Extract from Where the dark shines through

Justin Carroll

Maryland

From the day they’d been taken from him, until the moment he saw it, Josh knew exactly how his day would go, because every day was the same. Every morning started at the same time with the ear-piercing metallic beep of his alarm. Impaled by the sound, he woke, sweaty from one of the few repeated nightmares. He groped for the phone, turned off the sound, briefly considered going back to sleep. But the bed was too wide. He felt lost in it, the sheets too vast without another body to anchor him. So, every morning, pushed out by the emptiness, he would start his day.

He stared at the cold, unrumpled side of the bed as he dressed, his fingers unconsciously slipping buttons into holes, a for-granted feat of manual dexterity.

Overcome by instinct, he would momentarily think about waking up his son.

Downstairs, he made coffee, opening grey wooden cupboards she had hung, while their wedding gift coffeemaker rumbled and bubbled. He only drank half a cup before it grew cold, spending unfocused minutes surrounded by a conspicuous nothing, before he threw the rest down the butler sink she’d been so excited to install.

Every morning, Josh stopped at the front door and looked back. He told himself it was to make sure no lights were left on, that the stove was off. Really, he was waiting for David to run down the stairs to say goodbye. Waiting for Rebecca to kiss him twice, once on the mouth to say she loved him, and once on the cheek to wish him a good day.

He would distantly take in the slight dent in her cushion on the couch, carelessly carved out by many nights spent together. The naked hook where her coat should have hung.

One photo still haunted the wall next to him. The two of them, leaning against a pale, white-yellow wall. His hands on hers, her hands on the child yet to be born. Moments before, they’d been riding a moped, Rebecca’s hands clinging to his shirt, her laugh in his ears as he attempted to steer the old, rickety vespa around the bends of Old Town Ibiza. It had been David’s first kick and her shriek had nearly made him crash. 

He didn’t dwell in the memory, just let his eyes caress her face behind the glass. The way her eyes smiled.

He paused in front of the door. Closed his eyes, breathed deeply in through his nose. 

‘Morning Josh!’ The same war cry greeted him each time he left the house. 

‘Morning, Abe.’ He forced himself to look across the once white, now raindrop-stain-gray, roof of his Prius. Josh nodded to his neighbour. This was a moment of contact that he craved as much as dreaded. Abe continued to treat Josh as if recent events had never happened. Josh wanted to quietly seethe at this, but he was grateful for it, for the normality of the interaction. For being forced to speak out, to exchange banal pleasantries.

‘Beautiful day isn’t it!’

‘Yeah.’

‘Might rain later though, so be sure to take an umbrella.’ Abe brandished his golfing umbrella like Excalibur, the sun transforming his pate into a shining helmet.

Josh patted his case, a gift from Rebecca for his fortieth, what seemed like a lifetime ago. ‘I’ll do that, Abe. Thanks.’

‘No problem! Have a good one, Josh.’

Like the conversation, the drive was automatic. There were turns, some stops. With a gun to his head, he couldn’t say which small roads he took, which stores he passed, before reaching the only road into or out of downtown Maldon. The town traded on its dubious claim as George Washington’s favourite holiday destination, and downtown Maldon was a procession of carefully curated mom-and-pop stores selling a variety of middle-class tchotchkes relating to Washington, alongside mugs and caps that touted a vague, unaligned sense of patriotism.

Otherwise, if pushed, he might remember wide, green lawns giving way at first to low, single-story houses. Those houses then rising, huddling closer together as they reached higher and higher. The people he passed, their faces, the buildings. Everything was the same fused-flesh colour.

But he’d probably mention flags. Not because he recalled them, but because, to him, they were ubiquitous. All shapes and sizes, sticking out of lawns, hanging limply above porches. A fierce patriotism, an overt sign of love for a country that, Josh felt, seemed to not love all of them back.

