But it has no feeling. As the metal, is hot, it is not,
given to love.
It burns the thing
inside it. And that thing
screams.
-from An Agony. As Now. by Imamu Amiri Baraka
…
She could see the rough draft of her application in her head, sitting pathetically forgotten on Crane's desk by the paperweight. Inches away from his clipboard and cup of pencils and pens. Illuminated by the strangely full-bodied moonlight. Mocking her across this distance.
Night had fallen with unusual speed. A cold wind from the Atlantic tugged her hair loose into tangled knots and made the sickly trees along the sidewalks murmur to themselves like ghosts of concern. She glanced between her waiting car and the last few winking lights of the Asylum behind her, torn.
"Better get going," the night watchman grumbled at her from his booth, folding his arms over his dark windbreaker and glancing up the darkening streets, "I'm no babysitter."
Not without that draft. It took me two hours.
"Sorry—I forgot something. I need to go back inside."
"Arkham's closing for the night. Once the last few shrinks leave, we're locking up."
"Just give me five minutes. Please." She held up her plastic ID, as if it would explain everything.
"I wouldn't go back into that freak show at night for a million bucks, myself," he told her over the rising wind, "–But go ahead. Your funeral."
She ignored the comment and started walking toward the dark building, keeping close to the dim lights that lined the walkway, trying to forget the hungry gloom that lay beyond their feeble glow.
The lights were all still on when she entered, but the halls were deserted. The sick hush was broken only by the footsteps of a passing doctor, on his way out. As they passed each other, a chilling screech from the stories above made both of them hesitate and smile nervously sideways at each other.
Crane's office wasn't terribly far. She found the door and stopped before it as she fumbled in her purse to find the key he had given her.
Something made her hang back before unlocking the door; a sense that the room was somehow full when it shouldn't have been, like the beating of a cold corpse's heart.
"Stop scaring yourself, idiot," she muttered to herself, twisting the key in the lock with a frustrated anger and pushing the door open.
The room was blacker than the backs of her eyelids, darker than moonless water. The lights of the corridor didn't illuminate more than a few feet of the floor before her. It made her so jumpy that she thought she heard something in the lightless office hiss in surprise, but forced herself to close her ears to the imaginary sound. Just a few steps in and a few more out. She would grab the papers and go.
"Help…"
That was not her imagination. Her throat closed up and she took a step back, hand fumbling insanely for the doorknob. Was one of the inmates loose? It was impossible. The security was foolproof. Completely and utterly infallible.
"Help me…"
It was Mike. She could barely see him, looking disheveled and destroyed in the night. He tried to walk toward her and stumbled, the glazed whites of his eyes bright with a sickly glow like insanity. Hands laced with swollen veins struggled to pull his trembling body toward her.
"Mike?" Darcy blurted, dropping to her knees, forgetting her initial panic, forgetting everything. "What are you doing in here? What's wrong?"
He shrank back from her, features twisting with raw, rabid horror. "No! Not you! Don't come near me!"
"Mike—" Where was Crane? He would know what to do. He would help. Mike must have—
"Stay back!" Spittle flecked his dry, trembling lips.
It was as if he didn't know who she was. Summoning up what bravery she could, she made a reach for his arm but he yanked it away from her, screaming as he tried to crawl away from where she knelt. Remembering her elementary training, she stayed where she was and spoke in a soft, inflectionless voice.
"Please, Mike, it's okay. It's all right," she murmured soothingly, extending a hand to him, "I'm here. It's all right."
"Don't!" His face grew even more distorted with a desperate rage. He tried to back away from her even more, disappearing into the darkness, but his breathing seemed suddenly labored and difficult. Was he choking? Having a seizure?
"Mike, let me help you. Please."
There was no sound from where he had vanished. The breathing had stopped. Stunned, unable to think clearly, she watched as a new figure detached itself from the stifling dimness, so freakishly proportioned that she faintly wondered if it were all a half-dazed phantasm. A mask concealed the skeletal shadow's face, apparently made of rough burlap.
