a woman, for crying out loud. They have no idea they’re talking to a child, and if they did, there’s a good chance they’d cut and run. Not to mention, you don’t know if these people are who they say they are. This is a dangerous game you’re playing. Someone could get hurt.”

“Someone did.”

“Tell me what happened, Danny.”

“It’s your fault, Dr. Brooks, not mine.”

“Danny!” Beverly said, slapping him on the shoulder.

“What’s my fault, Danny?”

“Marlena,” He said. “She was crazy about me. I didn’t really feel the same way, not like I do about the others, like Sasha, and Lauren, especially. I love them.” Danny fixed on my gaze, something burning in him, wild-eyed, not an ounce of lucidity to spare. “I did what you said. I started telling them all I wanted to end things. I got through twelve of them. Some didn’t seem to care much, but some took it hard. Marlena was the worst. She said if I left her, she’d hurt herself. I didn’t know what to say, so I blocked her.”

“I told you this wouldn’t be easy, Danny. I’m proud of you for doing what had to be done.”

“She’s dead, Dr. Brooks. Marlena. It was in the news a few days later. She committed suicide, just like she said she would.”

I wanted to speak, but I couldn’t move my lips. Feelings of guilt came rushing back, sharp and heavy, like I hadn’t felt in years. I looked down at my pant leg where my baby rested and wished I could whip it out and plow a couple of clean centimeters in my calf or inner arm. Just enough to make the feeling go away. I patted the side of my thigh, making sure I could still feel the circular lump of the ring in my pocket. Its presence lent a bit of comfort. That would have to be enough to keep me going for now.

Beverly watched me drift away, lost in thought. I must have been gone for a while.

“Dr. Brooks, this isn’t your fault, and Danny needs to understand that this is a mess he created, not you, right?” she said, with tender, coaxing eyes, hoping to spark that all-knowing, all-wise fire in me that she had become accustomed to.

That’s why they came here, all of them, to be told what they already knew, yet chose not to see.

“Y…—yes. You’re right, Beverly,” I said. But by the look on her face, I could tell she sensed my insincerity.

The room began to shift a bit, and I felt dizzy. Images of familiar dead bodies fell in front of my eyes with a deafening click like my childhood View-Master. Names that I had forgotten began to surge back into my memory, but their faces had never left. They were the faces I’d seen in my nightmares since I was fourteen, right there, looking right at me in the light of day for the first time, empty eyes, powder blue skin, purple lips.

“Are you alright, Dr. Brooks?” Beverly asked.

The images burned up in orange and black splotches like nitrate film. I sat stunned and wide-eyed in front of the Liebowitzs as they gazed at me slack-jawed. I wanted to jump back into it. Back to where I had left off, being their good doctor. But I couldn’t. Something had switched off inside me, and I had to get the hell out of there.

“That’ll end our session for today folks,” I said, clapping my notebook shut. “I’ll see you same time next month.”

I got up from my seat and began to collect my briefcase and travel mug.

“We still have 45 minutes,” Beverly said, pointing at the clock on the wall.

“Not today. I’ve got to go. Don’t worry, I won’t charge you for today’s session.”

I sidestepped around Danny and slammed the door behind me, leaving them both sitting in my office, stunned in their seats. Before I could get out the door, Molly stepped in front of me.

“Is everything ok? I heard the door slam.” Molly looked down at my shirt and gasped. “Dr. Brooks, You’re bleeding.”

I looked down at the weeping, red Rorschach on my shirt. I pasted my briefcase to my front.

“It’s nothing. Don’t invoice Mrs. Liebowitz for Danny’s visit today. I’ve got to go, Molly. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I walked past her, out the door, and took the stairwell down four flights to the parking garage. I pulled the fob from my pocket and with the flick of my thumb, my car chirped to life. I popped the door open and slid down the driver seat. I couldn’t believe what I had just done. This was not going to be okay. People were going to talk. How could I lose control like that?

I took a deep breath. I needed to see Brenda. I had big plans tonight, and I couldn’t let this get in the way.

Just as I popped the shifter into reverse, my phone rang.

I pulled my Ally Tech smartphone from my pocket, the glowing screen showed a number I didn’t recognize, with a (626) area code. I pressed the green button.

“Hello?”

The other end crackled with static silence.

“Hello?” I repeated.

“Gid?”

My body went numb. No one had called me Gid in decades.

“Gid, is that you?”

“Luke?” I said in disbelief.

“Been a long time big brother,” said Luke.

“Yeah…—I—why…wWhy are you calling me?”

“Not the warm greeting I expected, but okay.”

“No, it’s just been so long. It’s great to hear from you. God, I can’t believe it’s you…what’s going on?”

Luke was silent.

“Luke?”

“Dad’s back.”

I laughed before it registered. “Dad? He—what do you mean?”

“He’s back, Gid. Fucker’s alive.”

Children screaming playfully sounded over the phone. “Listen, I’ve got to go. I just thought you, of all people, should know.”

“No, Luke, don’t go. How—“

“I’ll call you tomorrow. The kids just got home from school. I can’t talk about this right now.”

I held the glowing screen in front of my boiling face, feeling an explosion mounting until tears began to pour from my eyes. My hands trembled as I reached for my blade and removed it from its sheath.