The drive through Maldon was short, straight and slow. The drive from the town to Washington was the same: stopping, starting and crawling forwards. Multiple lanes of stationary black, silver and white, that were little more than a featureless wall around him. Alone in his silent, sensible, family car, surrounded by thousands of other unseen men and women inching their way towards work.

Where Maldon was the epitome of a one-horse town, Washington was a sprawling city, hundreds of years of architecture, hundreds of thousands of people. Josh used to love pointing out buildings, unveiling their history.

That’s the Kennedy Centre. Every different theatre and auditorium in there has been designed as a box within a box. That way all the noise from outside can’t reach the audience. Clever huh?

Rebecca would smile or make an exclamation of wonder. Even if it was a stupid comment. I lost my first and only fight on that corner. Ben’s Chili Bowl is down there. 

Work was the same. His occupation had been his obsession, his second thought when he woke: writing reports, what meetings to be had, with whom, about what. He would drive David to school, mind fixed on the first tasks on his mental to-do list. Then to his office, his back to the sky and the world outside, his attention fixed on his screen, his calendar and his reports, the endless task of juggling needs and desires, of balancing the mandates of the government with the fiscal needs of his clients. He ate lunch at his desk, reading, writing and talking through it. He’d join Rebecca and David for dinner, before returning to work for another few hours before bed.

Now, he would struggle to even describe what it was he did, if he was asked. Something in lobbying. Something that had been his life and focus when it should have just been his job. It had been so much of his world that it should have been something that he could cling to in the months since it had happened. It wasn’t.

Evenings were rote. The interminable drive home, the silence in the car broken only by memories of sound, her laugh, all of us singing along to songs David demanded. Josh would open his door not to the sounds of his wife and child, to the smells of cooking mixed with Rebecca’s scent, but to stale air. Stillness, but without the sanctity of the church or crypt. The staleness of a house emptied, the air unmoved and unmoving.

He would drop his keys in the dish, not look at them as they lay there without their mate. He’d half-heartedly eat pasta or a ready meal, possibly watch the television for a while, though later he had no memory of what he watched. It was faceless people making little more than background noises on the screen. During the summer, as the light failed, often the television was the only illumination, throwing colours across his face, creating deep, bruise-like shadows throughout the empty house.

When his body started to struggle under the weight of his own exhaustion, Josh would turn off the television. The darkness abated in the face of the harsh, metallic bathroom light, only to rush back in again as he lay down on his side of the bed. He set his alarm and then rested his head near her pillow. He breathed in the faintest remnant of her scent. A comforting thrill of the chemical impersonation of orange. Then he turned away from the emptiness and, eventually, slept.

It was a Tuesday when his predictable routine was shattered. Not a special day, just a sun-drenched, cloudless Tuesday morning in late September.

He woke, considered if there was a point in getting up, but routine drove him from under the covers. He glanced at the empty side of the bed and, half asleep, nearly called out for David to wake up for school. He showered out of habit, brushed his teeth and then undid the act by drinking half a cup of coffee.

He greeted Abe and tried to dwell in the conversation.

‘What a morning, huh, Josh?’

‘Sure is.’

‘You know, I don’t even think I’ll need the umbrella today. Oh shoot, isn’t that the kiss of – ah, ahem, well, have a great day and enjoy the sunshine.’

‘You too, Abe.’ 

Josh got in his car and proceeded to drive towards Maldon’s one main street, and to the city beyond.

For some reason, he was reminded of David’s obsession with blinking. Or winking? Each eyelid closing, then opening, one after the other after the other.

He pulled up at a red light and closed one eye. Then the other. The traffic light shifted left, right, left.

Then he saw it. 

Just like David had always asserted, when they’d be driving this road, when the sky was the unreal uniform light blue, like a painting without depth or dimension.

Josh stopped winking each eye and stared west, along the road, over the traffic and the other cars, over the faceless commuters and all the buildings that merged into a blur.

Nothing.

