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he true darkness!” Professor Leary bellowed, pointer quaking. “This is what I hope to uncover.”
“It’s been done, Dale. No one’s interested in the psychoanalytical ramblings about the Goth cretins that hang out on M street.”
Dale Leary whirled and squinted down at his colleague as the last of the dejected sentence echoed off the auditorium walls. Frank Adler hitched his ankle up onto his knee, a sarcastic angle to his head.
“That, dear Professor, is not what I refer to,” Leary snapped, stalking away from the makeshift slide show he had prepared. “You and I and every other academic know the difference between that and what I will seek to find. I’m not speaking merely of psychological answers. I plan to incorporate the full scope of the human experience. Anthropological, theological, evolutionary biology and sociological aspects as a whole, as eyewitnesses coming together to rehash what they each saw at the crime scene, thus building a complete story.”
“What a concise analogy,” Adler said.
Leary had expected just a bit more praise, a few more congratulatory questions about his ambitious new project. His hopes drifted to the polished hardwood stage with the fragments of lint Adler was picking off his tweed jacket.
Leary sighed and, with posture as crestfallen as he felt, turned to switch off the power to the projector. He heard the shuffle of clothes behind him as Adler got up.
“I’m not sure the subject is compelling enough to warrant a grant of the size you’re asking for, Dale. It’s nothing personal . . . but I’m not about to mince words with you, old friend. The board won’t care. They’re not into horror movies, if you get my drift.” Adler stuffed wrinkled hands in neatly pressed pockets.
“Nor am I,” Leary exhaled as he looked back. “It isn’t about that, and you know it. This is something much, much bigger. This is our chance to understand the true nature of darkness, of evil . . .the chance to explain with precise accuracy men like Hitler and Stalin and Vlad the Impaler. To make a blueprint for tomorrow’s deep psychopaths and stop them before they rise to power. To do that, we must first understand the nature of the beast.” Leary was pleading now, if not with his words, with his eyes.
Adler expressed his helplessness with a pained expression and a small shrug. “I’m sorry, Dale.” Without offering a handshake—knowing his longtime friend would view it as an insult at this moment—he tipped on a heel and turned for the small staircase leading into the empty auditorium. On the second stair down, he hesitated, and rotated his shoulders back towards Leary.
“Get me a sample chapter, some treatment mock-up. Something to show the board that this isn’t just ghost hunting, but that it has real scientific merit that won’t relegate their grant proposals to psychics and conspiracy nuts. I’ll present it to them. That’s all I can promise.”
Leary nodded, blinking relieved tears back where they belonged. “I’ll have it for you by the end of the month.”
Adler creaked forward once more and finished descending the stairs. Leary listened to the tired clopping of his shoes on the aisle until the sound had disappeared, along with Adler, behind the oak double-doors.
“This is a very secretive project,” Leary had told a group of eleven or twelve of his most trusted students, huddled one rainy evening in his university office. “Speak to no one that is not already present in this room about what I am requesting.
Heads wagged. Everyone agreed (and with substantial excitement) to keep their assignments under wraps. Truth be told, Leary was not worried about another scholar snatching his work. He was more concerned about appearing a fool to the wrong people before his scientific data could be gathered. He didn’t tell the students this. He knew quite well how much more diligently they would labor when the manner of their work was exclusive.
A case to this point rushed into Leary’s classroom one afternoon, not long after his final class had scattered. He was packing up his books when the door burst on its hinges, birthing Benjamin Perry into the room with a huff. The young sophomore was red-faced, worn backpack jostling over his shoulders.
“Professor Leary!” Benjamin’s ruddy hands slapped the top of his desk. “I found something that may be of assistance to your research.” His brown hairline glistened with sweat.
Leary didn’t look up. “Let’s out with it.”
“There is an art gallery about five miles off campus called Paradoxical. Tonight is their monthly opening, where they debut the month’s new featured artist.”
“I know how art galleries work, Perry.”
“Yes, of course sir.” Benjamin straightened and pushed his hands into his sides as if to ward off an ache. “Anyway, the artist debuting this month . . . I believe you should speak with her.”
By now Leary had gathered all his belongings. He yanked his satchel off the desk and let it slump to his side like an ancient weight as he started for the door. “An artist? What makes you think this would be a worthy investment of my time?”
Benjamin had stopped walking beside him. Only after a few moments did Leary realize his footsteps were the only ones scuffing through the classroom. He stopped, too, and rotated to face the student with a curious glare. Benjamin stood near the desk, looking at his professor, his hands stuffed in the shoulder straps of his backpack as if he were a prisoner of it.
