The Invisible Man was right.
Henry Taylor, the uncle I’d never known—but had known, and ohhh, that was the terrifying thing about memory, how it could overwrite old data, superimpose new identities over old ones, so easily “retcon” history, as comic book geeks say, to preserve one’s sanity—was real, and among the living, buried away in a prison. I’d extracted a secret so rotten that I had to admire how it stayed a secret at all.
“Alive, but worse than dead,” I said, gazing at the computer screen.
Digital scans of police reports and court records told the tale: Henry Taylor had shoved my mother Claire down a flight of stairs, in our then-Jersey City home. My father hadn’t been home during the mid-afternoon incident.
Apparently, I’d been interviewed the day my mother died. The Administration for Children’s Services report matched my long-forgotten memory: The lights were flickering, a black thing shoved my mom down the stairs. This vision of a “monster” was indicative of emotional shock, the employee had written. The real culprit had been Henry Taylor.
The flickering lights (my Living Room City thunderstorms) were written off as burn wiring in a ninety-three-year-old home, typical for its age.
The justice system was uncharacteristically, blisteringly fast with delivering its punishment. This is because Henry’s confession never wavered. He’d plotted my mother’s death. He offered no reason, other than he wanted “to see the bitch dead.”
A wave of hatred, thick and acidic, overwhelmed me when I’d read that.
He was sentenced to life in Claytonville Prison—New York’s penitentiary equivalent of The Brink, a black hole for reviled offenders.
Henry had a long sheet of previous arrests and convictions—fairly harmless crimes, I’d thought. But the judge was merciless. Henry’s possibility for parole: stone-cold, absolute zero.
And now, as I stared at the words I wanted to see the bitch dead, a ferret-like, desperate side of myself concocted explanations as to why my father wouldn’t tell us about this.
He didn’t want his children growing up with the public shame, the stigma.
He didn’t want us to knowing the horror, didn’t want us exposed to monstrous acts, crimes of passion, so early in our lives.
He didn’t want his murderous brother contacting us later in life.
I laughed at myself, and shuddered. This was a mental shell game, the masturbatory act of a mind stinking drunk on bittersweet denial. They were excuses for an inexcusable betrayal.
And so, I clicked onward, finding mental footholds, jotting notes, seething as I skimmed. I re-read the police and court records. Both stated that Henry Taylor had remained at the house after the murder. The criminal did not run. Nor did he call 911, as unlikely as that would have been, to report two crying children and a dead body.
Instead, he’d called Dad. And Dad had arrived, unbelievably, with a restraining order against Henry that he’d filed earlier that day. The brothers had stayed until the cops arrived. Was that the behavior of an unrepentant killer? Not in my experience. And the NYPD officer who’d taken Dad’s call and arrived on the scene? Eustacio Jean-Phillipe.
What had happened, during that gap between Henry calling Dad, and Papa-Jean’s arrival? What had been said? This was not documented. Nor was the reason for my father’s restraining order against his brother.
Further, the only person who’d apparently ever helped Henry in the past died that day. On every arrest sheet I reviewed, Claire Taylor was the person who’d bailed him out of jail.
It didn’t happen the way they said it did. It’s all lies.
Yes. My life was soaked in deceit, and I hadn’t a clue. My father had erased his brother from our family history. Gram, for whatever reason, had acquiesced. And now Henry was back, back for a limited time only, call now, quantities are available for just one person. Me.
Why? Why did Henry kill my mother? Or had he killed her at all? The Invisible Man’s memorial card—his final goodbye to Gram—insisted that Henry had been punished for a crime he didn’t commit.
Troubled, I erased my digital footprints by killing the history and file cache of Rachael’s web browser. I didn’t want anyone knowing this. I rubbed my eyes and sighed.
Twenty-one years ago, I saw a monster push my mother down the stairs. But that wasn’t true. No, the truth was far more terrible and sharp.
Henry Taylor was my personal Dark Man. He was the reason I was broken. The reason I was afraid of the dark.
9
I wiped my bleary eyes. I gulped a mouthful of The Brink’s awful coffee. My office chair creaked like something out of a B movie, an undead creature slowly opening its own coffin.
Okay, shake it off, I told myself.
I stared blankly at the stack of artwork I’d collected from my patients last week. Scraps of torn paper mingled with larger sketches and paintings. Insects. Sharp teeth. A gingerbread house in the forest. A birthday cake with cartoon dynamite sticks for candles. A penis, apparently made of rusted metal and barbed wire. A blood-soaked mother holding her drowned child.
I wasn’t up for this today.
I was preparing to digitally scan the art and post it on Brinkvale Psychiatric’s new website. Doctor Peterson’s recent hospital-wide memo about the site had been an obnoxious thing, banging the drums for “positive promotion for our excellent facilities” to evangelize our “world-class reputation.” Excellent wha? World-class who? Naturally, Peterson had tapped me to administer its Art Therapy section.
And so here I was, placing Bloody Mary’s painting on a flatbed scanner, transforming her trauma into ones and zeroes. The thing whined and whirred. My mind wandered, back to my own trauma.
I stared into space, past my giant ceramic coffee mug, eyes on the CRT monitor, but unfocused. The memory needled behind my eyes: baby Lucas screaming, Mom screaming, light bulbs bursting, the dark man howling. Tumbling, breaking, tumbling, bleeding, tumbling, blood running into her left eye.
And now there was blood on the monitor before me, oozing down the lined glass, bright and wet and glimmering.
I bolted back in my chair, screaming. The old chair’s wheels squealed rusty laughter. My coffee mug somersaulted off the desk and shattered on the floor. I slapped my palms against my redrimmed eyes.
Blood, no, can’t be real, can’t.
I pulled away my hands and swore.
The digital scan of Bloody Mary and Baby Blue stared back at me. The woman in the painting was drenched in watercolor red, nothing more.
You’re going crazy, a splinter of my mind said. I blinked, shook my head. Make a date with the Cheshire Cat, grin the grinnn of the—
No, my rational self interrupted. You’re sleep-deprived. Anxious.
“Thank you, Spock,” I whispered. A wave of reassurance swept over me, followed by more doubt.
“Am I losing it?”
I suppose I would’ve heard a reply were it true. I snatched a roll of paper towels from my art supplies and yanked off far too many sheets for the job. I wadded the towels, dropped them onto the spreading mess, tamped them with my Vans.
Can’t this be over before it’s started? I thought. Can’t this be a dream? Can’t the Invisible Man be nothing more than a con man looking for a quick buck?