Michael Dibdin - Dark Specter

Through all this, David had of course been my major preoccupation. My feeling that his previous acceptance of the situation had been too good to be true had been confirmed. It seemed somehow to be linked with his being on the island. The moment we left, everything changed. He became withdrawn and intensely clinging. I couldn’t even go to the bathroom without finding him outside the door in tears when I came out. There was also the question of Rachael’s death, which I had ducked before. Now I told him the truth, although without mentioning that she had died by her own hand. He at first refused to believe that he would never see her again, then became preoccupied with the physical details of her present whereabouts. In fact Rachael had been cremated, but I spared David that knowledge too, particularly after what he had seen on the island. I said she was buried underground, and he wanted to know how deep and where and whether she had enough food and a phone. I explained that that was just her body, and that his mom was not really there. I added, with a twinge of hypocrisy, that some people believed that she was in heaven. David immediately decided this was right, and that she could see him and hear everything he said. I decided to go along with this and let him work out the truth for himself at a later date.

One very important factor in David’s stability was completely fortuitous. The woman who owned the house in back of ours happened to have a boy about the same age, and the two made friends one day over the fence. This was the more surprising because David had never been very outgoing, even in the old days back in St. Paul. But although it would be absurd to suggest that the ordeal he had been through was what we would once have called “a growth experience,” there was no question in my mind that he had changed, becoming more independent and less tentative with other children. The only thing he absolutely insisted on was my continual physical presence. I’d only been able to sneak out to the store because he was plugged into some TV show he’d become hooked on.

The main problem with David’s understandable dependency on me was that I wanted to be with Andrea-alone with Andrea. Her problems of readjustment were not as serious as David’s, but they were just as real. After living in seclusion for so many years on the island, she had lost many of the skills that we all take for granted. Going almost anywhere was a torment to her. Traveling in a bus or car made her sick, the sight of strange faces made her panic. She couldn’t deal with answering the telephone or going shopping. Like a prisoner released after many years, she found herself unable to cope with the demands of organizing a life in which she was constantly called upon to make decisions.

All of this would simply have been irritating if I hadn’t been in love with her, but I was. Whenever we were apart, even for an hour or two, I felt unreal, drained of substance, like one of those specters whose meaning Sam had so totally perverted. What Blake meant, as far as I can recall, is that every one of us has a male and a female component, and that we can only achieve full humanity when the two are commingled. Split from that whole, the male component becomes a “specter,” a reasoning machine spinning abstract theories and arbitrary rules and then enforcing them ruthlessly. The female component similarly degenerates into an “emanation,” jealous, moody, nagging, envious.

Something like that had happened to me. Without Andrea, I felt reduced to a pale parody of myself. I wanted to be with her all the time, to care for her in this difficult transitional phase she was going through, to help her find her feet in the outside world. I never discussed these feelings with her, or asked her what she felt for me. It would have been forced and intrusive. Once we had both settled down there would be time enough to talk, and to decide what we were going to do next. For now, it was enough that we had these few months together, without conditions or promises.

I walked home unhurriedly, enjoying the mild summer day. Our house was in a pleasant neighborhood called Wallingford, with just enough yuppie input to have excellent bread and coffee and micro-brews and similar amenities readily available, while retaining a solid core of long-time residents from the days when it had been an unpretentious blue-collar community, blighted by fumes from the gas works down by Lake Union. The paper bag I was carrying contained a crusty French loaf, a bottle of good olive oil, tomatoes, basil, pasta and a selection of local goat’s and sheep’s cheese, together with a couple of bottles of Hogue Cellars’ fume blanc. Life seemed good.

As I turned the corner into our street, I saw something that brought me crashing down. At the other end of the block, coming toward me, was a policeman. He passed the house next door where the students lived, then turned up our steps and disappeared inside the fence.

For a moment I was tempted to go hole up at the trendy cafe where the local house-husbands went to sip herb tea and write in their diaries. It wasn’t that I was seriously concerned about being arrested again, although there was always the possibility of some unexpected development in the investigation. But even the prospect of having to answer another set of questions designed to trap me into some inconsistency seemed too grim to contemplate. I just wanted to be left alone.

