A Glimmer in the Dark
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Daniel Creese awoke in total darkness. He was shivering, bloody, and naked.
“What?!” He said in gasp. “‘What’s happened?”
Beams of light from discarded flashlights cut through the shadows at jarring angles, revealing slices of cave wall, jagged teeth in a beast’s giant maw.
He tried to sit up and found himself weighed down by a body.
He cried out and tried to push the body away.
He cried out again when it moved.
Lithe, blood covered limbs and a nude body slid against him. A pained moan escaped the woman’s lips, and he recognized the voice.
“Drude!” he said. “Drude, wake up! What happened? Where is everyone?”
Lilly Drude sat up, straddling Creese like a dazed wrestler.
“Is this blood?” she asked. Her voice was confused and thick. “Are we hurt?” She wrapped her arms around her chest, stood, and took a frightened step away from Creese. “Where are our clothes?”
“I don’t know,” Creese said. “All I remember is the ambush. The IED went off. We were surrounded. We took cover in the cave with the rest of the patrol. And then we woke up. Just now.”
“Are we in the same cave? Where’s the rest of the squad?”
Creese thought, hesitated, then answered. “I’m not sure.”
“Jesus, Creese,” Drude whispered. “Did the insurgents do this to us? What did they do to us?”
“We need a weapon,” Creese said. “We’ll grab those flashlights, find our rifles, and figure out what’s going on.”
“Stay close!” Drude said. Creese felt her hand grasp at his shoulder. “Stay together.”
They crept toward the nearest flashlight. Creese knelt, took it, and they looked themselves over. They were covered in blood and gore. Ribbons of blood ran down Drude’s face, but they only bore a slashing shrapnel wound from the IED blast. Their cuts could not account for the lifeblood that doused their bodies.
“What the hell does it mean, Creese?”
“It means we’re okay, for now…,” he said. His voice shook. “Let’s have a look around,” He lifted the beam, and cast it across the cave.
They saw a severed hand and half a jaw before they started finding the burnt corpses.
The first was Smith. His head was gone and his flesh was charred. They only knew it was him because his name was on his uniform.
The second body was Ramirez. His chest was split open and cooked ribs protruded, like an altar of bone.
After they found Baker, with eyes gouged out and an obscene smile cut across his blistered face, they turned the flashlight off, huddled in a corner, and waited in the darkness.
Creese opened his eyes from the nightmare. He felt the warm, dry sheets of his own bed. He was in Los Angeles, not Syria.
I’m safe, he thought, sighing.
He looked down, saw his hands wrapped around Vivian’s throat. She was choking. Her eyes bulged in panic and she slapped at his wrists. In the dancing light of the fireplace, she looked like she had ribbons of blood running down her face.
He let go and flung himself backward. She sat up, gasping, and brought her knees up in a protective crouch.
“What?! What happened?” he said, and shivered, hearing the echo of the nightmare.
“You were choking me, you asshole!” Vivian said. She coughed and cleared her throat. “If you wanted to play rough, you should’ve told the agency. They’d have sent someone else. But I do not cater to that.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, inching towards her, holding up an open hand.
“Stay the hell away from me!” She screamed. He flinched, wrapped his arms around himself, and stepped back. He rubbed his thumbs along the scars that crisscrossed his body.
She jumped off the bed and reached for her clothes.
“My boss knows exactly where I am,” she said, sliding into her evening dress. “If I don’t check in after our date, they know where to look, so don’t even think of putting your hands on me again.”
“It’s not like that,” Creese said, pleading. “I didn’t even know what was happening. This isn’t our first date.” He pulled his boxer shorts up around his waist. “You know me better than that.”
Vivian snorted and shook her head as she struggled into her heels. “This is just a job, and you’re just a customer. A few safe nights in bed doesn’t prove a goddamn thing in my line of work.” She glanced at the wall, at Creese’s framed bronze star and purple heart. “I don’t care if you have PTSD. I shouldn’t have to worry about getting hurt when I’m just trying to keep a roof over my head.”