He winked his left eye. Then his right. Faster and faster.

There it was again.

The light turned green, but he didn’t move. Cars honked, then began to drive around him, hurling abuse through rolled-down windows.

Josh just sat there, his hands starting to moisten the steering wheel with sweat.

Left eye, right eye, left eye.

Left. Right. Left. Right. It’s like blinking, but just one eye at a time.

The car inched along Main Street, the only artery into, and through, town. There were a few veins that would eventually wend their way into Maldon’s barely beating heart. Like tributaries, they merged into one near the centre of town, forming one Roman-road-straight path to the highway, and from there on to the nation’s capital.

Try it, Dad. Look in the sky! You’ll see it too!

I can’t right now, David. I’m driving.

But if you do that thing with your eyes, blinking them just right…

Not when I’m driving, bud. It’s dangerous. A pointless warning, given all that followed.

We’re not even really moving!

David was right. It wasn’t driving really. It was foot up, roll forwards for a moment, foot down. The staccato stop-start morning of a small town clogged up with parents and commuters. One road, dozens of cars crawling through it. Like the tired, worn-out and hungry settlers who first stumbled to this place, sick and desperate for aid. Like the defeated, humiliated vestiges of the Sioux or Powhatan, as they were forcibly marched out of the newly founded Maldon.

Are you doing it?

No, bud. I’m still driving.

Awww, Da-ad. If you don’t do it now, we’ll turn the corner.

That seemed peculiarly important. The corner?

Yeah! The corner!

What’s so important about the corner, Davey?

It’s the last one! Such urgency. Josh glanced in the rear-view mirror. David was craning his neck, leaning into the middle of the back seat to peer through the windscreen. He was still winking each eye in turn. Little shards of glacier blue flashing left, right, left, right.

He smiled to himself. That crazy kid.

They neared the end of Main Street.

Quick, Dad!

He shook his head. Green light, bud. Maybe tomorrow we’ll stop at the light and I can try your special blinking.

You said that yesterday. And if it’s cloudy, you can’t see the line as good.

David’s chatter faded, turned down by concentration as Josh swung away from the crawling growl of traffic and joined the slow procession of SUVs on their way to deposit children at the local elementary school.

Silence from the back seat.

He dodged the small orange cones and rolled to a stop. There was a loud click as David unbuckled himself.

Bye, Dad.

Hang on.

The sullen silence continued, but David sat.

Mom’s picking you up today, remember?

Yeah.

OK, have a good day. Love you, kiddo.

…Love you too.

The slam of the car door. Josh watched his son wriggle his funny little turtle shell backpack on to his shoulders as he walked away.

Once David was through the school gates, safely behind railings and in the care of teachers, Josh looked away. His thoughts shifted from his son’s disapproval and focused on the day ahead. He didn’t look back as he pulled away, his mind and car turning towards work.

That was the last time he would see David.

Left, right, left.

The entire world stepped in time to his eyelids. He winked each eye, just like David used to. Left, right, left, right. 

Then, for less than a second, in that moment between left and right, when one eye was opening and the other closing, there it was. David’s line.

Only it wasn’t a line. 

It was a crack. 

A thread-thin, crooked, black fracture in the otherwise flawless, perfect blue sky. Like the hairline cracks in porcelain glaze.

He blinked once, twice. Brought his focus back, to himself, to the real world.

The line was gone.

The light turned red, and Josh winked each eye again. There it was, in that strange non-place between the world of the left and the right, that in-between: a fracture in the sky.

The wheel was slick and cold. He was suddenly aware of his watch strap, too tight and unpleasantly damp, slipping around his wrist like a snake.

The traffic light’s green glow fought a losing battle against the morning sun, shedding just enough luminescence that horns from behind him pushed him into motion.

Thoughts of morning commutes vanished as Josh swung his dirty, white Prius off the main road. He pulled to one side and peered down the side street, winking each eye in turn.

