GARDENS OF NIGHT Read online

  In some ways this accounts for at least part of the tension that sometimes arises between the three. More often than not, they get along famously, as old friends should, but there are times when glimpses of the past reappear. They have always been a circle of three, with an understanding that no matter what, they’ll be friends forever, but in the end the reality is that Marc and Brooke chose each other over him. While it’s rarely discussed, Marc and Brooke both realize that in some ways, Spaulding has never completely recovered from it. He not only lost his girlfriend, he lost her to his best friend, and thus, lost them both. Had Marc and Brooke never fallen in love, surely their lives would’ve been different. If he’d remained Spaulding’s faithful and unattached partner-in-crime, who knows what they may have accomplished together, what alternate paths their lives may have taken? Though Marc cannot imagine happiness without Brooke, he knows that for Spaulding, the scenario is an intriguing and often frustrating fantasy.

  Now Marc wonders if Brooke thinks about it as well. She must.

  Before the incident it never occurred to him that his wife might regret or question her life with him. Their marriage wasn’t perfect, but they were happy. She was happy.

  “How’re we doing back there?” Spaulding asks, eyes watching from the rearview mirror.

  Marc sees history in those eyes – years of friendship and joy, turmoil and pain, anger and resentment, fondness and regret – all of it swimming in deep hazel pools. “Why do you ask me that like I’m a child?”

  Glancing back over her shoulder, Brooke gives her husband a gentle look of disapproval.

  With a sigh, Marc returns his attention to the window and colorful countryside beyond. “I’m good. Sorry.”

  “No worries.” Spaulding smiles wide, his teeth long and straight but faded and vaguely stained from years of black coffee and cigarettes. He changes lanes and increases speed. “I apologize if I came off condescending, it wasn’t intentional.”

  “So,” Brooke says quickly, “tell us more about this place, it sounds great.”

  Marc settles deeper into the seat, folds his arms across his chest and does his best to maneuver away from the thoughts and indistinguishable sounds crowding his mind. He listens, albeit vaguely, as Spaulding discusses their eventual destination. Tucked away amidst hundreds of miles of rural countryside not far from the Catskill Mountains, the tiny hamlet of Dasgar, New York is roughly six and a half hours from their modest home on Cape Cod, and two hours upstate from New York City.

  They still have several hours to go, but Marc tries not to think about that, as the longer he sits in the car the more restless he becomes.

  “It’s a contemporary chalet,” Spaulding says with more enthusiasm in his tone than usual. “I’ve never been, but Scott – that’s the owner, the guy I work with I was telling you about – showed me photos. Cathedral ceilings and glass doors, a wraparound deck, kitchen, full bath and two bedrooms down and a big loft up overlooking the first floor. It’s set at the end of a gravel drive just off a country road that looks like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting – I kid you not – and it’s on ten acres so it’s very private. Absolutely beautiful area.”

  “How did you manage to secure it on such short notice?” Brooke asks.

  “As if there’s any limit to my uncanny powers of persuasion.” Spaulding bounces his eyebrows at her playfully. “Plus, Scott owed me a favor for an account I straightened out for him a couple months ago. I knew he owned a spot in upstate New York and that he and the wife and kids only use it once or twice a year, so when he asked how he could repay me for bailing him out I asked if I could snag the place for a week. I thought it’d do us all some good.”

  Marc knows this conversation is largely for his benefit but he lets it go, allowing them to play their parts and say their lines without interruption. He’s more concerned with the black clouds gathered on the horizon.

  “It sounds wonderful.” Brooke pivots and turns to the backseat, her expression animated and forced. “Doesn’t it, honey?”

  “Yeah,” Marc answers softly, unable to look at her. “Great.”

