Darkness & Shadows (2 page)

“Has something happened?”

His mind drifted off.

“Patrick…”

He regained focus.

“Tell me what’s the matter,” she said.

“The words…”

“What words?”

“The ones in my head. They won’t leave me alone. Won’t stop. They’re choking me.”

“The listing.”

He looked the other way, wrapping an arm around his stomach as if protecting a defiant wound. “It’s starting again.”

There. He’d said it.

She leaned back a few inches, gave him an appraising gaze. “It’s okay, you know.”

“It’s not.”

“We spoke about this. That there might be times when—”

“I feel ashamed.”

“Why?”

“I don’t
know!” Agitation forced him off the couch, took him to the window where he stared sightlessly out at the San Diego skyline. He’d moved here about a year and a half ago from the Bay Area, hoping the change in scenery and new job might change his life for the better. They hadn’t. Same life, different backdrop. Stupid idea.

“Patrick…”

He snapped out of his fog, but before he could turn to her, he caught sight of himself in the window glass. His hair had grown long, almost past his shoulders, his face covered by several days’ scruff. He’d dropped about ten pounds that he could barely afford to lose. There was once a time when he cared about how he looked. Not anymore. No energy left.

He said, “I thought I had this under control. I feel like I’m losing my mind.”

“It’s not about control, and you’re not losing your mind.”

“Then what
am
I doing?”

“You’re learning.” She nodded. “Tell me. Do you remember what happened before you started making the list?”

“Lists.”

“Ah,” she said. “How many?”

He looked the other way, ran a hand through his hair. “I’ve lost count.”

She watched him for a moment longer, and then, “Can you tell me what you’re feeling while you’re writing the words?”

“Confusion. Anger.”

“About what? Toward whom?”

He shook his head.

“Your mother?”

Camilla had been dead for almost two years, and still the thought of her was enough to take him to the Dark Place.

As if reading his thoughts, she said, “You went through an awful lot.”

“She was a horrible person.”

“Yes, she was.”

“Did bad things to me.”

“There’s no question.”

“It still hurts. I’m still angry.”

“You have every right.”

“When will it stop? When will she go away?”

“She may never, Patrick.”

He met her gaze, as if by doing so he could strip the truth from her words. Tears that had refused to fall so long ago now filled his eyes. Chest tight, voice no more than a cracked whisper, he said, “I don’t want to think about her anymore.”

“It’s important that you allow the feelings. It’s the only way to get rid of them once and for all.”

“I can’t.”

“You can. Stop fighting them. Let them happen. She can’t hurt you anymore.”

“It’s not that easy.”

“It never is. That’s why I’m here. To help.”

“So, how do we do it?”

A warm smile. “We talk.”

He pulled his arms tightly across his chest. He closed his eyes.

She said, “The listing is a symptom, that’s all. Not a setback, not a failure. Your OCD is brought on by stress, as a strategy to relieve tension. It worked for you as a child, helped you survive your mother’s horrendous abuse. But now, as an adult, it doesn’t help so much. In time, you’ll acquire new coping skills that are more functional, less destructive.”

“
God
, I hate that I do it!”

“I get that, Patrick. I feel your frustration. But the better you become at facing your fears and emotions, the more quickly the urge to list will lessen.”

He leaned back, looked up, shook his head.

“Accept the pitfalls. See them as signposts. Realize that, in the long run, they are actually steps forward.”

“They feel like failures.”

She fell silent, frowning. “You’re awful hard on yourself.”

“I can’t help it.” A new tear rolled down his cheek. He wiped it away, as if to erase the pain.

She kept a compassionate gaze on him, then glanced at her watch. Quietly, she said, “Let’s stop for today.”

On his way out, he passed a girl thumbing through a magazine in the waiting area. She glanced at him, her face marred by a scar running diagonally from her left temple to her right cheek. He drew his attention away briskly, trying not to appear put-off. But he wondered how it got there and, even more, what it was like to have to wear the pain on the outside instead of within; whether one was worse than the other.

He got into his car. His notebook was open and facedown on the passenger seat. He flipped it over and stared at the page, and the words stared back, practically laughing at him, mocking him.

“No!”
he told himself, shaking his head, jamming his key in the ignition.

He shoved the gearshift into drive, took off down the road.

C
hapter
T
wo

C
HAPTER
T
WO

Bullet accosted him halfway through the doorway. On hind legs, paws pressed against Patrick’s chest, the dog delivered his unfailingly annoying Tongue Shot.

“Easy, boy,” Patrick said, wiping dog slop from his face. “Easy.”

Bullet threw his paws around Patrick’s waist and delivered another shot. He went on to the arms, the face, anywhere he could reach.

Patrick didn’t mind. Not really. Manners would have been nice, but it was hard to resist the unencumbered enthusiasm, the crazy love, even if it was the furry, four-legged kind. He’d take what he could get. Sometimes it felt like the dog was all he had left.