Nothing. The sky ahead was unblemished, unmarred by any cracks or porcelain-crackle. He pulled away again, driving slowly until he could look back left, along one of the roads that ran parallel to Main. He winked furiously and the jagged line appeared again.

The side streets diverged outside Maldon, each narrow tributary forming a road in its own right, a network of veins spreading out across the state, merging with those flowing from other towns and cities.

Josh swerved across oncoming traffic, driving along a road that would eventually branch out to the northwest, to Hagerstown and beyond. For now, though, it managed to maintain a straight course.

He drove slowly now, clutching the wheel and trying to avoid curbs and cars as the world shifted left and right with each eyelid. The only constant was the bizarre, crooked crack, static in the sky. A line of frozen black lightning that appeared from nowhere and vanished behind low wooden residences.

It wasn’t until the world suddenly widened, buildings falling away on either side of him, that Josh remembered to brake. The town didn’t peter out, it simply ended. One moment, he was passing smaller, single-story homes that had been in families for generations, wooden walls that wore the tale of every storm and heatwave on peeling paint and dirt. Then, without warning, homes were fields, the faintly rolling hills drifting off into wooded slopes in the distance.

The car rolled to a stop, the stones and grit on the edge of the road crackling and crunching beneath tires. Josh sat silently, still twitching each eye. There was the faint scent of vanilla from the car air freshener, the click of the blinkers and the occasional hiss and roar of a car passing on the grey asphalt. And, ahead of him, as far away as the sky could seem, the lightning-like tear descended from blue and disappeared into the horizon.

It was real. David’s imaginary line in the sky.

***

Blurred rivers of monochrome flowed by on his left. Hours passing like moments, the sun behind him rising unnoticed.

He stared west until his eyes ached, until they were so dry he could feel imaginary grains of salt beneath his eyelids. His hands reflexively tightened on the steering wheel, grasping onto something solid, real and modern. Something unquestionably present and grounded.

Eventually, he closed each eye in turn again, feeling his cheek muscles twitch. The crack was still there, an impossible silhouette facing the glare of the sun. He didn’t know how it was there, and he had no way of knowing why. But there it was.

David would have been ecstatic. His dad finally seeing the thing he’d gone on about every sunny day for years. The thing that Josh had ignored, brushed away as inconvenient childish imagination. Daydreams and silliness.

Rebecca had always told him to be less anxious, to be less lost in worries and thoughts about the future, about his work. Waking to thoughts of deadlines, of meetings and money, he would already be thinking about a lunchtime presentation or an afternoon meeting with some important client. He didn’t have time for anything else, for games or distractions. He had work. And it consumed him.

He glanced at the clock on his dashboard. Somehow it was nearing midday. He had wasted important hours staring at something that, rationally, he knew could not exist. Perhaps it was exhaustion, perhaps he’d finally reached some stage of the mourning process that left him hallucinating, trapped in a waking memory of his lost son.

Without knowing why, Josh shifted into drive. He needed to get closer, he owed it to David. After ignoring him, brushing him off and fighting his own irritation, Josh could at least find this crack.

‘David would have loved that,’ he said quietly.

For a while, he could keep on the road, looking ahead and searching for David’s crack every minute or so. But, when the multi-lane road twisted north, heading for DC, he pulled the Prius over to the hard shoulder so that he could twist his head and focus on the pale blue sky off to the west.

He drove as fast as he dared, hugging the unfinished edge of the asphalt, trying to keep the car straight while he winked, eyelashes knitting and unknitting to keep David’s secret in view.

At that moment, there was nothing else in the world, nothing that mattered. The road, the cars, the short, stunted trees and the thick, wiry grass – it all faded away, stretching out into a pale, watery blur.

