Full Dark, No Stars

A cold voice replied to that, one she had never suspected of being inside her, one perhaps related to the BD-voice that whispered to Bob about the snoots it observed in restaurants, laughing on

street corners, riding in expensive sports cars with the top down, whispering and smiling to each other on apartment-building balconies.

Or perhaps it was the voice of the Darker Girl.

Why can’t you? it asked. After all… he fooled you.

And then what? She didn’t know. She only knew that now was now, and now had to be dealt with.

“You’d have to promise to stop,” she said, speaking very slowly and reluctantly. “Your most solemn, never-go-back promise.”

His face fil ed with a relief so total—so somehow boyish—that she was touched. He so seldom looked like the boy he had been. Of course that was also the boy who had once planned to go to school

with guns. “I would, Darcy. I do. I do promise. I already told you.”

“And we could never talk about this again.”

“I get that.”

“You’re not to send the Duval woman’s ID to the police, either.”

She saw the disappointment (also weirdly boyish) that came over his face when she said that, but she meant to stick to it. He had to feel punished, if only a little. That way he’d believe he had

convinced her.

Hasn’t he? Oh Darcellen, hasn’t he?

“I need more than promises, Bobby. Actions speak louder than words. Dig a hole in the woods and bury that woman’s ID cards in it.”

“Once I do that, are we—”

She reached out and put her hand to his mouth. She strove to make herself sound stern. “Hush. No more.”

“Okay. Thank you, Darcy. So much.”

“I don’t know what you’re thanking me for.” And then, although the thought of him lying next to her fil ed her with revulsion and dismay, she forced herself to say the rest.

“Now get undressed and come to bed. We both need to get some sleep.”

- 10 -

He was under almost as soon as his head hit the pil ow, but long after he’d commenced his smal , polite snores, Darcy lay awake, thinking that if she al owed herself to drift off, she would awake with

his hands around her throat. She was in bed with a madman, after al . If he added her, his score would be an even dozen.

But he meant it, she thought. This was right around the time that the sky began to lighten in the east. He said he loves me, and he meant it. And when I said I’d keep his secret—because that’s what it comes down to, keeping his secret—he believed me. Why wouldn’t he? I almost convinced myself.

Wasn’t it possible he could carry through on his promise? Not al drug addicts failed at getting clean, after al . And while she could never keep his secret for herself, wasn’t it possible she could for the kids?

I can’t. I won’t. But what choice?

What goddam choice?

It was while pondering this question that her tired, confused mind final y gave up and slipped away.

She dreamed of going into the dining room and finding a woman bound with chains to the long Ethan Al en table there. The woman was naked except for a black leather hood that covered the top half

of her face. I don’t know that woman, that woman is a stranger to me, she thought in her dream, and then from beneath the hood Petra said: “Mama, is that you?”

Darcy tried to scream, but sometimes in nightmares, you can’t.

- 11 -

When she final y struggled awake—headachey, miserable, feeling hungover—the other half of the bed was empty. Bob had turned his clock back around, and she saw it was quarter past ten. It was

the latest she’d slept in years, but of course she hadn’t dropped off until first light, and such sleep as she’d gotten was populated with horrors.

She used the toilet, dragged her housecoat off the hook on the back of the bathroom door, then brushed her teeth—her mouth tasted foul. Like the bottom of a birdcage, Bob would say on the rare mornings after he’d taken an extra glass of wine with dinner or a second bottle of beer during a basebal game. She spat, began to put her brush back in the toothglass, then paused, looking at her

reflection. This morning she saw a woman who looked old instead of middle-aged: pale skin, deep lines bracketing the mouth, purple bruises under the eyes, the crazed bed-head you only got from

tossing and turning. But al this was only of passing interest to her; how she looked was the last thing on her mind. She peered over her reflection’s shoulder and through the open bathroom door into their bedroom. Except it wasn’t theirs; it was the Darker Bedroom. She could see his slippers, only they weren’t his. They were obviously too big to be Bob’s, almost a giant’s slippers. They belonged to the