Creese shook his head. “No, Viv, that’s not it. I don’t have PTSD, and I’m not a violent person. Please, just stay. I don’t even want to be physical. I just don’t want you to leave like this.”
Vivian slung her purse around her shoulder and stood straight up, poised, and assessed herself in the mirror. Then she looked at Creese, her eyes all daggers.
“Don’t call me ‘Viv.’ I’m not your pet.”
She held out her hand, palm up.
Muttering, Creese pulled a few hundreds from his wallet and placed them in Vivian’s hands. Quick as a sprung trap, she snapped the money into her purse.
“Get some help, Dan,” she said, her voice thick with disdain.
She turned and walked out of the bedroom. Her heels hammered on the hardwood floor like the steady hammer of a beating heart. When the front door slammed shut, Creese collapsed back onto the bed and ran his hands through his hair.
He looked through his window and across Laurel Canyon. The harvest moon glowed like a cold, autumn riddle in a bleak, hopeless sky. He shivered.
“What’s wrong with me?” he whispered.
He stood up and stared at himself in the mirror. Scars from a war he’d fought ten years ago still peppered his body. The gnarled white dashes of ugly tissue sliced across his arms and shoulders. He could see that problem, and so explain it.
But he could not explain the dream, or why it wouldn’t go away. He could not explain the litany of broken relationships, the despair that replaced girlfriends with escorts, and this latest horror, an unconscious attack on Vivian.
Worst of all, he couldn’t explain why it felt so good to squeeze the air from her throat.
Fighting back the urge to vomit, Creese hurried to his dresser, grabbed his bottle of Prozac, and started to twist the cap. His shoulders slumped, he shook his head, and he set the bottle down.
Instead, Creese grabbed his laptop, opened it, and logged into his messenger. He scrolled over to the search bar, typed in ‘Lilly Drude,’ and hit enter.
“Drude! Drude, wake up! What happened? Where is everyone?”
Lilly Drude sat up, fighting for consciousness through a cobweb haze. She was naked and immersed in total darkness. She could feel the touch of a man’s body beneath hers, and she ached everywhere.
“Is this blood?” she asked, wiping at the slick, cooling fluid that drenched her body. She licked her lips; yes, blood. Vaguely, she thought she should feel more afraid than she was. She recognized the voice, knew it was Creese, knew at least someone from her squad was with her.
“Are we hurt?” She struggled to piece together some kind of memory of what might have happened. She remembered the blast, the shot of fear down her spine as she rolled out of the burning Humvee, the dash to the cave as bullets fell around her and the rest of the patrol.
Then, she’d been wearing a combat uniform and a full kit. Now she was naked, bloodied, and unarmed. Her mind leapt to capture, rape, torture, beheading. Had the insurgents caught them?
She wrapped her arms around her breasts, the best protection she could muster, and stood. She felt herself shaking. “Where are our clothes?”
“I don’t know,” Creese said. “All I remember is the ambush. The IED went off. We were surrounded. We took cover in the cave with the rest of the patrol. And then we woke up. Just now.”
The gravity of their situation was sobering.
We’re going to die, Drude thought, then clawed at denial, sought to bury the image with pleas for information, for a way out.
“Are we in the same cave? Where’s the rest of the squad?” If Creese and Drude were alive, the rest of the squad might be, too. But Creese took too long to answer, and Drude knew she was deceiving herself.
“I’m not sure,” he said.
“Jesus, Creese,” she whispered, a confession of their doom. “Did the insurgents do this to us?” She felt the blood dripping down her body, felt the slick of it in every crevasse, as though they’d bathed beneath the slit throat of a sacrificial lamb. “What did they do to us?”
“We need a weapon,” Creese said. “We’ll grab those flashlights, find our rifles, and figure out what’s going on.”