  On cue, raindrops tap the windshield. He immediately hears what the others cannot – the true rhythm – the language of whispers within and behind them. Marc slides shut his eyes, tunes everything else out and listens more carefully. Unlike the whale songs he’s yet to fully decode, this he understands. This he knows. But it saps him somehow, drains his energy until he feels like he’s literally fading away and slipping into oblivion, transforming into a ghostly figure no longer visible to the naked eye. A defense mechanism, perhaps, a spiritual camouflage designed to protect him from that which hunts him even now.

  Yet he remains. Flesh. Blood. Bone.

  Vulnerable as ever, he conceals his soft white underbelly and hurries through the dark, narrow passageways of his mind.

  This time it is not water that haunts him. It is fire. Horribly twisted visions of women in full black habits – nuns – in agony, chapped and bloody lips moving in silent prayer as men in frontier garb nail them to wooden crosses, strap them to trees and burn them alive. Fire burns through the darkness. Hell has come to Earth on this bloody night. But this is no Salem. These are not lowly spinsters accused of witchcraft by vengeful children. These are alleged brides of Christ, messengers of the light, slaughtered like the Lamb of God they worship…

  Across time, wind, rain, and the miles that separate Marc from a destiny he can never change, something summons him. It summons them all.

  There, hidden in the rain. He can hear it so clearly now.

  It’s not human.

  Two

  Before, in the stillness of their lives, the quiet, there were times Marcus marveled at his happiness, wrapped himself in it like a blanket and snuggled beneath it to ward off the cold. He’d always expected a life more extravagant and exciting, but found himself content with the peaceful and relatively uneventful existence he and Brooke shared. Their lives had turned out positively ordinary – he the manager of a small office supply store, she an English teacher at the local high school – and far as he knew they could not have been happier.

  He and Spaulding were friends first. They’d met in junior high school and struck up an unlikely bond. Tall even then, Spaulding was lanky, with narrow shoulders, a tiny waist and a mop of long curly brown 80s-rocker hair that gave him something of a feminine look, like some gangly runway model. But unlike those corpse-like models, with their vacant expressions and dead eyes, Spaulding possessed a dashing quality, an air of confidence, style and charm well beyond his years, which, when combined with his quick and often cutting wit and angular facial features – shamelessly curious eyes, a large crooked nose and a square jaw – resulted in a person everyone noticed and tended to have strong opinions about. As in his adult life since, in school few held neutral feelings when it came to Spaulding Smith. He was either adored or reviled, and usually with good reason. Though not wildly popular in school, Spaulding did have a small circle of friends and was without question their self-appointed leader. His interests primarily involved books, movies, music and the drama club. Despite how awful most school productions turned out to be, Spaulding worked tirelessly and with great enthusiasm on each one, toiling behind-the-scenes with lighting, sound or operating the curtain, and sometimes even appearing as an actor. Although he often presented himself like a sophisticated man-of-the-world, in reality he came from modest means. Like Marc’s family, his was working-class and not exactly the yacht club type, but unlike Marc, Spaulding always seemed ashamed of it and for some reason had the need to be more complicated and urbane than most.

  While Spaulding honed his larger-than-life persona, Marc remained a socially withdrawn, subversive kid who seemed to revel in his role as the school’s antiestablishment rebel. In high school he’d briefly been a member of both the football and baseball teams but was never the typical jock type. In fact, he had few friends and rarely associated with his teammates socially. Unlike Spaulding, wh
o thrived in the high school environment, Marc found school boring, unfulfilling and often maddening in its hypocrisy. Though bright, he preferred to self-educate, and even as a young man, looked ahead to a time where rather than slogging from class to class he could go out into the world and make a life for himself. In the dream, he’d eventually settle down and have a usual life, marry a brilliant, beautiful and adoring woman who truly understood him, they’d have some kids – two maybe, a boy and a girl – get a dog and a cat, a nice place to live, a couple cars and a happy, quiet life. But until then he’d defy convention and boldly experience everything he’d set out to do on his own terms, to the beat of his own drummer, and find his place in a world he’d always felt out of synch with. He had no idea what that might entail, and perhaps that’s what was so appealing about it. He’d always loved to write, and often penned short stories he never let anyone read but Spaulding. Maybe, he often mused, he’d be another Jack Kerouac.