Leary didn’t ask again. He stared at Benjamin as the boy’s Adam’s apple quivered.
“Her art, professor,” his voice came out like a crackle on a weak radio transmission. “I can’t quite explain . . .” Benjamin’s eyes searched the tile floor for the words he couldn’t find. Then he looked up again. “You just have to see it. Even if she isn’t what you’re looking for . . .at the very least, it will be a pleasant evening full of culture.”
Leary nearly gaped at the young student’s surprising words and demeanor. Benjamin had become quite pale. Leary couldn’t deny that the room had taken on an almost sinister palpability, as if young Mr. Perry had been trailed to the classroom, despite his speed. Benjamin stood now silent, waiting, his blinking eyes begging for approval.
If one were to question Leary later as to his motivations for following Benjamin’s advice, he would most surely tell them it was for the mere sake of argument, for the lack of anything more productive to accomplish on a Friday night, and for the off chance that it may prove a valuable lead to his research.
The truth, of course, was that Leary could not reason away the unsettling feeling that something had chased Benjamin here, had hurried his journey to report this finding to little more than a dead run, despite the lack of any grounds to rush the news to his professor. Final class was out, yes. But Benjamin knew where to find Leary should he need him, and the gallery opening was over seven hours away.
Benjamin had no reason to run. Therefore Leary had no reason to dismiss his hunches. He dipped his head towards the student in a subtle admission of interest, and breezed from the classroom.
Years had passed since the last time Leary had found himself at an art gallery opening. As his academic career had blossomed, time became less and less his, and thus meandering between masterpieces holding a cold glass of champagne under his nose was a luxury long ago left behind. Even so, when he first stepped into the Paradoxical Gallery, the tap of his shoes on the wooden floor conjured invisible scents of wine and cheese and expensive perfume from his memory. Behind him, night was falling like a rich veil, accompanied by the blaring sounds of the busy city.
Paradoxical Gallery sat very professional in front of his eyes with its stainless steel track lighting and antique tables to either side of the door, one bearing light refreshments and the other pamphlets and flyers about the gallery, its artists, and the general art community. Leary brushed his stubby fingers over one pile of papers and snatched up the small blurb pamphlet about the month’s featured artist. He didn’t look at it, but wandered first to the refreshment table and helped himself to a glass of red wine and a small black plate of buttery crackers. The gallery was still quiet, ringing with a few distant voices and the clack of high heels on wood. He stood near one of the windows, his back to the city and enjoyed his makeshift dinner as well-dressed revelers began to trickle in like grains of sand through an hourglass, every moment adding more and more of them. He saw familiar crowds of socialites and art connoisseurs, but also a substantial gathering of college-aged and younger kids wandering the gallery, creating an interesting spice rack of jeans and cummerbunds, leather jackets and 24-carat diamonds.
The room was buzzing by the time Leary finished his wine and crackers. With the pamphlet tucked in his hands, he stepped into the unofficial viewing line behind a well-dressed young couple. Before he laid eyes on any art, he stopped at the small printout of text behind glass that was the Artist’s Statement. Arms tucked behind his back, he read:
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Amplified Premature Burial: A Collection by Rose Abbott |
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My art is and always has been an outlet for emotions I simply cannot control. Whether they be too heavy, too frightening, or just plain disturbing, I know the surface of the canvas will never judge me. Only in the moments of our creation are we freed of the chains of society, of history, and of the gods. We become gods that no one can question or defy.
The collection you will view tonight is thus far my greatest testament to those moments. |
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Leary swallowed against a tight throat. He kept his eyes glued to the black-and-white of the statement well after he was done reading. It was as if something living between the neat black words of this oddly quick and simple statement had knocked on the back door of Leary’s consciousness, causing him to turn, if only for a moment.
The chattering of teenagers falling into line behind him got Leary moving. Hands still clasped behind his back, he shuffled along the viewing line to the first piece. It was not very large, but the radiant colors struck Leary’s eye immediately as pleasant. When he got close enough to view its details, he felt his heart drop.
It was entitled Natural Selection, and its nod to Charles Darwin was unsettling. Before Leary sat a beautiful ocean scene at sunset, reds and yellows and oranges vibrant in the calm sky. In the foreground, coming in to sparkling white sand with the tide, was a hideous, deformed merman. Bottom half of a fish, top half a gangly human male whose skin was clammy and the color of death, he was twisted at a disturbing angle, one arm supporting his weight while the other was lifted above his head. His mouth was open wide, revealing malformed and sharp teeth. From the uplifted arm, he was dangling something above his mouth with his long and grotesque nails, as if preparing to feast: a rosary complete with crucifix. Seaweed hung in sickly strands over his body, while, from the surf like his own personal army, came a wave of tiny white crabs storming the beach around him.
