The Dark Man (14 page)

CHELSEA HOPPER

TWO YEARS AGO

A Very Special Live Halloween Episode

“You’re so brave,” I told Chelsea as she climbed the ladder into the attic. It’s amazing how often kids are absolutely fearless unless they’re taught to be afraid or something happens that dissuades any further attempts at exploring certain areas of life. Case in point, I haven’t touched tequila since I took a sip of my dad’s back when I was eight.

Chelsea was five. Her birthday was three weeks earlier.

The colossal fiend hiding in the space above her head had been growing in strength for thousands of years.

What in the fuck was I doing?

I reached for her on instinct, wanting to change my mind, wanting to pull her back. Then I played it off as if I was trying to steady her. Goddamn it. I was a seesaw.

She could do it. I had to
believe
with everything I had that she could. Chelsea would win and the beast would return to hell where it belonged, and she would live a long, happy life. She would be free of the black clouds because she defeated the dark man. On her own. Like a big girl.

Chelsea paused on the third step up and looked over her shoulder at me, both hands with a white-knuckled grip on the ladder. “Mr. Ford?” she said in a whimper.

“Yeah, sweetie?”

“I’m scared.”

“It’s okay. I’ll be right here. It’s your fight, your bully, honey. You beat that bully up there, and you’ll never ever have to be afraid again. You’ll be
so
strong, and you can fight for the other kids who are scared.”

Off camera, Mike said, “For God’s sake, Ford, it’s not like she’s getting on a roller coaster.”

I couldn’t hear him in my earpiece, only in my free ear. Carla must have cut the feed to his live mic. It was probably a smart decision on her part. It might have been her only one during the entire scenario.

Chelsea said, “Will you come with me, Mr. Ford? Come fight the dark man?”

“I’ll be right behind you, Chelsea,” I told her, but—and like the giant asshole I was—I had already decided to hang back for the sake of good television. The ratings would launch outside the stratosphere. Some cosmonaut up on the ISS would be able to reach out the window and touch the chart’s arrow as it sailed by on the way to the moon.

Some time ago, Mike told me I was getting dangerously close to letting the show, the sponsors, and the money go to my head. Said it was affecting my clarity of thought, and he was sure that I wasn’t the same person anymore.

Of course I wasn’t.

Back when we first started, I was some goofball with a camera and a few drunken cheerleaders, who happened to get lucky by capturing a life-defining moment on film.

Fast forward to last week where I sat next to Jennifer Aniston and told a couple of funny stories to David Letterman.

I wasn’t the same person, but, yeah, when Chelsea paused on the fifth step, with her legs visibly trembling and her head not yet inside the attic access above, I could see how maybe all of this had gone to my head.

What was
wrong
with me?

One minute I was standing there actually thinking that this was good for Chelsea, that she would come out of that attic as a victor who would be able to face down anything. The next minute I was waffling—my heart was melting. I was an idiot. A beat later, I’d be right back to drooling over ratings and—

“I want my mommy and daddy,” Chelsea said.

I gently squeezed her ankle to encourage her. “You can do this, Chelsea. Remember how I said that if you beat the dark man, you’ll never have to be afraid again?”

“Yeah.” There was a quivering lip behind that single syllable.

“You, Chelsea,
you
are the monster. The dark man is afraid of
you
. Now get up there and kick his—”

“Ford! Stop it, now!” I felt a strong hand on my forearm, fingers digging into my skin, yanking me to the side. It was Mike, pulling me away, trying to get to her.

“What’re you doing?”

“Get her down from there. If you don’t, I will.”

“Mike—” I held up an index finger to the camera. “Always nice to see on live television, folks. Anything can happen. One second, please, if you don’t mind.”

In my earpiece, I heard Carla whispering. “That’s good, that’s good. Go with it. Live TV, Ford.”

Mike said, “I’m getting her out of here. We can’t do this!”

Carla whispered in my earpiece, “Take him out, Ford.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

Mike was reaching up for Chelsea’s legs when I yanked his shoulders, spun him to the side, and sent him to the floor with an abrupt leg sweep. He cursed when he cracked his head against a dark black chest with metal bindings, and rolled over, clutching his skull.

“Chelsea, you can do this. Don’t listen to Mr. Mike, okay? Don’t forget, it’s afraid of
you
.”

