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  Dark Side: The Haunting

  J. M. Barlog

  BAK BOOKS

  Wheaton, Illinois

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1999 by J. M. Barlog

  Cover art copyright © Samsonitemonkey, Inc.

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number:99-095300

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  ISBN 0-9654716-1-6

  Printed in the United States of America

  OPM 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  To Mary

  1

  Echoes. Jenny Garrett’s first inkling of life came as echoes. Indeterminate sounds really, buoying to the surface of a tumultuous crashing sea. But from amidst this chaos emerged a faint tinny beep—a homing beacon guiding her through a twisting and turning tunnel of darkness. Steady and reliable it came, like the faithful ticking of a clock; the sound grew in intensity but maintained a near constant frequency.

  From somewhere beyond, a warbled voice wormed its way into her brain. A voice she knew. Her own voice trapped inside her head. Jenny listened, straining to capture words barely decipherable. She could sense her chest rising, feel her lungs expand then collapse in that gentle life-sustaining rhythm.

  ...beep...beep...beep...

  Moments passed. Jenny never thought to keep track of them, never realized how precious they could be. She commanded her eyelids. They refused her, sending a wave of dread spilling into her mind the way wretched flood waters overwhelm everything in their path. For her, darkness held steadfast.

  Then, like night yielding begrudgingly to the brightness and comforts of dawn, shrouded layers of gray and white poured in through rushing waters. The darkness—and now the dread—were gone. Sight exhilarated her with a sense of being.

  Jenny listened to the thump of her heart, pumping strongly and regularly, and in synchronization with that artificial beep funneling into her brain.

  Seconds passed, measured now by heartbeats. Jenny listened, then sought to explore the far reaches of the flat colorless canvas stretched endlessly before her. Their tiny tails of crystalline blue, she peered through a shower of motes hurling this way and that like miniature comets. When they abated, water-stained acoustic panels, faded by a half century’s time, came into focus, and for the first time, Jenny realized she existed still in the world of the living.

  She felt no pain, only a deep, penetrating chill that coursed her entire body. But could she still feel her body? Or was her mind tricking her? What remained out there in the abyss beyond her eyes and ears? What dread would she face when she commanded her limbs to move?

  Beep...beep...beep...

  That artificial sound, so rock stable, so comforting in its regularity, became her measure of time, and as such, her measure of life. How had she come to be in this desolate place? She tasked her brain to dole out answers, to make sense of what collected in her consciousness.

  No answers came.

  Overcoming a leaden inertia seizing her limbs, Jenny risked movement. She had to take stock of herself, had to know what remained of her. There must be more. Hell’s fires shot up her spine, punishing her attempt and tearing into every corner of her head to force an immediate cessation.

  ...beep...beep...beep...

  The rhythmic hollow chime marched steadily into her ears like soldiers.

  With ever-clearing vision, Jenny could discern only what presented itself before her eyes. Twisting her head slightly left, she sought the outskirts of her uncharted world.

  Please, God, let there be more to me, she heard a desperate inner voice cry. Let me exist as a whole person. Was this all that remained? She would refuse a life of only sight and sound. She had to know if there were more.

  Jenny commanded her arms. They responded, though not without reproof. It felt like someone was pumping her with a thousand volts of electricity. But in excruciating pain, her answer came. Joyful tears rolled out the corners of her eyes. Her body was out there, though just beyond reach.

  Exalting briefly in an exhilaration that comes from wholeness, Jenny tilted her head further. The throes of pain seized her neck. It felt like iron clamps held her in check. She issued a scream, but no strident cry fell into her ears. Only that steady beep.

  Beep...beep...beep...

  On the edge of her world, entangled plastic tubes descended from three clear bags dangling on a bedside pole. Jenny now knew this place, yet still had no understanding of how she came to be here.

  Poised to endure whatever the consequences of her decision, Jenny sought the furthest reaches of this place. Through a dim light filling the room, and across a chasm of uncertainty, Jenny discerned the outline of a feminine form, whose hair reached her shoulders and cloaked behind a black veil of obscurity. For a time, the form stood stone still; no sounds other than the beep marched into her head.

  Beep...beep...beep...

  Jenny’s mind sharpened; her eyes focused with improved clarity. While Jenny stared, the voiceless form advanced, falling for the first time under the scrutiny of a sallow light that radiated out from somewhere behind her head. Matted hair became the color of honey stained red. The flesh took on the pallor of parchment. Cracked lips, bluish in color, remained thin meaningless lines across the face. Where eyes once were, black orbs, devoid of life, existed.

  The face!

  Jenny fought to breathe, urged a scream.

  Beep—beep—beep—beep—beep.

  The sounds lurched into frenzied staccato. Terror seized Jenny’s pounding heart as a wavering alarm sundered the rhythm of life.

  The face and the body poised before Jenny were those of herself.

  Then Jenny Garrett saw no more.

  2

  A drowsy autumn sun washed into the hospital room through water-stained glass. Jenny perched herself anxiously at the edge of her bed, staring at her legs and feet as they dangled. More than six arduous weeks had passed—forty-five days to be exact, and now Jenny was going home under the power of her own legs. Something five weeks ago she wondered if she would ever experience.