"Mike—?"
"No."
There was a long, inhuman whisper of air, and something thick and chemical filled the room. Darcy struggled to rise from where she knelt, to escape the suffocating mist, but her efforts only left her lying paralyzed on the floor. For a few sluggish seconds, there was only a ringing in her ears, an ominous peace.
Then something—everything—seemed to quicken, to contort, to splinter. Her heartbeat pounded beneath her shuddering, papery skin, growing larger and larger until it seemed that that accelerating pulse was all that was left of her. Her shell of a body felt light, helpless, fragile.
She could die like this.
The darkness came, fully and truly, this time. The darkness to which her eyes couldn't adjust, the darkness of her nightmares, the inescapable black that hid her from herself and laid her open to every niggling fear. Pressing down on her unseen ribs, smothering her heart and filling her mouth like water. Her eyes grew wide and hunted for freedom for a while, then gave up and shut tight as she gathered herself close, unable to move.
But closing her eyes gave her no solace or escape. It only left her defenseless. The walls spoke and dark, nameless things trailed over her body. Her head throbbed like a wound as she twisted away from hidden predators, hidden fears, hidden traces of deeper black.
Despite the fiendish life about her, she was alone. Isolated. Lost. Knowing her utter solitude was the worst of all. Only her tears moved, as they squeezed out from under her eyes and slid into nothing. There was nowhere to run, even if she could. The dark would follow, rise up and swallow her like a wave, and drag her deeper. She struggled to remember to breathe, to remember her name, to remember what light was like.
She could only remember one thing.
"Come on, Darcy!"
Her chubby little child's body struggled to keep up with her cousin's longer strides.
"Slow!" She gasped out, vocabulary still unformed.
Susan finally stopped halfway up the stairs and turned around to look down at the younger girl.
"What's the matter?" She groaned, exasperated.
"Tired, Susan! Tired!"
"Well, come to my room and you can sit down."
"Doll?"
"Sure." Susan resumed her uneven, swift ascension of the stairs, Darcy puffing behind.
The upper story of the old house was musty; hot autumn sunlight shone through the dirty windows. Below, she could hear her mother and her aunt talking in loud, cheerful voices, and the smells of the Thanksgiving meal to come were thick and warm in the air.
Susan was already sprawled out on her bed when Darcy entered the room, paging through a magazine with a lethargy made even more extreme by preadolescent dramatic flair.
"Took you long enough."
"Doll?"
"I don't play with my dolls anymore, dummy. They're in my closet."
Undaunted, Darcy ran over to the closet and switched on the light before opening the door. The narrow closet was chilly and lined with a multitude of old toys. Giggling, she reached for her favorite, a china doll with a lovely blue dress made of silk and tightly-curled red hair.
As her little hand closed over the doll's cold china face, the naked bulb overhead went out, and the door slammed behind her. Susan's snickers were muffled but unmistakable, coming from the other side of the door.
"Susan! Susan!"
There was darkness all around her, and the suddenness of its arrival was alarming. She hadn't been scared of the dark before. Nighttime was for sleeping; lights went out when one left the room; the teacher always dimmed the fluorescent lights for naptime. But the dark filling every corner of the cold little closet was something new and terrifying. Panic seized her, cold and paralyzing and poisonous. Her mind left her. She sobbed and screamed and fumbled for the doorknob, and had finally collapsed on the floorboards with a hollow thump, tears running down her face, too hoarse and shocked to scream anymore…
A low, animal moan of remembering rose from what was left of her invisible carcass. Her teeth ached with the needling resonance, and she made herself smaller before the paralysis took hold of everything. The memory lingered resolutely in her head, blurring the lines of reality.
She was in the office—on the cold floor of the closet—Susan was outside—she was alone—heart battering itself against her thinning skin—head aching—vision twitching and unsure—she was a child—she was a woman—she was swallowed up by the cold night.
"Help," she whispered around her thick, disobedient tongue, sitting like a slab of meat in her throat.