Leary frowned before the piece, entranced by the detail, and the stunning use of naturally occurring color to counter the obvious horror of the foreground. Something about it sent shivers down his arms. The young couple just ahead of him was put off; he could hear the woman commenting on its ugliness as the husband turned up his nose and moved to the next piece.
Leary shook it off, too, and moved on down the line. The subsequent pieces were no less distressing: A picture-book style series entitled Long Dead Lullabies featuring a young boy in pajamas visiting the scenes of popular children’s stories, only to find their realities; Peter Pan as an old, senile man jumping off a cliff; Cinderella, a battered wife hiding in a pumpkin patch; Alice in Wonderland, clearly insane, slitting her wrists with a broken teapot; Sleeping Beauty resembling nothing if not a zombie. Next was one called Commandment; it was a scene in a dark, decrepit cemetery of a young woman in tattered clothing, ribs visible through her emaciated skin, lifting a spoonful of gruel from a bowl and offering it a headstone that read “Beloved Mother, Beloved Father”. The girl was smiling, but only because of a terrible piece of headgear that held her lips stretched, hooks embedded in her skin. Two of the next pieces featured nooses as their theme: the first called And The Questions Poured Out displayed a side shot of two people, one standing and one, though only the torso was visible, had obviously hung himself. The living man was staring up with teary eyes, two fingers to his jugular vein as if to check his own pulse. The second, Salvation, once again made Leary stop because of its bright colors. Backlit against a brilliant green light, a man was hanging by his neck from a ceiling, his face stretched upward towards heaven, his arms extended to either side, while his feet hung without support off the ground. It was impossible not to see its likeness of so many images of Jesus on the cross.
It was then Leary had noticed the teenagers behind him had stopped chattering. In fact, the whole room seemed upset and tense. He couldn’t say it came as a surprise, though the intellect in him was bothered more by the fact that he was upset and tense as well.
Leary approached the final piece in the gallery, and was curious to find that a crowd was gathered around it. It was almost as if the entire line of spectators had become stuck here, instead of wandering back to the refreshment table or visiting area. It took a moment for Leary to maneuver his way towards the front, as the piece was not very large. When he finally got there, he felt his breath catch in his throat.
The final piece was appropriately titled Amplified Burial, the entire show obviously a lead-up to this image. Technically, this was the least disturbing piece in terms of disfigurement, death, and gore. Yet its composition grabbed one by the throat and demanded full attention.
It was an outdoor scene of a muted green field that stretched into the horizon. The right side of the scene showed some faraway mountains that sat dark and forbidding in the distance. Overhead, a blue and grey storm churned with ominous cloud shapes that almost seemed as if they were being sucked out of the foreground. And in the middle of this field, under the brewing gloom, stood a young woman in a royal blue dress. She was pale—something Leary would have imagined seeing on Medieval portraits of vampires—with smooth skin that stood out against the drab environment. Her chestnut hair was laced with gold highlights, and it hung not only in graceful curls down her back, but also snaked upward in a few thick tendrils, like the arms of an octopus reaching for the dark heavens. Her posture suggested she was creeping through the empty field, not at all distressed by it, but instead, one had the odd sense that this creature-woman was nowhere if not at home.
No blood, no death, no decay—yet Leary’s heart was pumping so fast against his ribs he couldn’t hear himself think. It was as if this creature, this horrifying woman sent from another terrible world, had sucked him into her field, into her storm. Leary had never felt so helpless.
The crowd around him seemed equally mesmerized, standing silently and staring into this plain-looking abyss without reserve.
“Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention please!”
The loud voice of the gallery’s director echoed like a gunshot in an empty forest. Most started in surprise before they turned to face the short, rotund man in the dark suit.
“I want to thank you all so much for coming out to Paradoxical this evening, and thank you for sharing in our celebration of Miss Rose Abbott’s fifth gallery showing!” He clapped his meaty hands together until the crowd followed suit. “I would like to introduce you all to the lady of the hour, our beloved artist, Rose Abbott.” He made a sweeping gesture towards a wall divide from where a young woman emerged with a shyness about her. Leary was surprised; she couldn’t have been thirty. Light hair, modest makeup, wearing a simple black dress and heels. She came to stand next to the director, almost half a foot over his head, and she smiled out at the crowd, lifting a hand in recognition.
The crowd’s applause gathered force, and Leary found himself clapping louder than anyone else. Disturbed as he was by her work, he had not been effected by art this much since viewing the great frescos of Italy in person some twenty years ago.