  A thick fuchsia robe trapped her warmth against her sinewy form, staving off the almost constant chill from windows rift with cracks that allowed the outside air into the room. Jenny hesitated, glancing once more at the hand mirror set beside her on the bed. It taunted her, daring her to pick it up, to use it. She resisted, knowing full well she must at some time face what demons existed on the other side of that glass. She had refused up until this moment to confront what could no longer be held off. Her sweaty hand clutched the mirror’s cool metal stem.

  The voice inside her head dared her. What do you look like now? You must know, it chided.

  After a moment’s indecision, Jenny mustered her courage, lifted the glass from the bed, and brought it between her face and her legs. She stared at it with loathing and disgust. Hideous.

  Jenny slammed the mirror to the floor, shattering the glass into a thousand sprawling pieces across green speckled tiles that had gone out of fashion a generation ago.

  The bandages that had long hid her face and protected her from this moment had been weeks removed. Now what remained, exposed to the world, was a thin scar that hooked from the base of Jenny’s nose to the right corner of her mouth. Hideous. Never, ever would she smile again. Never could she allow anyone to see her this way.


  The crash brought her nurse rushing in with panic writ across her face.

  “S-s-sorry, I d-d-dropped it.”

  Relief washed over the nurse.

  “That’s okay, Jenny. Just stay on the bed. I’ll get maintenance to clean it up,” the nurse said, with hands on her robust hips.

  Jenny despised what had become of her face and her still-butchered hair. She dreaded the time it would take for her hair to return to its former feminine length and luster. After wiping teary azure eyes, Jenny used her finger to inspect another small scar bisecting her right eyebrow. She recoiled briefly when the tip of her index finger made its first contact.

  “Rumor has it you’re looking to leave us today,” a throaty Dr. Vance Morrison said from the door as he checked Jenny’s chart. He looked fiftyish, yet he maintained the youthful stature of someone half his age. Today he appeared unshaven and drained from a shift that seemed unending. His entrance into Jenny’s room preceded that of an elderly black maintenance man and a nurse assigned to assist him.

  “A small accident?” Morrison asked, noticing the glass. He had hoped Jenny would have accepted her present state better. All his encouraging words, in the end, had done little to ease Jenny’s moment of truth.

  The black custodian picked his way carefully into the room ahead of the doctor, and within a minute, had the glass swept into a neat pile and whisked into a dustpan. Morrison’s nurse took up her position just inside the room, yet safely beyond the range of the shattered glass.

  “D-dr. M-m-morrison, can I go home?”

  “What’s the matter, Jenny, you don’t like our hospitality? Warren informs me his cooking is considered a scandal to food.” Morrison hid a faint smile, then replaced it with an all-business expression.

  “Before I let you go, I want one more good look at you. This really is one hell of a piece of work. If you’ll pardon my French.”

  Morrison’s intense hazel eyes slipped down below the top rim of his glasses and did little to soften a clinically distant face. He saw anatomy and physiology and little else beyond. His proffered smile could easily be mistaken for admiration of his work rather than an interest in his patient’s well-being.

  How could he even look at her with such pleasantness? Jenny thought as Morrison examined his handiwork.

  But Morrison saw not disgust and disfigurement; rather he saw a miracle. A miracle from God that had plucked a worthy soul from Death’s clutches and returned it to the world of the living. Nothing on earth could be more precious than life.

  Not at all what Jenny had seen when she gazed into that mirror.

  With his fingers, he studied a thin, almost invisible scar along Jenny’s hairline, pleased at the results of the hours of work it took to perform the delicate task.

  “You’re healing just fine. In time, these can be permanently removed,” he offered, smoothing with a gentle finger over her brow. His eyes caught hers.

  Jenny looked askance.

  “W-w-when?”

  “Soon, Jenny. I know how you feel. But first let’s make sure everything else is in good working order.”

  Jenny brought her eyes to meet Morrison’s, feeling tears filling the corners.

  “A little nip and tuck and that scar will be barely noticeable.”

  Morrison pocketed his pride, knowing Jenny needed more time to accept her new life. The accident had irrevocably altered her. Now she had to come to terms with that. But she would have help.

  With a surgeon’s gentle caring, Morrison assisted Jenny back into a prone position.

  Jenny’s Pavlovian response was to avert her eyes when Morrison opened her robe to examine the measures he had taken to staunch the internal bleeding and ultimately save her life. A crescent moon incision frowned across the entire breadth of Jenny’s abdomen. A stabbing reminder for the rest of her life of what she had endured.

  Jenny refused to acknowledge it; she wished that somehow it could be erased from her like a mistake on a chalkboard. How could Warren ever become passionate seeing her this way?

  The handiwork displeased Morrison equally, but desperate times called for desperate measures. And though successful, desperate measures tend to leave an unpleasant aftermath.

  Jenny would probably never know how close she came to death that night in the operating theatre. Nor would she hear of the measures the doctor and his team took to snatch her from death.