But I knew this was dumb. If the police wanted to question me, there was nothing I could do. Better to get it over with now. I carried on down the hill, clutching my sad sack of goodies. Our gate was open. I walked up the steps to the porch. The lace curtains of the living room window were drawn. I opened the front door and called, “Hi, I’m home.” There was no answer.

Setting the groceries down on the table in the hall, I walked through into the living room. It seemed to be empty, but I could hear a strange noise, like someone humming tunelessly. Although it was such a lovely day, the blind over the window looking on to the garden was lowered. A black bag I’d never seen before lay on the pine table. I rounded the section of wall forming a kind of proscenium arch into the dining area, and stopped. Andrea was on her knees in the corner of the room, looking up at me imploringly. Her wrists and ankles were handcuffed together and a patch of tape covered her mouth. She was trying desperately to speak, but all that emerged was the inarticulate humming I had heard. Then something cold and hard touched the nape of my neck.

“Hi, Phil. I’m home too.”

I felt my skin prickle. I couldn’t see who was standing behind me, but I knew the voice. I also knew that the person it belonged to was dead.

“Put your hands behind your back.”

I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t think. What was happening was impossible.

“Do it, or I’ll blow your brains out right now!”

Mechanically, I obeyed. I felt a handcuff bite into one wrist, then the other. Then a vicious kick at the back of my knees sent me crashing to the floor.

“Kneel!” said the voice.

By pushing with my shoulder against the sofa, I managed to get to my knees. My ankles were locked together with another double click. There was a tearing sound, and then a hand was clamped to my face, pressing a sticky surface hard over my lips, gluing them together. A figure moved into the space between me and Andrea. I looked up, and the impossibility was confirmed. The man in a black uniform standing over us with a gun in his hand was Sam.

“Big surprise, huh?” he sneered. “Ripley’s Believe It or Not. And you didn’t, did you, Phil? I laid it all out for you. I shared the Secret with you, and you still didn’t believe. Mark and Rick and the rest, they didn’t believe either. They demanded proof. Well, they got their proof, just like you’re going to.”

He burst into a savage laugh.

“They accused me of making mistakes! And I did make a mistake. The mistake I made was thinking that they were worthy of sharing the Secret. I didn’t want to be alone, you see. I didn’t want to have to bear this great burden alone.”

He nodded gravely.

“Like the first Christ, I wanted the cup to pass from me. I told myself that there were other people out there as real as me, and that I could recognize them. Well, I’ve been punished for my weakness, justly punished. I accept the bitter truth now. I am alone, and always will be. What happened on the island proved that. They were all destroyed, but I survived. Plus you two, and the kid.”

He broke off, as though a confusing thought had just struck him. Then he reached forward and ripped the tape off my mouth.

“Where is he?”

I could hear the faint sound of the TV down in the basement.

“At a friend’s,” I said.

Sam nodded reflectively.

“In that case he gets to live. That’s the way it works. That’s how God protects his chosen ones. You thought maybe he suspended the laws of physics for us, so a bullet fired into our brains wouldn’t penetrate the skull? I told you, Phil, things are set up like this to make faith both possible and necessary. If some people got a special deal, it would be obvious that God was protecting them. But it doesn’t work like that. This gun would kill me just like it’s going to kill you two. The reason it doesn’t is because it’s never fired!”

He laughed again.

“I’m living proof of that! There I was, trapped in the hall with all the others, surrounded by three crack shots who gunned down anyone who came out. The hall is torched and burns to the ground, and pretty soon afterward the whole island is crawling with cops. Yet I walked out of there without a scratch on me, as easy as checking out of a hotel! You want miracles? There’s a miracle!”

“So how did you do it?” I asked.

The longer I kept Sam talking, the more chance there was someone might come to the door and scare him off. Or maybe he’d crack up and go over the edge. The way he was acting, it looked like he was high on something. If I could spin things out, it just might turn on him. It was a chance at least, the only one we had.

“How did I do it?” he echoed. “I had faith, Phil, the faith that moves mountains. I knew I couldn’t be harmed. I knew God wouldn’t let that happen. But I also knew that I couldn’t just sit there and expect Him to stop the world and let me get off. God helps those who help themselves!”