Liar, liar, pants on fire because they’ll be burning in hell.

“Promise?”

“Absolutely.”

Downstairs, the front door slammed open, followed by angry shouts from some of the crew and the distraught voices of Rob and Leila Hopper. I was actually surprised it had taken them so long to get inside.

I found out later, much, much later, that Carla had hired security and two brutes about the size of Hulk Hogan were blocking the front door. From the moment Chelsea said, “I’m scared,” the sentries had been holding the Hoppers back. It took a hidden can of mace for them to gain access.

Chelsea didn’t understand what the sounds meant. Instead, she took the angry shouts to mean that she’d done something wrong, that she was in trouble, and she said, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’ll go!” She crawled up the last three rungs and disappeared into the gaping maw of the attic.

Downstairs, her parents screamed her name.

Mike, groggy from knocking his head, tried to get to his feet.

I looked at Carla. With every bit of sincerity, and no pun intended whatsoever, the malevolent smile slicing across her face was absolutely
haunting
.

Through the commotion, I heard Chelsea’s footsteps as she cautiously crept across the attic floor.

And then it happened.

A deep, raspy growl, made of ashes and rage, poured out of the hole above us. I smelled sulfur and rot.

Chelsea shrieked and went silent, then a second later, she tumbled out of the attic, flailing head over heels along the ladder. I lunged and caught her before she hit too hard, but the damage was already done.

Overhead, I watched a black mass, darker than the lightless attic, as it hovered there. It seemed to be mocking me, taunting me, enjoying the spoils of its effort, and then it slowly slithered back inside.

Chelsea’s eyes were half-open, yet she stared at nothing.

I turned to the cameras, ashamed and horrified at what I’d done. The wavering scale of my emotions tilted back to the same caring human I had been ages ago, and I felt the softball-size lump clogging my throat.

What have I done, what have I done, what have I done?

The twenty-four-hour news channels, the nighttime talk shows, the tabloids, Facebook and Twitter, none of them used
this
image of me, so distraught and worried about that damaged angel in my arms, hating myself. No. They didn’t use it at all, because to them, I was an awful, vicious, bloodthirsty devil, and I deserved the public castration of my character.

I had good intentions, though, didn’t I?

Chelsea’s eyelids fluttered.

I shouted at Carla, at Don the cameraman, at anyone who would listen to me: “Cut the feed. Cut the feed, goddamn it!”

Carla fired back. “No, Ford, we are staying with this!” It was unconventional for her, as a producer, to insert herself into the live television situation, but by then, it was obvious that she didn’t care.

The Hoppers breached the second floor, and I moved for them.

Don, thank God, said something to Carla and lowered his camera. Even in the dim light surrounding us, barely a hint of it coming from some far off bathroom nightlight that we forgot to unplug, I saw that Don’s cheeks were wet with regret.

Carla tried to block me, and I leaned into her with a strong shoulder. I was a runaway train. She was a cow on the tracks. She had no chance at stopping me. A breathy
oooph
flew out of her mouth as she careened backward, slamming into the wall. A picture frame fell and glass shattered around everyone’s feet.

Rob reached us first. Leila was blubbering, bawling, and wailing her daughter’s name. He took Chelsea’s limp body out of my arms and handed her to his wife. Then he whipped around and nailed me with a bare-knuckled backhand across my right cheekbone.

I dropped. My face immediately puffed with fluid and split where his rigid knuckles had met skin and bone, blood trickling down while I struggled to get back up, eyes watery. It wasn’t the first time I had ever been punched by a client, but it was the first time I absolutely deserved what I got.

My profuse apologies went unheard over Leila’s horrified voice as Rob flicked on a hallway light. Deep, red, furious gashes arced across Chelsea’s cheek, neck, and collarbone.

Three of them. A mockery of the Holy Trinity.

I couldn’t help myself. I moved to the small family that had been through so much. I wanted to hug them. I wanted to apologize for a hundred years and tell them I understood that what I had done was wrong, that Carla Hancock influenced me, that I had been driven by greed and ambition, by my own stupidity. I wanted to beg their forgiveness for getting caught up in the moment, for convincing them that having Chelsea battle her demons would be a good thing.

I picked a fine fucking time to develop a conscience.