The dark laughed. It laughed at her and her heart froze to hear the slow, rolling, cold sound coming from an unseen mouth, tainting the air.
"Help you," the dark mocked softly in a coarse, cruel voice that grated like a death rattle, "Help you. After that scene? Pathetic."
"Help," she mumbled again, unable to say anything else, afraid that the effort to form other words would tear her apart.
"And who would help you? Laramie? He's dead, Darcy. I killed him. Too much of my medicine."
She found the strength in her to twist away, burying her face in the crook of her frigid, trembling arm. The fact refused to register. Dead? What was dead and alive in this night? There was no difference. Only fear.
"You should be grateful," the voice hissed into her ear, "He was such a trouble to you and me both."
She nestled her face deeper, eyes stinging with tears and fright, trying to forget, trying to pay no heed to the unrelenting malice. This made the dark angry.
"Look at me, Darcy. Look at me!"
Long-boned hands gripped her, turned her over, forced her to look into yellowed-death eyes that smiled down at her out of the overwhelming darkness. She heard someone scream as if from miles away, and only numbly realized it was herself.
"You stupid girl. Don't turn away. Why did you come back? Why?"
She thrashed and struggled to rise but couldn't. The eyes bore into hers like needles, ripping, slashing, hurting. Everything seemed to be closing in, locking her down, crushing her into the floor. She screamed again, tasting salty tears and bile, not knowing if anyone could hear.
"Why couldn't you just leave?" The voice demanded, rasping upon what was left of her sanity.
"I'm sorry," she whispered blindly, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry…" It hurt to speak—the words made her even more nauseous with fear—but she didn't know what else to do but to apologize, to beg for forgiveness and hope for escape.
The presence over her seemed to vacillate in an oddly familiar surprise. The only sound was her own rough breathing. She closed her eyes and waited for the end.
"Amy?"
She was too terrified by the bizarre respite to feel confused. When she opened her eyes again, the violent aura over her had disappeared. The weight had left her chest. Now, there was only the all-consuming dark, infinite, menacing.
A needle, a real needle, jabbed into her arm out of the black, and she flinched in unexpected pain.
"Go to sleep," the voice mumbled, sounding bewildered and weary, "Go to sleep, Darcy."
Author's Note
Sorry for the impromptu sabbatical last week! My weekend was ludicrously busy and Friday night unusually late. This chapter was also one of the most difficult to write so far. All of these elements combined created a busy and stressful week. But one of the things I did do on Saturday of last week was participate in a debate regarding the Insanity Plea—suffice to say, a very ironic subject considering my current work in progress. Especially when talking about corrupt doctors being paid off to testify that defendants are criminally insane. ;-)
ACleverName – Yup, exactly 1.2 seconds. :-D
AngelLust12387 – Crane is my favorite character, too. Cillian is just…amazing. Glad you're enjoying reading this!
Azina Zelle – Wow! So many people are asking me if I'm a professional writer! I am so amazingly flattered. See my response to Kagerou-chan for the answer…
Dr. E. Vance – If you consider this following excerpt 'mushily romantic', you may want to refrain from reading this story any further: Jonathan Crane gazed down into Darcy's soft dark eyes as they embraced in the moonlit rose garden. He knew he could hide it no longer—he was in love with every inch of her, he loved her heart and soul. "Jon," she protested softly, clinging to him, "We can't keep up this charade. We work together…" "I don't care," he whispered, kissing her sweet lips feverishly, "I don't care anymore." She kissed him back, pressing her face to his before pulling away to look up into his statuesque face. "I don't care either. I never have," she confessed in a quiet, velvety voice, "But Jon?" "Yes, my angel?" "Why are you dressed up in a Regency-era outfit?" He paused and glanced down at his rather unusual attire before responding slowly, "I—I don't know. Why are you wearing a gown?" She looked at her own rosy-pink Empire-waist dress with a bewildered curiosity. "I have no idea." Haha, just kidding. I began this story with the priority of keeping Jonathan Crane in-character, and I will do my best. No overly romantic schmaltz. Maybe a little, but not too much. He's Jonathan bloody Crane, after all.