He had started pacing up and down the dining area, swiveling around every four paces. His face was pale and strained with a manic energy.

“Those fuckers had us pinned down, right? Mark on one side, Lenny on the other, Rick out front. Lenny was the one I went for. I knew he was only going along with the others out of weakness. Lenny was too scared to stand up to Mark, but I knew he couldn’t stand up to me either. I opened the window in my room and called to him, told him I wanted to talk. Then I climbed out and walked over to him.”

Sam looked at me with contempt.

“You couldn’t have done that, Phil, for all your fancy talk. Walk up to a guy who’s crouching down twenty feet away holding a Cobray automatic on you, just staring him down! I knew he wouldn’t fire, you see. I knew God wouldn’t let him. I kept on talking to him the whole time, telling him how this was all a terrible mistake, urging him to come over to our side. In the end he lowered the gun. He knew he couldn’t use it. I walked right up to him, and when I was close enough I pulled out my pistol and shot him in the face.”

He paused, listening. I too had heard something, a faint click, then a scuffling sound. I knew it must be David. The program he’d been watching was over and he was now coming upstairs. I glanced at Sam, and realized that he’d read my expression perfectly. He ran through to the kitchen and I heard the door to the basement open. I turned my head toward Andrea, but I couldn’t bear the look of helpless anguish in her eyes. There was nothing either of us could do for David now.

It seemed an eternity before Sam returned. When he did, he was alone.

“How come the TV’s on?” he demanded.

I shot another glance at Andrea. Had David managed to hide somewhere? Perhaps God really was protecting him. I hoped someone was.

“He always leaves it on,” I said. “He thinks those are real people in there, and if you switch it off they die.”

Sam’s eyes bored into mine. He had seen the look on my face earlier, and was still suspicious, but his desire to maintain an aura of omnipotence made it difficult for him to show any uncertainty or doubt.

“But how on earth did you get off the island?” I asked, to get him back on track. “The police searched the whole place with dogs.”

Sam smiled, secure and superior again.

“How did I get off?”

He burst into raucous laughter.

“The police escorted me ashore, Phil!”

By now it was obvious that he was out of his skull on something or other. His whole mood had changed in a few seconds, and he seemed to have forgotten the question of David’s whereabouts.

“I let Rick and Mark torch the hall and pick off the suckers inside as they tried to escape,” he continued in a rapid burst. “It was a regular turkey shoot. I could have taken them anytime, but it suited me just fine that there wouldn’t be any survivors. They were so busy covering the hall they didn’t see me creeping up behind them. They had no reason to watch their backs. They thought everyone was inside getting barbecued. I took them out one at a time at close range. They never even knew what hit them.”

He patted the black jacket he was wearing.

“Mark had this phony police uniform he’d put together to get past Andy, some kind of security guard outfit. I stripped it off him and changed into it. When the real cops showed up I fired a burst over their heads with the Cobray to make sure they called in reinforcements. After that I sat tight in the woods and watched the whole thing. I saw you guys come in, and I saw the reception you got. That beat everything, Phil, watching you get led away in cuffs!”

He started pacing up and down again, seemingly trying to relieve the surges of nervous energy which threatened to overwhelm him.

“Once they figured they’d caught the guy who shot at them, they all relaxed. I just moseyed on down to the pier and waited around till I saw a boat leaving. Some guys from the Coast Guard, it was. “Hey, fellas, any way I could catch a ride with you? Our boat’s gone back to the mainland and I’m kind of stranded here.” They were real nice about it, ran me over to Friday Harbor and I got the last ferry out.”

He stopped in front of us.

“Now all I have to do is take care of you two, and I can head off into my new life.”

“How did you find us?” I blurted out, desperate to distract him a little longer. I could face the idea of dying, but not now, not so soon.

“I called your father. Told him I’d heard you’d had some kind of beef with the cops and I wanted to get in touch at this difficult time. He gave the address right there, over the phone.”

I dimly recalled my father telling me that a friend of mine had called a few days earlier. I hadn’t paid any attention at the time. I certainly hadn’t thought of Sam. As far as I was knew he was dead.