Available Darkness: Chapter 43

(Author’s note: We apologize for the delays from the prior chapter to now. Thank you for the comments and emails, even the ones calling us jerks. We’ve been extremely busy, partly with another exciting fiction project we’ll talk about soon. But we’re back on track and plan to deliver weekly chapters of Available Darkness starting this week.

Just a quick catch-up to bring you up to speed – In the last chapters, police visited John and Hope in search of a missing woman – the same woman who Hope painted as dead and John possibly as her killer. Hope doesn’t want to imagine John as a killer, but as much as she loves him, and as much as they know one another, he has never come clean about his past. John, meanwhile, has been having strange dreams which lead him to believe he may have indeed killed the missing woman, but he can’t tell Hope of his suspicions. We left off with John leaving the house, ostensibly to go to work, though he has some other matters to tend to, first. And Hope has finally worked up the courage to dig into John’s past by finding the key to a trunk he has stowed away in their closet. A trunk which he has never let her see inside. What lies inside the trunk? What does John have planned? Find out in Chapter 43 of Available Darkness)

The historic district of St. Augustine was charming; goth eaves arching over the worn, but still mostly gorgeous, moldings of the peeling Victorians. But street parking was scant in the overbuilt and overcrowded quarter, and unfortunately for the residents. A steady sea of tourists swallowed the majority of available spaces, leaving locals to hitch it several blocks from their own mortgages.

Any other day and the agitation would’ve creased his brow as usual, but John knew that the morning’s half mile walk past homes turned into bed and breakfast spots, interspersed with homes which seemed to be in a constant state of renovation, would give him an advantage. Hope would never see him pass gravel instead of grass as pointing the car west and away from the restaurant.

He’d have to be quick. His shift started at 10 a.m. and he couldn’t risk being late and having someone call home. He felt the swell of Hope’s suspicions, despite her best efforts. Even if he wasn’t hyper sensitive to human emotions, her unease was as plain as a thunderhead on a clear day. They knew one another well, but John knew Hope like his rising breath. His life, however, was mostly mystery. And it would have to stay that way if they were to build a life together.

Guilt slid through his gut, but it was quick to leave. Deception was necessary; no woman could ever love the monster he had once been. Certainly not a woman as sweet and kind as Hope.

And it wasn’t as if he’d sold her on a lie without a center of truth. The John she knew was as real as any other part of him; the him he strived to become. The idealized version of himself, freed from his alien instincts and inhuman hunger. He was, by all accounts, the man Hope had come to love.

Though, if police at his doorstep and vivid dreams were a telltale sign he were living a double life as a murderer, perhaps this John was a guise even to himself. That was exactly what he intended to find out, even if his methods were unorthodox.

John circled his intended block twice, never moving his eyes from the rearview for longer than a second. He couldn’t afford to be followed. He did as usual, swinging the car into the U-Store-It complex, punching his pass code into the dingy aluminum box, then waiting for the black metal gate to lurch open and invite him inside.

****

Hope turned the key and opened the trunk filled with John’s buried past. The smell of cedar brought back memories of her childhood and she smiled.

The contents were neatly stacked; bound journals, a metal lock box, and a red scarf, obviously a woman’s.

Hope heard a creak in floorboard, and jumped, startled, dropping the keys into the trunk with a dull thudding chime. Her heart pounded as she imagined John entering the room and catching her in an act of betrayal, with no time to rinse the red from her hands. But he wasn’t in the room. It was probably just the sound of the house settling.

She caught her breath and fished the keys from the bottom of the trunk. Her hand brushed a stack of five journals, all in surprisingly pristine condition. The whisper inside her wasn’t shy.

“Shut the trunk and leave John’s past where it belongs – in the past. If he wanted to share it with you, he would have.”

But he hadn’t.

And why not?

Okay, but quick.

She grabbed the book on top, smoky black leather with a crimson red strap, then unfastened the cover and slowly cracked it open.

The pages weren’t filled with John’s careful block letters, though it was clearly his writing. The flowing strokes looked as though they’d been scribbled in a rush, despite entries that went on for pages. All 400 pages of the book were packed with writing, and all of it in a language she’d never seen.

“What the hell?”

She grabbed the other journals, quickly flipping through hundreds of identical pages.

Another floorboard creaked and her heart skipped a beat or three before finding its usual patter.

Hope grabbed the metal box, next, surprised to find it unlocked. She swung the lid and was greeted by a stash of folded newspaper articles and photographs, sitting beneath a blue velvet pouch. Spilling from the pouch was a perfectly smooth black rock, the size and shape of a small apple. It felt impossibly colder and smoother than seemed possible, as if it were made of ice.

There were two photos, old and faded. One was of a small, Northeastern, rural-looking two story house. The other was of two young boys, standing in front of the same house, each holding ice cream cones; four scoops and two goofy grins. The boy on the left, she was certain was John.

Hope gulped with the sudden, unsettling realization that she’d never seen another childhood picture of John. The boy on the right looked a lot like him, but older and taller.

A brother? John had never mentioned a brother.

The newspaper articles, at least 10, and a decade old, were all about a string of unsolved murders scattered throughout the southern edge of North Carolina. A chill slithered down Hope’s spine as she thumbed through the fading newsprint, her brain doing calculations that filled her with terror for what might lie on the other side of the equals sign.

The articles weren’t being harbored for stories of murder. No, there was a name circled in red on each of the pages, always just below the photo of the FBI agent it belonged to: Jack Baldwin, an older, hardened version of the second boy in the photo.

“Who are you, John?”

*****

Unit 178 was in the farthest corner of the lot. John parked his car, then got out and walked in a straight line toward the corner, glancing at the pair of cameras mounted on the roof above the unit. He flipped the back of his hand in a casual wave before knocking on the corrugated metal bay door, serving as the only way in or out of the makeshift “office.”

“Hold on, hold on,” an out-of-breath voice said, followed by the sound of a cascade of soda cans spilling to the floor. John stifled a laugh as the door rolled up and the chubby face greeted him.

“Still haven’t cleaned your office, eh?”

“Maid’s month off,” Larry grinned.

*******

Hope’s eyes moved from photo to article, then back again as time refused to march on. The article wasn’t nearly faded enough to hide the truth, and she knew there was no way she could bury reality and still meet his eyes. But bringing it up without telling him she’d gone fishing through his stuff, how was that possible?

Why is he hiding a brother?

Another creak, this one closer. Hope looked, even though she knew John wouldn’t be there. He wasn’t.

But someone else was, a man. His bald head and wide smile stepped through the threshold a split second before his impossibly black suit followed.

“Hello, Hope.”

TO BE CONTINUED…