“Thank you all for your support,” Rose Abbott said softly. “There are refreshments at the tables near the doors, in case you missed them. I will be here to answer questions for the next few hours.”
Once again, the crowd gave her a round of applause, and then as if a hypnotist had snapped his fingers, they all meandered away from the girl in the field they had not been able to take their eyes off of, and gravitated towards the visiting area, alive with chatter and laughter.
Rose Abbott and the director immediately had people surrounding them, asking questions or showering her with praise. Leary sidled up to the edge of the crowd, uncomfortable, unsure of what he was doing, yet pulled by the same invisible force that seemed to have been present all night—present, in fact, since it had followed Benjamin Perry to his classroom. He flipped through the pamphlet of the gallery with patient interest until the group in front of him dwindled, and he found himself next to the quiet Rose Abbott herself.
“Miss Abbott,” Leary outstretched a weathered hand. “My name is Professor Dale Leary, I teach Evolutionary Psychology at the university.”
Rose smiled and shook his hand with gentle grace. “A pleasure to meet you, Professor. Did you enjoy the show?”
An awkward smile painted Leary’s face before he could stop it. “Yes, yes I did. You have quite a remarkable gift for expression.”
She bowed her head in humble acceptance of his compliment.
“Let me be frank, Miss Abbott,” Leary’s fingers fumbled around his mouth. “I am doing a research study—a thesis, really—about certain traits of humanity. Your show was brought to my attention by one of my students, convinced you would be helpful in this. I see now that he may have been correct. I wonder if I might trouble you for an hour of your time, to speak with you about your art?’'
Rose seemed surprised. “A research study on what?”
“I would prefer to explain that in private, Miss Abbott. It involves my field of work, as well as some others—anthropology, sociology, et cetera. I would love to treat you to coffee or a meal, and I can explain what it is I’m doing. If you aren’t interested in participating . . . no harm, no foul.”
Rose thought for a moment, and then smiled at him. “Sure, Professor. I would be happy to discuss it with you. I would, of course, insist that you come as my guest to dinner at my home. Shall we say nine o’clock this evening?”
“Oh, I couldn’t impose. And your show-”
“I’m not much for large social gatherings. I stay long enough to appease the gallery director and convince the crowds I’m not a misfit. And it is no imposition.” From a small handbag she produced a pen and a scrap of paper. She handed it to him when she had finished writing. “Here is my address. Nine o’clock sharp.”
Leary read the address and then nodded to her. “Thank you, Miss Abbott. I will be there.”
Rose Abbott smiled at him again and turned to address another person.
Leary was ten minutes early when he lifted a heavy fist to Rose’s door. After their conversation, he had lingered around the gallery, spying from the corner of his eye on her reserved responses to the well-wishers and art aficionados. Holding a delicate glass of champagne, she was cordial and kind, but he couldn’t ignore the air she held about her that suggested she knew much more than those speaking to her would ever understand.
After a few patient moments in the stuffy late summer night, the brownstone’s door opened and Rose appeared, looking much more comfortable in a pair of black, flowing pants and a modest forest green sleeveless blouse. She smiled with warmth at Leary.
“Professor Leary, welcome to my home. Please come in.” Rose stepped back and swept her slender arm into the foyer.
Leary nodded and grinned, wiping his feet on the mat before he stepped in. As she shut and locked the door behind him, he took stock of the warm earth tones and rich darkness of her sitting room and dining room to either of his sides.
“May I interest you in a drink? Coffee, brandy?” Rose asked.
Leary went to answer with his usual disinterest, but paused and said instead, “Yes, brandy would be lovely.”
Rose nodded and led him into the quiet parlor, where she gestured to an overstuffed chair before breezing to the small bar in the corner. Leary sat, engulfed in the dark woods of the room; books lined the shelves of a full-wall library with haphazard love; shelves were covered with artifacts and demigods from history’s forgotten corners; fine prints of the works of Gustave Dore lined wall opposite, showcasing the artist’s most famous interpretations of Dante’s Inferno, Milton’s Paradise Lost, and select moments from the Bible. Leary stared at them a moment before Rose approached him and lowered a crystal glass to his hands. He thanked her and took a sip, enjoying the burning warmth of the liquor as she relaxed in a matching chair opposite him.
She watched him drink with a small, interested smile, and the room became engulfed in stout silence. Leary felt his face growing warm, and not from the alcohol.
Rose must have noticed his discomfort, because she let loose an airy laugh. “I’m simply waiting for you to be comfortable, Professor, since it is you who had something to say to me.”
Leary’s cheeks flushed again and he lowered his glass to his lap. “Of course, of course. Where have my manners gone? Entranced by this beautiful home, I think.”