She pictured him stepping away from her in the dark and disappearing. Then she would be alone, the only one grappling with the horror of this mystery.
“Stay close!” she said. She shot her arm out in a panic, groped out into the darkness, until her hand landed on his shoulder. “Stay together.”
When Creese got the flashlight and they examined themselves, saw the cloak of blood and viscera that dressed their bodies, Drude was so overwhelmed with dread that she forgot their nakedness. She put her hands on her head.
“What the hell does it mean, Creese?”
He tried to reassure her, but she heard the lie in his trembling voice. “It means we’re okay, for now…. Let’s have a look around.”
And they did, and they saw the canticle of gore, their friends a slaughtered offering to a merciless deity. They doused the light, collapsed to their knees, and clutched at one another like wards against despair.
Drude’s eyes flittered open, breaking out of the reverie. She was looking over her balcony, across the New York skyline. The lights of the city glimmered in the dark, like a swarm of fireflies challenging the night’s hegemony, while the harvest moon glared down at her like a poisoned, damning eye.
Her left hand was on Jake’s forehead, pulling it back, exposing his throat. Her right hand held a paring knife to his jugular.
“Lilly,” Jake said, slowly lifting his hands up in surrender. “Please. Put down the knife.”
She yelped as though bitten, and threw the knife back into her apartment. “Oh god, Jake, I’m sorry!”
As soon as the knife left her hands, Jake shoved her away. She fell with a cry, landing on her hands and scraping them on her balcony floor. Jake backed away from her, into her apartment.
“What the hell is the matter with you?” Jake shouted. “Is that your idea of a good time? Pick up guys from the bar and shank them like you’re some kind of black widow?”
“No, it’s not like that at all!” she said, pleading. “I would never hurt anyone.” Not if they didn’t deserve it. The thought flashed across her mind, and she tried to box it up.
“Yeah, tell me another one,” Jake said, rubbing at his throat. “If you’d have sneezed, I’d be bleeding out all over Soho.”
She put her hands to her head. “I’m sorry. Something came over me. I don’t know what it was. But it wasn’t me, and it’s nothing you did.” She stepped toward him, reached out to take his hand.
He flinched back. “Lady, I don’t care how good you look or how rich you are, you’ve got problems. I’m not about to be on the next episode of Forensic Files. I’m out.”
“Jake, please,” she said, putting her hand on his shoulder. “You don’t understand — ”
He knocked her arm away and raised his hand, pointing his finger directly in her face. “You’re someone nobody is going to understand.” He stalked away from her and out of the apartment.
She stared at the door, watching, still in denial, waiting for him to turn around again. Then she crumpled against the wall, wrapped her arms around herself, and wept.
Sniveling, fighting to regain composure, she wiped a tear back along the thin white scar that ran from cheekbone to ear.
She rubbed at the old shrapnel wound with tenderness, thinking. Then she crawled on hands and knees to her bed, reached underneath for the old black shoebox, and pulled it out.
She shuffled through its contents, a collection of precious trinkets and hard-won memories. A pair of beaten dog tags; A photo of her old squad — she winced and stifled a pained gasp as her eyes darted across her fallen teammates, then lingered on Creese; a bronze star and purple heart medals that she tossed aside; her award citation, beaten and crumpled — she read again the line, ‘For heroic achievement against an armed enemy…,’ shook her head and threw the citation back into the box.
“Lies,” she whispered. Lies she was told, and lies she told herself, a sad attempt to rationalize the trail of pain she left in her wake and in which she bathed herself. Partners brought close enough to hope to love and then pushed away, or spurned and used up like tissue. And now, ten years to the day she’d lived her nightmare, she’d come an inch away from manslaughter.
And worst of all, holding a blade against a pulsing vein had thrilled her, filled her with an exaltation she hadn’t felt since she was a child being tossed in her father’s arms.