Eccentric Banshee – Glad you loved that line of Jonathan's when he's talking to Laramie about scruples. That's one of my favorites too.
Jonathan: (mumbling from behind his copy of Emma) Oh, come on, it's so absurdly cliché.
Me: I thought it was cute.
Jonathan: 'Cute?'
Me: Yes. (smiles sweetly and takes a big spoonful of the mint chocolate chip ice cream that Banshee gave her)
Jonathan: (perks up ever so slightly) What is that?
Me: (mouth full) Ice cream.
Jonathan: (intrigued but trying not to be) It's nearly November, you ridiculous fool. You don't eat ice cream in November.
Me: Well, I am. (takes another big scoop)
Jonathan: (disdainful) Only a true ignoramus would eat ice cream in November. (pause) Ahem?
Me: What is it?
Jonathan: Can I—(mumblemumble)
Me: What?
Jonathan: Can I have—(more embarrassed muttering)
Me: (licking spoon) Have what?
Jonathan: Can I have some ice cream?
Me: Well, geez, all you had to was ask.
hornofgondor2 – Party! (disco ball descends from ceiling) Woot woot! (does ridiculously outmoded dance moves) Come on, Jonathan! Dance with me!
Jonathan: (sits and stares at Blodeuedd like she's crazy)
Jonathansgirl18 – Ah, autumn. One of my favorite seasons. Raking is not so much a favorite, though. ;-)
Kagerou-chan – I love you too! (hug) I actually have been published: once, in a young poets' anthology. I won some sweet prize money and my work placed in the top ten poems for my age group. My family now has roughly a billion copies of said anthology floating around, and it's quite a delight to open any one of them and see my poem contained within. Otherwise, however, I have been very timid about submitting any other works to publishers or contests, especially my prose stuff. Ah, that Jonathan Crane line is one of my favorites in the movie too. I love how his voice seems so flat and emotionless at first, but is often overcome by his own fiendish glee as the story develops. That amusing little quality is one nuance I almost weekly strive to instill in my work, but it's tough. That Cillian! (shakes head)
Karina of Darkness – Awww, sorry you got cut off. Longer review next time? Laramie does fail at life!
Nightshade0020 – Thanks for keeping me posted. The story is going awesomely, by the way.
No One Mourns the Wicked – As many people here can attest, I love receiving long, rambling reviews, so you are certainly welcome to leave them if you're in the mood. And regarding your question about the happiness-level of this story's ending…er…would I turn you off this story completely if I said, 'No, it gets a little happier and then goes right back to Dismalsville?' I love hearing from you (and your own writing is delish, by the way)! Please stay tuned.
SpadesJade – Fear not, I was never a cheerleader. In sixth grade, all my friends, like you, succumbed to the cheerleading craze, but I was content to sit by and volunteer to be the one working the video camera for all of the sixth-grade sporting events. Sure enough, I loved that job far more, and, one by one, all my friends dropped out of cheerleading within a matter of weeks. Hahaha. But I never said 'I told you so.' Not once. Sometimes it's the satisfied silence that is best.
Valse De La Luna –I've never made someone want to stay home on a Friday night! (happy dance)
VampireNaomi – The toes are curling! That's a good thing! (grins delightedly) And if you're not missing Mike…even better.
Again, apologies for the delay! I will try not to be so tardy with Chapter 13, where Jonathan learns about how to dispose of a body and the downside of hiring morally corrupt security guards.
And now a message to ALL OF YOU….
(lightning flashes, thunder rolls, as Jonathan's now-famous cackle echoes across MwahahaHAHAAAHAAAA! HuahahaHAAAAaaaahahahaha! Happy Halloween! MwahahAAAhaahohohooooHAAA! (cats screech and wolves howl as more thunder crashes)
Love,
Blodeuedd