Rose’s patient smile returned. She crossed her legs.
“As I said before,” Leary began, “I am preparing a thesis that will encompass a full range of sciences, all working as one to answer a single inquiry. Specifically, Miss Abbott, I am looking to find the source of true darkness.”
At this, Rose’s eyes seemed to narrow in interest. “True darkness?”
“Yes. That immutable shadow living among human beings since the dawn of time, influencing our histories and our lives. The same shadow that, unchecked, has spawned some of the greatest evils we’ve known: The Holocaust, the Inquisition . . .”
Her brow furrowed just a bit. “Well, I’m sorry to disappoint, Professor, but I’ve not become a mass murderer just yet.”
Leary paused, broken from his self-imposed trance, and laughed with obvious embarrassment. “No, no, of course not, and I hope I didn’t offend you. I didn’t mean to suggest . . .”
“What is it about me—my work—that you think would be of assistance to you?” Rose asked.
Hesitation fell over Leary and he took another sip of brandy, struggling for words. “Well, Miss Abbott, to be frank I haven’t quite put my finger on that. But—and again, please take no offense—there was a definite presence tonight that I myself felt in your work. The emotions you expressed, the scenes you created for the viewer . . . in particular that final piece, Amplified Burial . . . well, it felt alive, Miss Abbott. It felt as if you had created life instead of art, and I find myself sure that you are not one to be ignored.”
Rose didn’t answer, but entwined her thin fingers in her lap and stared at her library in thought.
“Did I offend you?”
“Not at all,” she answered. “I’m intrigued. What is it I can do to help your thesis?”
“I’d like to ask you a few questions, about your life and your work. You need not answer anything that makes you uncomfortable, though of course, the more information I have, the better. I brought a tape recorder, if that is permissible to you.”
After a moment, Rose said, “Alright, Professor. I’ll agree to that. I only hope my answers are what you planned on finding here tonight.”
Without reason, Leary felt his heart pop against his ribs, as if he had been given a fright. Rose stared at him from across the parlor with patient eyes. He shook off the odd moment and fumbled into his jacket pocket for the small tape recorder. Hitting the red button, he said into its microphone, “This is Professor Dale Leary, interviewing Miss Rose Abbott, local artist, about her life and work.” He rested the recorder with gentle care on the small table between them, facing Rose, and began.
“Tell me a little about yourself, Miss Abbott—about the experiences that made you the artist you are today.”
Rose gathered herself and when she started speaking, it seemed as though she was not speaking to Leary anymore.
“My family was not surrounded by any more tragedy than most of my generation. We had our difficulties, of course, the biggest for me being that my parents discovered early on that I was not a normal child. I had a fierce blaze of independence in me from a very young age that more or less informed them that their services of parenting were not required. Being the people they were, they took full advantage of this stroke of luck, which only furthered my disinterest in being their daughter.
“I was an artist from a young age, also. I saw the world much differently than my peers, and this caused me some strife and growing pains I do not wish to recount here in detail. Suffice it to say I lived on a different plane of existence than everyone around me, and I believe it was this that made me a prime target.”
“Target?” Leary asked. He was leaning forward fully in his chair now, elbows digging into his knees.
“Yes.“
“Of what?”
Rose looked at him with eyes that seemed a different shade of color. “I don’t have a name for it, Professor. I suppose it is the artist in me that refuses to confine it to pre-packaged and ultimately flawed human definition.”
“Well . . . can you describe it?”
Rose blinked a few times, and then her voice came out soft, “Darkness.”
Leary swallowed.
“I know that is a bland and unsatisfying way to put it. But that is all I have ever known it as. It is not as a demon with his own name and rank, you see.”
“Did you attempt to get any help with this problem?”
“That’s just it, Professor; I didn’t see it as a problem. And I still don’t. Let me put it this way: affiliation with any group has its ups and downs, yes? Religion, the military, politics, any given social order. Mine is the same. Its ups and downs are just different.”
“Group affiliation . . . forgive me, but are you some sort of devil worshipper?”
At this, Rose chortled with marked bitterness. “No, Professor. I’m not naïve enough to tempt that fate.”
Leary absorbed her words, twining his fingers together and struggling to force a question to surface from the murk of his mind. “I see . . . but it is this darkness that inspires you to create the things you do?”
“Most definitely.”
“Do you consider yourself some sort of messenger?”
“Not particularly.”
Leary rubbed his stubby fingertips over his lips and said, “I’m sorry, but this darkness . . . What is it like? I mean, when and how did you find yourself involved in it?”