  At times Marc’s desires complimented Spaulding’s, who also planned to do everything, go everywhere and live an exciting and adventure-filled life. But unlike Marc, Spaulding not only wanted to be part of the establishment, he planned to rule and exploit it for his own purposes. He was going to be a movie star or perhaps a famous playwright, and of course expected his best friend to share in these plans and to accompany him. When Marc resisted lusting after many of the same things, Spaulding could never understand why, and often scolded him for it.

  “My God,” he’d say, “get some focus, will you? You remind me of Brando in The Wild One when he’s asked what he’s rebelling against and he answers, ‘what’ve you got?’ There’s no point if you’re subversive just to be subversive. Why would you want to be Kerouac when you could be M. R. Banyon!” Spaulding had already decided that if Marc were to become a writer he should use M. R. rather than Marcus and Robert, his first and middle names. “There’s a whole world out there, Marc. Things to see and experience, places to go, people to meet, a life to live, and if you don’t get your shit together you’ll end up in this nowhere town doing some nowhere job, got it? So fuck that. We’re getting out of here. We’re going to do great things, you watch.”

  Spaulding never suspected that what was really in store for him was a two-year stint at a local community college, and after earning an Associate’s in Accounting, a series of unrewarding jobs and eventually a humdrum career at a huge corporation in Boston, and then, after being transferred a few years later, Chicago. He’d had a few serious relationships but none lasting, and the older he got the more likely it seemed Spaulding would spend his life as a bachelor.

  Sadly, as they all creep into their early forties, it no longer seems likely but certain, because while he can be caring and loving, at times Spaulding can also be remarkably difficult to get along with. He’s never outgrown the desire (perhaps the need) to constantly be the center of attention; voices his vast opinions in no uncertain terms and usually with a condescending edge, and possesses bitterness toward life which generally manifests in drinking binges. Combined with the perpetual egocentric habits of a long-single person, and his constant need to feel superior to everyone he comes into contact with, the result has caused numerous difficulties over the years not only with those he dates but the friendships he tries yet consistently fails to maintain.

  All these years later, he and Marc talk on the phone quite a bit but only see each other two or three times a year when Spaulding flies in for holidays, vacations or other special occasions.

  Still, Marc and Brooke remain his best friends…arguably, his only friends.

  For Brooke and Marc, their life together has developed and strengthened gradually over the years, evolving from high school sweethearts to a mature married couple. While Marc went to work at the office supply store, Brooke attended college locally, chasing her dreams of one day becoming a teacher. Just prior to Brooke’s graduation, Marc was finally named store manager, and after a lengthy engagement, they were married a year later and set off on a life together. Things seemed to get better with each passing year. Brooke furthered her education, then landed a job teaching at a high school a town away, and by the time she and Marc were thirty they’d bought a modest but nice two-bedroom colonial in a quiet neighborhood at the end of a cul-de-sac in town. His cigarette-smoking, black-leather-jacket-wearing, too-cool-for-school guise a pleasant memory, Marc took some college creative writing courses and had a few short stories published by the time he’d hit thirty, but his writing had never amounted to much. Still somewhat antiestablishment, age had softened him a bit, and he’d come to grips with the idea that he’d never be Kerouac or anything even close. Spaulding had been right. He’d wound up himself, locked in a life equal parts contentment and silent disillusionment. Three completed novels filled a desk drawer at home, but they’d all been rejected numerous times by nearly every publisher on the planet. Though deeply disappointed, in time he learned to live with his failure as a writer and rebel extraordinaire and did his best to fully focus on his job and marriage instead.

  He and Brooke lived humbly and happily.