  “I’m afraid bikinis are out,” Morrison offered with a wry glint of medical humor.

  You have the perfect bikini body, Warren’s words flooded into her mind at that moment. He had spoken them to her the first time they made love on the sofa in her uptown apartment. He had stared at her with such desire that now she feared he would never be able to see her in that way again.

  But now...she could never expose such a monstrosity.

  “Jenny, I hope you believe in miracles,” Morrison said, after closing her robe and cupping her hands into his. “Because that’s what you’ve been granted. Only a miracle could have pulled you through after that crash. I’d like to take the credit, but I can’t. You make sure that husband of yours realizes how lucky you both are.”

  Morrison wrapped Jenny’s cold hand in his, skillfully maneuvering her to a sitting position without the aid of the attending nurse, who still stood quietly near the door.

  “H-he already d-does. Dr. M-m...M-M-Morrison...h-h-how...”

  Frustration locked Jenny’s jaw. Her temples pulsed. The harder she tried, the more the words clogged her throat. Tears left her eyes.

  “It’s okay, Jenny,” Morrison was quick to interject. “Just try to relax. Your speech should normalize in time. Don’t force it. Give your body time to heal; time to make itself right again.”

  “H-h-how come I c-c-can’t remember?”

  “The accident?”

  Jenny nodded.

  “That’s not unusual in head trauma cases. I expect you’ll experience gaps in your memory for awhile. These, too, should correct themselves over time.”

  “H-how long i-is a w-w-while?”

  “Few months. Maybe more, maybe less. If all goes well, they’ll get filled in. I’ve spoken with Warren about this. He knows what to expect and how to help you through it. He’ll fill in those gaps for you.”

  For the first time since Morrison entered the room, Jenny offered a faint glimmer of a smile.

  “Look at it from the bright side—it’s not amnesia. It’s just a short gap in your life. Portions of your memory are lost for now. But don’t worry, it only gets better.”

  “And...i-i-if all doesn’t g-g-go w-well?”

  “Jenny Garrett, you are alive! You’re walking out of this hospital and you’ve got a husband who loves you like crazy. Count your blessings, and take the rest one day at a time.”

  Jenny tightened her robe, smiling, though her eyes remained uncertain.

  “Any pain sitting?”

  “No. Last n-night I got t-terri-b-ble pains...”

  “I’m going to keep you on the Demerol for at least another week. You’ve come a long way in six seeks, but you’re not fully recovered. You understand that?” Morrison’s face turned into a paternal frown while he spoke.

  Jenny nodded.

  “You take it real easy at home,” Morrison said, leveling an emphatic finger.

  Despite all his training and efforts, Morrison realized there were some things only love and nurturing could fix. And that’s what Jenny needed most right now. Doctors repair the body, but only loved ones can repair the spirit. The hospital and staff had done all it could to put Jenny back together again. Now Warren needed to provide a husband’s love to help Jenny the rest of the way.

  And for Jenny, the road ahead would be rocky and difficult. Warren became the best person to help her overcome the obstacles still facing her. Maybe he was the only person who could restore her spirit to what it once was.

  “W-will...I b-be...”

  Jenny tensed up.

  Morrison patted her hand.

&
nbsp; “H-h-have ch-ch...b-ba-by?”

  “It’s far too early to tell. You’re young and strong. Only time...and God can answer that.”

  Jenny quelled a sudden rush of guilt rising out of her question. Why should those words trigger such an unusual reaction? Something in that exchange had knotted her insides, and at the same time, eluded understanding.

  “Just remember, strict convalescence for the next four weeks. No working, no straining to do anything. You just lay around and do nothing. I’ll see you again in two weeks. Then we’ll see if you can start getting out and about. If anything comes up before, you call me right away.”

  “Jenny, it’s time,” Warren said from the door, his smile the brightest part of his face. Yellow tea roses overflowed in his arms—Jenny’s favorite. His cinnamon-colored, thatchy hair was long overdue for a trim and wind-blown it looked like he did no more than hastily rake his fingers through it upon rising. His clothes, despite attempts to remedy it, looked like they had been plucked from a clothes hamper, smoothed by hand and then climbed into. But Warren had made it through this ordeal and now Jenny was coming home.

  “Right on time, Warren. I think Jenny’s all ready to go.”

  3

  Home. There’s no place like home. Home was a meticulously renovated three-story Victorian set at the rear of a cul-de-sac in the small town of New Brighton. Home was close enough to commute to New York City, yet far enough away to be classified as exurbia. Thirty-seven miles of rolling rich countryside acted as a levee, holding back the crime and grime from the city. Home had been Jenny’s refuge of security and comfort since marrying Warren. Now Jenny wondered what home would become for her. A prison? A fortress impenetrable by the outside world?

  Warren cradled Jenny in his arms while climbing the stairs with the grace of a man whose physical condition was in dire need of repair. He situated her comfortably onto their bed, struggling to keep from dropping her prematurely onto the mattress. Scents of jasper and wild flowers wafted through the bedroom.