Rose Abbott blinked, and licked her lips. She seemed to be staring right through him, and it was so palpable that Leary nearly turned in his chair to see who or what was standing behind him, staring back at her. Finally her eyes trailed to the floor and she tucked her dark hair behind a delicate ear.
“I wasn’t looking for it,” she said with a defensive tone that could not be ignored. “But in a way, perhaps some deeper part of me was. When I first encountered it . . . God, even now I find it difficult to believe I survived, let alone embraced it.” The way her eyes were misting over, it told Leary that this was a tale few had heard. He did not feel honored so much as nervous, as if he were tiptoeing his way across a lake that wasn’t quite frozen.
“Survived . . . what?” The second his words stopped, Leary felt the tendril of an icy grip wrapping its way around his neck and beginning to squeeze. He was too afraid to scream.
Rose seemed aware of what was happening to him. She was staring again, at and through him simultaneously, and the tears he thought she would spill had dissolved into her hardened eyes. He had the invisible, unexplained thought that something would not allow her to cry.
“When I felt it close to me the first time, my skin tingled.” Rose Abbott’s voice had dropped in timbre, and taken on an ethereal glow. “I knew where it was at any given second—behind me, to my side . . . and when it got close enough, my vision failed. I couldn’t see where I was. In my mind, instead of seeing what was in front of me, what I saw was what I can only describe as a projected movie. It was showing me what it wanted me to see. And over and over, all I could see was myself, leaping from my car and running, screaming, into the darkness of night. It wanted me to run, to be scared. To be swallowed.”
Leary couldn’t speak anymore. He, in fact, couldn’t move.
Rose took a deep breath. “I didn’t run. Not the way it wanted me to. I don’t know what would have happened if I had done it, aside from the very explicit feeling that many people would have died.
“And then I drove home.”
Leary found the ability to swallow again, and he did so. His saliva felt like fire dripping down his throat.
Rose got up. She circled her large armchair and Leary saw her fingers dig into its fabric. “It is a profound experience, breathing in death so deeply, yet walking away as if I had the right to. Whirling on an aching heel and stumbling out of the darkness like a soldier from a bullet-ridden jungle. You think that sunlight on your skin is the beginning, the start of something new.
“But the darkness, it never leaves you. It trickles through your veins eternal. You are left with the constant shadow creeping from behind you, never quite consuming, but ever present, ever chilling. You can smell the warm, faceless arms of insanity beckoning you back to what you escaped. And the most horrifying experience of it all is not that you cannot leave it all behind . . . no. It is knowing how badly some infested part of you wishes to return to that terrible, comforting realm of bleakness. It is the awful sensation that brightness gives you. It is the promise that you are forever scarred, forever decayed from within, and that you can never know submersion in the symphonic clamor of life. Within you beats the ragged pulse of night, and to flee it is to flee the very core of your own soul. When you touch the dark, you never come back. Some part of you is gone, forever.”
Leary’s hands were shaking. Whatever had constricted him was dispersing like a cloud of smoke, and he felt the warmth of the room rushing down his veins again. He inhaled sharply enough for Rose to look over at him in sympathy. She was apologizing with her eyes, expressing how sorry she was that he was so curious.
“Miss Abbott . . .” Leary’s voice came out cracked and weak; he coughed a few times. “Are you saying that something drove you insane?”
Rose seemed disappointed, and she sighed with a heavy heart. “Not by your, I’m sure, narrow definitions. But the truth of the matter, Professor Leary, is that insanity is simply Death come for you too soon. And neither you nor he can remedy his mistake. You can only rest in the knowledge that he is now an arm‘s length away, eternally, until he chooses to seize you again.”
Leary drove a deep breath down his throat as he watched her fist clenching, unclenching, clenching again; the movement seemed juxtaposed to her delicate face, her soft hair. She tilted her head and said, “Perhaps those you spoke of earlier, those terrible ghouls of history . . . perhaps they were the people who listened.” Her voice quickened as the thought continued to develop. “Maybe they are the ones who listened when it said ‘Get out of the car and run into the abyss.’ They took off screaming into the blackness because they were too weak to fight it, and when it was done with them, they were something else entirely. Not human anymore; their human weakness helped them transform. And we are the ones who must suffer for that weakness.”
The air stopped moving around him and Leary could feel the dust scraping through his nostrils as he inhaled. The thought swirled around them both, and then Rose turned to look at him; not for approval of her theory, but to make sure he had heard it all.
Rose added quietly, as if she were speaking to her own heart, “But even fighting it after it has found you assures your doom.”