  The only real sore spot in their lives was the matter of children. Both wanted kids, but not long after they’d been married and trying for several months, a visit to the doctor revealed that Marc was sterile. They were both devastated, but Brooke reminded him that they could always adopt, skillfully masking her pain as she so often did. They had each other and were deeply in love, that’s what was important, she’d said, and while he believed that to the very core of his being, for the first time in his life he felt like he’d failed not only himself, but his wife.

  He hadn’t known then that it was only the beginning.

  They discussed adoption on and off over the next few years but decided to wait. Two decades later they were still waiting, still talking about it now and then as if it might be a real possibility, and perhaps before the incident, it had been.

  The envy of their friends and families, they are the only couple who has managed to stay together over the years, as sadly all their other friends who married around the same time are long-divorced or separated. A little more than a year ago they celebrated their nineteenth wedding anniversary, and anything seemed possible. Happiness was more than a luxury, it was a certainty. But neither could’ve suspected their twentieth would take place amidst such sorrow.

  Celebrated a few months prior, it was a quiet and forced affair. A few close friends and family gathered; there was a cake, some champagne and uncomfortable small talk. Though Brooke was hardly herself either, and he will never forget how drawn and pale she’d been that day, Marc was without question the eight-hundred-pound gorilla in the room and everyone knew it. Just back from the hospital, as it turned out he’d only last at home a few more days before having to return. Spaulding had called and apologized for not being able to make it. He’d previously booked an elaborate vacation to Europe and wouldn’t be back in time.

  Brooke was annoyed with him for missing it, as she thought his presence might help aid in Marc’s recovery, but Marc felt it was just as well. He didn’t want Spaulding to see him like that.

  The present version, Marc thinks, is pathetic enough.

  His second return home from the hospital was better than the first, and it looked like he might make it. Marc decided to fake his way through things if need be, but he’s never going back there again. He has to find a way to live outside those horrible walls or die trying. He decided this on his last night there, lying in that awful hard bed with the crisp sheets that smell like bleach, staring at cracks in the ceiling and listening to his roommate in the next bed snore and gurgle like a broken faucet.

  Like every night, they’d given him medication to help him sleep. While it left him groggy, he’s certain even now that he was still awake when the door to the room opened and the dark figure entered. Light from the hallway split the shadows to reveal a petite nurse in full uniform and cap. He remembers thinking it odd to see a nurse wearing a cap, as none on the ward he’d
seen previously had done so. He also remembers thinking she must be a new edition to the nightshift because he’d never seen her before.

  As the door slowly closed behind her, moonlight seeping through the lone window in the room washed across her face. Perhaps thirty, she was one of the most breathtakingly beautiful women he had ever seen. Her hair was raven black and pinned up beneath the cap, her complexion flawless and her eyes large, soulful and such a deep brown that they too bordered on black.

  The allure of her body was evident even beneath the featureless polyester uniform.

  Marc lay still, head flat against the pillow, unable to take his eyes from her. The ward was unusually quiet that night. No moans, no screams, no footfalls of attendants or nurses hurrying back and forth along the corridors or the occasional murmur of conversation from the nearby nurse’s station just down the hall. It was so quiet, in fact, he wondered if he might be dreaming after all. But then the nurse moved across the room with a fluid stride, stopping next to his bed, her stunning eyes gazing down at him with equal parts loveliness and intensity.

  Despite her beauty, there was something strange about this woman.

  Something disturbing.

  Marc noticed a tattoo of a serpent coiled around her left wrist, the tail extending across her palm and the head reaching to the beginnings of her forearm. The snake’s body was gray and thick, its tongue protruding and forked. She saw him looking at it and nodded, like this should mean something to him, a secret now shared. A tantalizing though subtle odor emanated from the woman, something similar to perfume but unlike anything he’d smelled before. It left him dizzy and intoxicated with lust, and Marc felt himself stir beneath the bed sheets and grow hard despite his best efforts to prevent it. The woman noticed this as well, glancing with amusement at the tented sheets. She smiled, parting her full lips to reveal gorgeous, perfect, brilliantly white teeth.