Reaching once more into the box, she withdrew a small razor blade. Hiking up her shorts, she found the series of small, neat scars she’d put on the inside of her thigh; brush strokes on the masterpiece of the only coping mechanism that brought her any relief. She set the blade against her leg, in line with the other, older cuts, and started to push the blade, felt the bite into her skin -
With a frustrated groan, she threw the blade back into the box and kicked it under her bed. She buried her head in her arms and wept again.
Her phone chirped, and she lifted her head, curious. She stood, grabbed her phone, and opened up her messenger.
It was Daniel Creese.
“Christ,” she whispered, glancing back to the shadows under her bed, and saw the corner of her shoebox jutting out. She opened the message.
Dan Creese: We need to talk. Can I see you?
Drude didn’t waste any time responding.
Lilly Drude: I can fly you out tomorrow.
Creese and Drude sat on a bench in Central Park, as far away from each other as they could, staring at each other like zoo animals. Their neglected coffees cooled in the light of the setting sun. They’d given lip service to the formalities of catching up as they walked deep into the hidden recesses of the park, offering token high points in the narrative of their lives since they’d last seen each other.
But after finding the most isolated spot they could, cloaked by the red-yellow clash of changing autumn leaves, the chatter had dried up. They sat in a tense silence, punctuated only by the sigh of a dying leaf settling on the ground. Creese’s jaw was clenched and Drude’s back was taught as a coiled spring.
“This is stupid,” Creese said, cracking his knuckles. “Drude, I — ”
“Need to know what happened in the cave,” Drude said, cutting him off. “In the dark.”
Creese nodded. “Yeah.” He slid closer to her. “Yeah, that.”
Drude smirked, but Creese saw no joy in it. “Most people who see combat are never the same, after,” she said, running her finger against the scar on her cheek. “That’s no secret. But I feel like I fell asleep in that cave and now I’m stumbling through a dark fairy tale. Medals for valor, a medical discharge, a booming start-up, and successful investments. But everyone I’ve cared about I’ve pushed away. I can have anything. Except the things I want.”
“A fever dream,” Creese said. “Everything’s twisted. My life is not my own. I’ve felt like a different person since that day. It’s like I’m wearing the skin of the person who went into that cave, and someone else came out of it.”
“Which brings us back to the start,” Drude said. “What the hell happened?”
“I can only remember what we talked about in Bethesda, when we were recovering. The same stuff you and I both told the HUMINT team that debriefed us.” Creese rubbed at his temples with one hand and grimaced as he conjured the memory. “We were patrolling back to base when the IED went off. Right after, we started taking heavy fire from covered positions. I saw Rollins and Drayton get hit, and knew we’d all die if we stayed put. Then Baker saw the cave. We put down covering fire and ran inside.”
“And then?” Drude asked, her gaze boring into Creese. “What do you remember then?”
“Waking up,” Creese said, looking away. “With you.”
“That’s all I can remember, too. Then the bodies. And hiding until battalion found us.”
Creese barked a single, despairing laugh. “Is this all we get, after all this time? A question mark?”
“And nightmares,” Drude said. “We get the nightmares, too.”
“At least we’re not alone, with… whatever this is.”
Drude slid closer to Creese. She inched her hand toward his, then withdrew it like it’d been burned.
The pair looked away from each other, watching the sun disappear as the shadows covered Central Park. The moon hung in the sky, dark and yellow, a spoiled yolk.
“We should go,” Drude said. “It’s dangerous, at night.”
Creese cast a glance across the park, realized the breadth of their solitude.
“Yeah,” he said, zipping up his jacket and standing. “Let’s bounce.”
They hurried down a footpath, with hands in coat pockets, elbows nearly grazing. A pair of trees flanked the path like a gateway, with a spider-web tangle of branches overhead.
They passed between the trees.
A hooded man slipped out of the shadows. Moonlight glinted off the steel of a small blade.
“Your money,” the man growled, rushing toward them. He shoved the knife in Creese’s face. “Now!” he spat.