Leary felt the icy tendrils creeping along his skin again, and he jumped to his feet, snatched the tape recorder off the table and stuffed it in his pocket. Rose looked over at him with sad, pleading eyes; from somewhere deep within, a broken child was crying for Leary to save her, yet knew he was nowhere near brave enough to face the monster that held her captive.
Leary smoothed his hair at an attempt to be casual and then held his meaty hand out to her. “Well it has been a pleasure, Miss Abbott. I believe I have all I need here. I thank you for your time and honesty.”
Rose knew everything that was happening to him internally, Leary was sure of it. It was apparent in the slow way she moved from behind her chair to shake his hand, and in the cold grip of her thin fingers that slid into his. She looked at him square in the eye, and Leary was afraid.
She studied his face before she said, “I hope you found what you were looking for.”
In his head, Leary heard a raspy echo of Rose’s voice warn, I hope you realize what you’ve found.
Rose didn’t say another word as she led Leary through the darkened halls of her home and to the front door. She opened it for him and nodded in his direction as he passed her. He forced a tight-lipped smile and didn’t turn back once he had reached the safety of the lively street.
Come Monday morning, Leary was back in class with his ritualistic cup of coffee and Danish. He had his stacks of papers awaiting grades, the course’s textbook, and the day’s newspaper in their usual positions on his desk. Three sharpened pencils were lined up in a row on top of the class’s roll call list. As the students filtered in, he customarily ignored them, instead perusing the front page of the paper. He sipped his black coffee in gentle tastes and waited for the bell to ring.
Perhaps it was the early morning hour, or the way everything else was so flawlessly in its proper place, but most of the students entering did not right away notice the primly tied noose hanging from the ceiling.
One after the other, however, they noticed, and whispered to the others who hadn’t. The rope looked new, professionally tied, and had been looped around a light fixture just left of the center of the room. It hung too high for anyone to touch—or use—but its appearance sent an upset rumble through the class.
The bell sounded, a shrill, high-pitched electric whine. Leary put down his coffee and folded the newspaper. The last of his students, most looking as if they had just fallen out of bed, scurried in to their seats. Leary stood, collected the day’s lecture notes and clopped around to the front of his desk.
Leary pushed his reading spectacles up his nose and told the students to turn to page one-thirty-seven in their text. He then launched into a tidy lecture regarding the Trivers-Willard hypothesis and the specifics of parental investment in sons or daughters, respectively, depending on the condition of the parents.
The students could not pull their eyes away from the noose, exchanging glances with each other, whispering among themselves at its strangeness. Finally, one student couldn’t take the suspense. He raised a slow arm and waited.
After a bit, Leary looked up and noticed the interruption. With more than a bit of annoyance he gestured at the student. “Yes, what is it?”
“Sorry, Professor, but . . . why is there a noose hanging from the ceiling?”
Professor Leary’s sight jerked upwards, as if he had failed to notice it before. He looked at it a moment before he pushed his glasses up again and replied, “It’s simply decoration.”
“De . . .decoration?” The student was incredulous.
“Yes, for the course section we will be beginning on the Salem Witch Trials and the Inquisition.”
The student seemed confused a moment, then began to shuffle through papers for his course curriculum. Leary waited with quiet impatience. When he couldn’t find it, he flushed and nodded in submission before shrinking into his seat.
Without hesitation, Leary returned to his lecture notes, and the students did everything they could to pay attention and not embarrass themselves like the other boy had. No one spoke another word about the noose that day, and when the bell rang dismissing class, they had all but forgotten about it.
That evening in a few quiet dorm rooms and study halls, some of Leary’s more curious and bright students whipped through their collection of papers from the semester, and found to their surprise that Leary’s curriculum did not include a single lecture on Salem or the Inquisition.
By the end of the week, every student in all his classes was aware of the lie. But because Leary had added four more nooses to his collection that same week, not one of them dared to challenge him.
Over the next month, attendance in Professor Leary’s classes dropped significantly, coinciding with the fact that the ceiling was practically covered with nooses of all lengths and sizes. He never addressed the strange adornments, and never again mentioned a single word on the Salem Witch Trials which had been his initial excuse. He began to keep the blinds shut in his classroom, all the time, creating a vortex of artificial light that made his students uneasy. He seemed to have stop personal grooming, leaving his thin white hair in shaggy disarray, and his clothes continuously wrinkled.
He began to bring up strange topics that deviated from the current lecture; he asked Benjamin Perry, the boy who had directed him to Rose Abbott and her art, how he would destroy the world if he were given the power. What manner of catastrophe would he choose? Leary asked him. Flood? Fire? Pestilence? A great meteor from the heavens? Perhaps nuclear winter?