Bullet was an eighty-pound Rotty mix. A rescue. Well, sort of. Actually, the dog had nearly killed him when they first met. Patrick had been covering a story in Texas and found the starved and beaten animal chained to a rundown trailer, stranded there for days while his murdered owner, a dirtbag named Flint Newsome, lay rotting inside. Patrick managed to be first on the scene, and Bullet managed to sink his teeth into Patrick’s leg soon
after—not a good thing to happen to someone for whom even a minor cut could be a death sentence. Luckily, the dog’s teeth didn’t break his skin. Near catastrophe averted.

Word was that Newsome had abused and neglected Bullet since he was a puppy. Patrick knew how that felt and soon realized that their chance meeting was no accident at all, that it was meant to be. Two kindred spirits converged, partnership formed, happiness found.

“Easy, boy,” Patrick said again, intercepting another Tongue Shot just in time.

Bullet eventually settled down, head up, eyes keenly fixed on Patrick as he moved into the kitchen and thumbed through the mail. Bills and more bills. He tossed them onto the counter to join the growing pile of their unpaid friends, and as he did, a postcard slipped out from between them. Patrick lifted it: a message from CJ Norris. The two met and became close friends while working the Nathan Kingsley story together in Corvine, Texas. He studied the picture from Empire, Nevada, a dilapidated small town located north of Reno. He flipped it over.

Greetings from Hell. Stuck in what has to be the shittiest place on earth, doing what has to be the shittiest assignment on earth: recession ghost towns. Of course, knew you’d appreciate this. Been there, done it, right? Think of you far more often than I’m able to reach out, but God, I sure do miss you!

Hope you are doing fantastic!

Hugs,

CJ

He let out a long, defeated sigh, pitched the postcard onto the counter.

The last time they’d spoken, Patrick
had
been fantastic; in fact, he was at the peak of his career as a reporter for
Newsworld.
Then an opportunity came that he couldn’t resist.
National Monthly
—a magazine with a much larger circulation—offered him a freelance job with a substantial pay increase and the possibility of becoming permanent. Patrick accepted, working out of their Southern California bureau in San Diego, where he’d spent his first year of college. Things went well for a while. Then he was sent to Donovan Correctional Facility, a prison located in an unincorporated area just outside of town, to cover the Aaron Stillwater case. The six-year-old boy had been savagely beaten and left for dead inside a closet, tethered to an ironing board with electrical cord. The child’s face was so badly bruised that his eyes were barely visible beneath the swelling. Cassandra Clayton, his mother, a part-time drug dealer, part-time prostitute, had left Aaron alone with her part-time drug dealer, part-time pimp boyfriend, Harold Freely.

Having endured years of his own mother’s wicked and relentless abuse, Patrick wasn’t so sure this was the best assignment for him, but being new to the job he knew that turning it down wasn’t an option. As the interview progressed, Patrick tried his best to ignore the disgust and contempt mounting within him with each new word that fell from Freely’s mouth. Then Patrick asked what the child had done to deserve the abuse. Freely answered, “He changed the channel on my football game.”

Patrick didn’t remember lunging at the man, nor did he recall the three outsized guards who intercepted him before he was able to make good on his intentions—but he didn’t need to. He was able to watch the whole thing as it played out on YouTube courtesy of the television crew setting up for the next interview. The video instantly went viral, and soon, just about every broadcast outlet in the country and beyond was showing it, along with attention-grabbing teases that simultaneously managed to attack Patrick’s competence and derail his career. “A reporter attacks a convicted child abuser during a prison interview!” and “
National
Monthly
reporter throws professionalism out the window while trying to throw a punch at his subject!”

Patrick had never been a violent person—he couldn’t remember a single incident in his life when he’d ever acted in such a manner—but Harold Freely had tripped a wire, a very exposed, very fragile one.

Freely escaped unscathed, but Patrick did not. As if the public humiliation hadn’t been bad enough, his career slid down the rails. Julia McGovern, his managing editor, didn’t exactly fire him; she just stopped calling him for assignments, stopped returning his calls, and very soon Patrick got the message:
Bon voyage. Have a good life
. Not that he could blame them. In just a few short moments, he’d not only discredited himself as a reporter but also severely damaged the magazine’s reputation.

And just like that, his illustrious career as an award-winning journalist vanished, his former triumphs nothing more than a distant memory. Patrick couldn’t bring himself above the shame to look for new work. He knew there wasn’t a news outlet in the country that would hire him anyway, so he just gave up.

With plenty of savings to sustain him, he remained at his small rented bungalow in the North Park area, a once-struggling, rundown neighborhood now moving into yuppie gentrification one street at a time. Patrick had hoped to improve his life by moving here, but instead had failed miserably at it. Stability had been the goal, but unbalanced transience was the result. Not exactly what he’d been shooting for, unless sad and lonely was the plan.

After feeding Bullet, Patrick turned his thoughts toward feeding himself. He peered into the fridge at a burrito from Rodrigo’s, soggy and beyond edible, one bite missing. An opened can of Rockstar. Two petrified slices of something; no telling from which year they’d hailed, or for that matter which animal.

He closed the door, pushed out a long sigh while looking at his watch: 3:00 p.m. He hated cooking for one. He hated cooking, period.