Creese stopped in his tracks, planted his feet wide, and slowly raised his hands. “Okay man,” he said, licking his lips. “You got it.”
Drude froze but watched, entranced. Her eyes widened, looked from the cutting edge of the blade to the veins of the mugger’s bony hands.
The man glanced at Drude. “Your pockets. Empty ’em. I want everything.”
She nodded, lifted her hands out of her pockets. Her slim wallet was in one hand.
Creese’s eyes darted from Drude, to the mugger, to the blade. He felt a surge of electricity building at the base of his neck, could feel the night air at the tips of raised hairs.
Drude watched the man shift his bodyweight, orienting towards her and the wallet. She held it out like a treat offered to a compliant child. She could control him like a snake charmer, and felt a surge of energy spreading through her body, pure joy, exaltation.
She smiled as she dropped the wallet.
The mugger crouched, reaching for it, taking his eyes off the pair of them.
They lunged as one, compelled by instinct. Creese grasped both hands around the wrist of the mugger’s knife-wielding arm, while Drude kicked him square in the face with one heavy black boot. The man drew up and his hood flew back, revealing a scraggly beard and long, dirty blonde hair.
The mugger flailed wildly and the blade slashed across Creese’s chest. He cried out, felt a white-hot flash of pain where the flesh was cut, and smiled. Then he then rotated with the mugger’s wrist pinned to his chest, locked the man’s arm out, and jerked.
There was a snap, like breaking celery. Their attacker howled, and Creese stifled an absurd laugh. The knife slipped from the mugger’s grasp, and Creese dove for it.
Drude grabbed the man’s hair and yanked it, arching his back. She stepped in, graceful as a dancer, and swept his leg with hers, taking him to the ground. She pinned him down, one knee on his chest and the other on his neck.
Knife in hand, Creese knelt next to her. They stared at each other, wild animals uncaged, eyes completely dilated like wolves on a hunt. Drude panted, grinning ear to ear.
Unspeaking, Creese gestured at the blade. Drude nodded.
Creese raised the knife. Drude joined her hands around his.
“Please God, no!” the man cried out, wailing.
Together, they slid the knife along Drude’s chest, drawing a single, neat cut. Red blood oozed out, glistening black and thick in the sour moonlight, a glimmer in the dark.
Their attacker scrabbled out from under them and ran away.
Creese bent and placed his lips along Drude’s open wound. Drude’s mouth found the cut beneath Creese’s jacket.
Joined in communion, sharing blood and body, they plunged back into the cave through their fever dream, awakening in their wellspring, a rose wilting and then blooming again.
Creese and Drude each crouched on one knee, firing their M-4’s at muzzle flashes they could faintly see through the dust and flames. Their Humvee, twisted and shattered by the IED, burned in front of them, sending up a snaking plume of oily black smoke.
An RPG went wide, exploding on the rock wall behind them, forcing them down as a rain of pebbles and scree bounced off their Kevlar helmets and flak jackets.
Baker and Ramirez trotted up to them. Ramirez put down a base of fire with his automatic rifle while Baker shouted over the bursts.
“It’s not a dead end! There’s a cave in the mountain side, just around the bend. The rest of the squad’s inside. Get there, now!”
“Rollins and Drayton are on the other side of the Humvee!” Drude cried.
A burst of fire cracked over their heads, and the ricochet of rounds zipped around them.
“They’re gone, and we’re toast if we stay put. The QRF will recover them, but we have to move, let’s go!” Baker grabbed each of them by the shoulder and shoved them further down the mountain path.
They withdrew, running down the path, as each side of the rock wall closed in on them. Briefly, madly, Creese thought the walls really were moving, and that they’d be crushed. When they saw the open maw of the cave, Creese flinched, slowed and almost stopped, felt a mad fear that he was about to be eaten. Ramirez gave Creese a push and he careened inside.