Blame the fog of war, or better yet, the fog of celebrity, but that was all bullshit. I knew better. I knew what I was doing. The catalyst was—the fulcrum to the whole state of affairs—was that I didn’t stop myself, and I didn’t stop Carla when I should have.

Mike was right all along. Mike was always right.

I thought about that as I bent down to the traumatized Hoppers. I put my hand on Leila’s back, and she hissed, “Don’t you touch me,” with all the ferocity of that thing hiding in the space over our heads.

Before I was able to respond, I felt her husband’s hand on my throat, grasping tightly. “Once wasn’t enough?” he asked.

Through his grip crushing my windpipe, I croaked, “I’m sorr—” and then his fist centered my nose. I heard the sharp crack as the bone shattered, and then I was falling, landing on my back, choking on the blood gushing down my throat and into my open mouth.

The room flashed whiter than the hallway bulb, and I realized it wasn’t my vision reacting to the blow.

I rubbed my eyes, trying to see what happened. Was it a ball of energy? Was the creature upstairs manifesting, gathering strength to attack again?

No. It was Carla, chuckling, thumbing furiously on her phone.

“You’re such a dick,” I said, groaning, rolling onto my knees. Behind me, the Hoppers thundered down the stairs to the first floor. “What’s—”

“That’s an amazing picture, Ford. So much blood. I’m thinking CNN, MSNBC. Lead story everywhere.”

“Don’t.”

“You’ll be fine,” she said, without an ounce of sincerity or concern in her voice. “There’s no such thing as bad publicity, right?”

Mike wants to wait until Caribou is back with the next round of beers before he explains what he means, because he feels like, in his own words, “This whole goddamn discussion needs to be numbed by more alcohol.”

“I actually don’t want another round,” I tell him. “Not a good idea to investigate with too much of a buzz, remember? Or are you planning on ditching me?”

Mike wobbles his head as if this is something he considered. “The thought crossed my mind, but no, not after what happened back there.”

I’m fairly certain that Caribou gets the beers to us in record speed, because hey, we’re the washed-up superheroes from
Graveyard: Classified
, yet I’m so zoned in on Mike’s revelation that I forget to thank her, and I also forget to take another glance at that perfectly cupped rear. Good on me, I guess.

“So, about this offer. You’re here to, what,
pitch
me? Were you planning to do this anyway? Like, what if I hadn’t called you today, then what?”

“Ease up, cowboy. I’m getting there.” He takes a long pull from his bottle of Budweiser. “The short and dirty is, Carla Hancock has some interested parties. People have been keeping tabs on you.”

“
Carla
? Not a chance in hell,” I say, and I’m already on my way up from the seat.

Mike pats the air, motioning for me to sit down. “Chill for a minute. Hear me out. She’s got an idea for a project, and based on the feedback she’s been getting—I kind of agree. I think it could be huge.”

I sit, but I’m not happy about it. “Just who are these ‘interested parties,’ Mike?” I make sure to emphasize the air quotes around ‘interested parties’ and then follow that up with a quick wave to a younger boy at the next table. He’s definitely interested in me. “Who’s been keeping tabs?”

Mike looks confused, like I just told him that water wasn’t wet. “Have you not been on the Internet lately?”

“Nope.” And that’s the damn truth. After the incident with Chelsea, after Wolf Blitzer, Brian Williams, Jon Stewart, and all the rest of those guys completely eviscerated me, after my sneering face was plastered all over the Internet, after the lawsuits, after everything shitty about those six months, post-live-show trauma, I needed to walk away.

“Seriously?”

“I have a phone. It rings. I have a website with my contact information so stumped detectives can get in touch. I answer e-mail from my mom and dad. I haven’t tweeted, or posted, or blogged, or so much as surfed for porn in about a year and a half, so no, I haven’t been on the Internet lately.”

“
Really
?”

“Why is that so hard to believe?”

“Well, I mean, I figured that Captain Ego had to
look
, you know? Had to see what people were saying about him.”

I have to admit, I’m curious, but after my righteous defiance just then, I most definitely can’t go begging for him to tell me what’s been going on in the world of social media. I make some offhanded joke about being on the psychiatrist’s orders to stay away from mentally damaging material—which, honestly, isn’t much of a joke.