Benjamin stuttered and looked near tears when he answered, “I wouldn’t destroy the world just because I could, Professor.”
Leary balked at him, confused, looking almost angry at the response. Then he huffed at the boy and dismissed the class forty-five minutes before the bell rang. No one raised an argument against him; they just crept by him as he sat at his desk, scribbling furiously on a sketch pad.
Not long after the early dismissal, Frank Adler eased into Leary’s classroom with his hands in his pockets. Immediately his eyes were drawn to the ceiling, and he frowned in disturbed questioning at the nooses. He looked then to Leary, and watched with curious interest as Leary filled the entire sketchbook page with dark ink from his pen, as if he were trying to wipe out anything white from his view.
“Hello, Dale,” Frank said, walking towards the desk. “I saw your students in the hall early, thought I would stop by and see what gives.”
Leary grunted at him and didn’t look up.
Frank Adler sighed, and hitched a leg up to sit on the edge of the desk. “I was expecting your thesis proposal last week, to give to the board. Did you give up on it?”
“Ha!” Leary let a bellow out that shot-gunned into the empty classroom. “Give up? Hardly.”
“You told me you’d have it ready by the end of the month.”
“You think you can just dictate genius, Frank? You propose to sit there and tell me how fast I should have ready the greatest discovery of our time?” Leary huffed again. “You’re a bureaucrat, you have no idea.”
Frank was taken aback; Leary had never spoken to him with such anger and disrespect in all their years as friends. He took a few slow breaths to keep from saying anything rash, and then looked again at the messages in front of him: The darkness of the room, Leary’s fanatical drawing, and the ceiling of death hovering above him. Suddenly Frank was cold enough to shiver.
Frank swallowed against a raw throat. “You found it, didn’t you, Dale?”
Leary stopped scribbling. His gaze rose slowly until his wild eyes met with Frank’s. He didn’t answer, but stared at his friend, the way Rose had stared at him.
Frank promptly rose from the edge of the desk and backed away, as if he had just startled a hungry lion in the brush. His eyes rose upward again; it was so quiet, he could hear the ropes creaking in the breeze of the air conditioning. The room seemed much darker.
“By God, you found it.” Frank put a hand to his mouth.
Leary wasn’t listening. He had returned to his drawing. The dull air filled with the sound of his scratching.
Tears coated Frank’s eyes as he realized Dale Leary was gone for good. Without another word, he backed out of the self-made abyss that was Leary’s classroom and closed the door.
The next people to open the door to Leary’s classroom were the dean of the college, followed closely with two police officers, the head of the psychiatry department, and the school councilor. All of them stopped short in the doorway when they saw the nooses above them.
“Dear God . . .” muttered the councilor, a short fat redheaded woman, who promptly gripped the sleeve of the dean’s pressed jacket.
Leary didn’t look up to greet them; after all, he had almost finished his art. The floor around him was scattered with sketch pages turned black with pen ink and ripped carelessly from the book. He was on the last page when the officers flanked him, while the dean and his colleagues spoke to him like they would an upset child, or a monster with a short fuse. The redheaded councilor was crying; it wasn’t long before the pressure of the dark in the room caused her to flee back to her office.
“Dale. Come with us,” said the psychiatry department head. “We will take you somewhere safe where you can tell us what happened.”
“Look on the floor!” Leary screamed at them, pointing wildly. “That explains it all! I’ve already written it out for you!” He gestured to the black scratchings of his sketchbook before snatching one up and shoving it into the dean’s hands. “Can’t you see?!”
The dean looked at the nonsense in his hand, and then back at Leary with fearful eyes. He gestured with his head to the two police officers, who put gentle hands around Leary’s arms and helped him to his feet.
Leary didn’t fight them. He only shrieked at the dean, “My work! My thesis! You cannot leave it here—Adler will claim it for himself!”
The dean exchanged glances with the psychiatry professor, and when he nodded, they both began to collect the black papers with gentle hands. Once they had them all, Leary nodded and smiled and said, “That’s going to change the world!” as he pointed at the stack of torn papers in their hands.
With that, Dale Leary was led out of his classroom for the last time and into a waiting hospital transport that took him to a high-security mental facility. This was at the adamant request of Frank Adler. The head of the psychiatry department agreed after a single fifteen minute interview with Leary.
Even after he was gone—and after his nooses had been removed, his darkness chased away—students refused to enter his classroom. It was cursed, they said. They could feel it in their bones. They would not attend any class in that room, ever again, and they would make sure future generations of students knew the danger the dean was trying to put them in.
Resigned and exhausted, the dean had Dale Leary’s classroom boarded up. |
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