Eventually, he could turn off the major road, sliding down the off ramp. The car faced east, then south. Time slowed, Josh’s mind leaping ahead to turning back to face the west, only for the line to have vanished. He would come back around to head west, only to find that no amount of winking would reveal it again. That link to David, that unbelievable, impossible lightning-like cut in the sky, would be lost. It would join them in only existing deep in the never-healing ache in his chest, in memory and in the dreams that left him hollow with longing.

But, as he continued to steer in the long, drawn-out loop, he faced West again. Slowing, he blinked each eye in turn, left, right, left and the tear, at once paper-thin and universe-swallowing, appeared in that moment and space between each eye opening and closing. As the world shifted through each lens, it persisted, static, reaching down from somewhere unseen to touch the ground, somewhere beyond the horizon.

Do you see it, Dad?

He could feel David’s excitement behind him, from the space where the booster seat had occasionally been, when it wasn’t in Rebecca’s car.

‘I can see it, kiddo.’

What is it?

Josh shook his head slightly. ‘I don’t know. But we’re going to find out.’

Kentucky

The road swiftly merged onto another highway, heading west through Alexandria. Not wanting to deviate, not wanting to risk losing his North Star, Josh skirted the main town, keeping to 495 before turning onto 66 at the collection of sparkling, shiny and soulless suburban housing complexes of Dunn Loring. He would pull over every few minutes, grind to a halt on the detritus-strewn shoulder, and ensure that David’s line hadn’t moved or, worse, vanished.

Josh had little sense of time passing until the sun had inched its way ahead of him, and he found himself pulling the sun visor down. He needed to move quicker, but to do that he needed to be on roads where he could more easily pull over if he needed.

He left the highway soon after joining it, choosing to take smaller roads. They were less travelled, meaning he could slow and check for the hair-thin tear without worrying, and he felt less constrained. There was a sense of freedom to the state highways and back roads; an understanding that he could turn with more regularity and less planning away from the multi-lane obligations of the interstates.

Slowly, the sun sank like a stone in ever-darkening water, orange and red in the deep oceanic blues of the sky until, defying the natural order, the watery colours caught fire and turned pink and red. Josh found it harder and harder to find the crack, to squint through the sun’s glare to see the black line. It began to hurt just to try.

As the sun finally disappeared, as his world shrank to the cold, impersonal white of his headlights, the Prius’ fuel light burst into dying-ember red behind his steering wheel.

***

The lights of the gas station seemed more like an infection, a feverish neon glow that bled into the night, sickly greens and yellows spreading into the darkness.

Guinee Gas. Not a chain, or at least not one Josh had heard of before. Though he didn’t care much, as long as he could fill up the tank and carry on his way, following the crack.

The now invisible crack.

He slowed down, letting the car coast a little. He peered through the windscreen, looking past the unpleasant light and into the starless sky. It was impossible to see the razor-thin line now. He squeezed his eyes tightly shut and looked again. He couldn’t see anything, except a satellite, blinking slowly and rhythmically as it drifted through the blue-black.

What the hell do I do now? Josh twisted the wheel and slowly turned off the road. The forecourt felt rough and crunchy, gravel, not asphalt. The pumps looked like they were from the fifties or sixties – free-standing, curved pillars in soot-covered white and faded reds illuminated by ancient, yellowed floodlights at the back of the plot. 

Josh pulled up alongside the nearest pump. Miraculously, it had unleaded gas. On its face were three black digital-style dials: cost per gallon, gallons delivered and amount of sale. They weren’t digital though, but black plastic with white lettering on them, ready to flip over each other by way of automated counting. Something about it was deeply sentimental to Josh, though he had no childhood memories of this sort of pump. Perhaps a clock in his parents’ house? He shrugged, unbuckled his seatbelt and got out of the car.

‘Oh, I’ll get that for you!’

Josh jumped as a figure appeared from behind the pump. He was at least a foot too tall to have been behind it.

‘Were you hiding behind that?’ His voice was shrill to his ears.

‘Was I –? Oh, no, sir. I saw your car pull in. We’re a full-service station. I’m Junior.’