Into the Dark. Rick Mofina

Since that time all he’d wanted to do was protect Claire, let nothing hurt her again. But how do I protect her from heartbreak—from forces that are beyond my control?

      He dragged the back of his hand across his mouth. He was forty-five, and some days he couldn’t see what Claire told him she’d seen and liked: The small crinkles around his eyes, his chiseled jaw, his thick salt-and-pepper hair. He was six-one, about one-eighty. His workouts gave him an athletic build. But he didn’t see the strong, decisive, capable, kind man that Claire saw. He saw a man who’d failed too many times, a man constantly at war with himself, a man unworthy of her.

      At times he would steal glimpses of her when they were at home, or while he waited for her at her office. He liked how her hair curtained over her eyes when she studied her notes, or the way she slid her small silver cross back and forth on her necklace chain when she was on the phone with a patient. She was devoted to them—compassionate and caring, never allowing her own heartache to interfere.

      He didn’t deserve her.

      As he drove, Bowen massaged his temple. A million things rushed through his head. He was tired from the flight and stressed over those rumors of looming cutbacks at the company.

      He couldn’t go back to commercial. He couldn’t face those hours again and that kind of strain at home. He just couldn’t. Look at the toll it had taken with Cynthia. He couldn’t go through that with Claire.

      But that was the least of his worries.

      There was more, much more.

      The darkness is back, stirring again.

      It had been triggered by Claire when she started taking serious steps to have a baby, because in a corner of his heart he knew that would change everything.

      The darkness is taking over. Sometimes at night, I feel I—

      The chaos of horns and screeching tires jerked his concentration to the freeway where traffic ahead had come to a standstill.

       6

      Los Angeles, California

      Robert stopped and got out of his SUV, joining other drivers craning their necks at the heaps of mangled metal several car lengths away.

      A boy, about twelve, staggered between the stopped cars toward him. The kid’s face glistened with crimson scrapes. His T-shirt with a T-Rex on it was torn, smeared with blood. Somewhere a woman was screaming.

      “Por favor ayuda!” The boy’s eyes, wide with shock, found Bowen’s and he switched to English. “My mother, my sister, please, mister, they will die. Please save them!”

      Robert’s mind raced.

      “Por favor ayuda!” the boy pleaded again before he collapsed into the arms of a well-dressed woman who’d stepped from a Mercedes. She wrapped her Realtor’s jacket around him as he sobbed, “Please! My mother...my sister...they’ll die. Please, mister!”

      Bowen tore off his tie and ran to the carnage.

      Some motorists were calling 9-1-1 while others, uncertain what to do, stood helpless. Black smoke now curled from the wreckage.

      Bowen counted three vehicles: a pickup that appeared to be a landscaper’s truck was turned around, its front smashed and air bags depleted. Mowers, tillers, tools and supplies were scattered. He saw a small green car that had flipped onto its roof. Then he saw a van; it was on its side with its hood folded open and its engine on fire. A man was climbing out of the van’s driver’s side. Blood oozed from his mouth as he gritted in pain. Bowen got hold of his arm and got him to the ground.

      “I’ve got a first aid kit,” said a motorist wearing a Lynyrd Skynyrd T-shirt who’d stepped forward to help.

      When Bowen turned to the inverted car, something splashed at his feet. He looked down to a widening puddle with the telltale rainbow film and smelled the fumes. Fuel cans from the landscaper’s truck had ruptured, spilling gasoline everywhere around the overturned car, pooling in spots. Bowen glanced at the flames licking from the van’s engine a few feet from the car.

      The fire was growing.

      His stomach lurched. He saw a hand reaching from the car and heard a woman crying softly as someone shouted at him, “Get out of there, man! There’s too much gas, it’s going to blow! Back off! Get out!”

      He ignored the warning and hurried to the driver’s side of the car. He dropped to his hands and knees. Everything had been unfolding with dizzying speed, but it slowed the instant he saw the woman.

      She was upside down. Her hands and arms hung to the ground. The air bags had deployed. She was still belted to her seat and pleading weakly.

      “Please, save my baby.”

      Bowen’s attention moved beyond the woman to the back. He saw the child, about a-year-and-a-half-old, upside down, strapped in its car seat, little arms hanging down.

      “Please,” the woman cried.

      In a surreal moment Bowen saw how the gasoline now seeped into areas of the car. Then he noticed among bags of clothes, boxes of cereal and cans of soup, a leather-bound bible. It had splayed open, a light wind lifting the pages.

      The blood rush in his ears pounded him into a trancelike state.

      He found himself looking into the woman’s terrified eyes.

      He swelled with pleasure, his ears rang and an ancient, familiar, evil erupted inside him.

      Let her die.

      I hold this woman’s life, and that of her child, in my hands, the power over life and death, the power to rise above everything on earth.

      Go ahead and plead.

      I love it.

      I am the beginning and I am the end.

      I’m going to let you die. Your baby, too. I’ll watch you die.

      “I’m sorry,” Bowen said. “I can’t reach you. I’m sorry.”

      Her eyes bulged. Her fear excited him, pushing his sensual gratification to a new level.

      “Please!” she gasped.

      Keep begging. Beg me for your life.

      She coughed. Her voice was fading.

      “Please, I beg you, please! God, someone, please save us!”

      The break in her voice connected with Bowen, telling him he could not let this happen. He closed his eyes, battling himself for control as the woman’s cries slowly pulled him out of his trance and back into the chaos.

      “Okay,” Bowen said. “Okay, ma’am, I’m going to get you out.”

      He maneuvered his upper body deeper into the car and, while on his knees, reached up, feeling for and finding the woman’s seat belt buckle.

      “Can you get your arms around my neck?” he said.

      He felt her lock her arms around him, felt her trembling, she smelled of soap and sweat and was nearly choking him as he tried to depress the button to release the belt. The woman’s full downward weight had created pressure and the button refused to depress.

      Bowen tried but it wouldn’t move.

      Panicked motorists were shouting.

      “Get out now!”

      “It’s going to go up—get out!”

      He glimpsed the flames horribly large and nearing the gas pools that patched their way to the car. He reached deep into himself and with every bit of strength he had in him he lifted the woman’s weight upward, taking pressure off of the belt while depressing the button with every fiber of strength he had until he heard: click.

      The belt released.

      The woman slid down onto him and he immediately