“Friendlies coming in!” Baker shouted as the team hurled itself into the cave, on the trail of another grenade blast. Inside, the rest of the squad, eight more riflemen, had taken cover behind boulders and stalagmites — canines and molars, Creese thought idly — their rifles and flashlights sighted in on the opening, ready to fire.
Panting, Drude and Creese let their momentum carry them deeper into the darkness, past the rest of the squad.
Falling to one knee, the pair of them gasped for breath. Drude ran a finger along the deep cut on her cheek, a chance kiss from flying shrapnel, the only wound she’d sustained in the firefight.
The chatter from the squad followed them and echoed through the cave as beams from moving flashlights danced behind them. Ahead was total darkness.
“I can’t get anyone on the radio,” Smith said, his voice tinged with fear.
“You won’t,” Baker said, blunt and defeated. “We’re inside a goddamn mountain.”
“Is the react force en route?” Ramirez asked.
“Battalion knows we’re in contact,” Baker said. “They launched the QRF. If we can hold tight they’ll get us out of this mess…”.
Creese was staring at the ground, fighting to keep his breathing under control. Drude reached her hand out to Creese. He flinched, pulled his hand back as though he’d been burned. When he realized it was her, he reached back out and gave her hand a desperate squeeze.
They saw a glimmer in the dark.
“What’s that?” Drude asked, her voice shaking. She stood, raised her rifle, took a step forward.
Creese’s hand shot out and grasped her shoulder. “Stay close!” He said. “Stay together.”
They stepped forward, easing their legs over rocks and holes, toward the yellow-white light.
The scream of fighter jets flying overhead shook the cave, followed by the dull thud of exploding ordnance and a distant cheer from the squad, somewhere behind them, seemingly miles away.
The battle was a forgotten dream. The light, sour and elusive and poisoned, pulsed and beckoned them like a siren’s song.
They came upon the light. Drude let her rifle drop to the ground. They knelt, hand in hand, staring.
“What is it?” Creese asked. His mouth watered and his pupils were wide and black.
“A star,” Drude said. Her voice ached with yearning. “An eleven-pointed star. It knows my name.”
“I see a snake eye,” Creese said. “It can see me. It’s terrible.” He gasped. “I want it to see all of me.”
They reached their free hands toward the light. Their arms plunged into it, and the light rose up their bodies, inside them, consuming them. They were transfigured, crystallized, like ascended flames or damned souls.
Completely consumed, they became one with the light, whipping out in tendrils of hungry flares. They wrapped around the flesh of the other men in the cave, now nameless offerings, ripping and burning in a desperate effort to feel the beating of the lovely red hearts that lived inside them. The light filled the cave like a bursting bomb until all was white, sour, and forsaken.
The screams were euphoria and eternal, until time stopped and started again.
The light faded into darkness, except for a white pulsing that slowed and weakened with every dim flash.
Beneath a pile of gore and flesh, two naked bodies slid up from the floor of the cave, one male, the other female.
The light disappeared. Total darkness remained.
Daniel Creese awoke.
“What?!” He said in gasp. “‘What’s happened?”
Back in the apartment, the pair of them laid in bed, staring out the balcony window at the unblinking eye of the full moon. Drude laid on Creese’s chest, running her hand idly across his knife wound. He rolled the knife’s hilt in his finger, catching the moonlight off the blade in a rapid-fire flash.
“What the hell does it mean?” she said, her voice an earnest whisper.
“I don’t think we’ll ever understand.” He put a hand on her head, ran his fingers through her hair. “But I don’t think we have to. I think knowing is enough.”
“Knowing that we’re monsters?”
Creese shook his head. “Knowing we’re not the people who went into that cave.”
“Monsters,” she said, insisting.
“And knowing we’re not alone.” He brushed the scar along her cheek, tracing it with his fingertips.
She nodded absently, feeling the warmth of his hands on her face, watching the flicker of the light off the blade in Creese’s hands, seeing what could have been an eleven-pointed star, or the eye of a snake, or something too terrible to name.
