The Darkest Valley, page 13
The more she scrolled as Eli drove on, the more Gina’s anxiety about her own unfulfilled dreams and miss-outs, the in-joking and in-crowding, the window into lives more interesting and clever than her own bloomed into the feeling she was a big, fat zero—capital Z.
Driving her to start twirling her hair even as she popped two sticks of Doublemint in her mouth, the phone on her lap glowing with invitation to further her descent into the rabbit hole.
The intense spearmint flooding her taste buds and nostrils helped bring some measure of calm to the rising overwhelm, as did using her jaw to grind the polymers, plasticizers, and resins of the gum base that made up her stimming technique into a pulp.
Gina knew she should stop, knew she should shove the device back into her pocket—of all people, knowing the harmful psychology behind the social feedback loops WeShare engenders to fuel self-esteem and share self-referential thoughts to garner likes and shares that further the loop. But she couldn’t—especially with the new posts coming into view.
Ones that mirrored her own doubts about her recently chosen profession (“OMG, did I make the biggest mistake of my life taking this job!” from a friend of a friend), and fears about nearing the Big Four-Oh without any romantic prospects on the horizon (“Just me and my four cats on a Friday night, with a pizza, watching Gilmore Girls. Nope, not a nun. Just a 39-year-old doomed to socially imposed celibacy!” from another shared post), and general feelings of malaise (“Why did no one tell me life would suck this bad??? I would have slit my wrists a decade ago. LOL! JK!! <3 <3 <3”)
For a split second, she agreed with Mandy Fosdick’s self-confession, whoever she was—just some random acquaintance connection from a friend. But there she was, verbal vomiting on her ShareFeed. It was as if the darkness Gina had been surrounded by with this inexplicitus case had seeped down inside, stirring up her own dark, despairing, desperate thoughts.
The self-defeating ones that told her she was still that double-wide trailer-park trash that would amount to nothing but her stoned mama.
The self-doubting ones that said she’d made the biggest mistake of her life joining Group X, wasting her life in service of the Church instead of catching the real bad guys, the flesh and blood ones terrorizing the country.
The despairing ones that kept her attention on the headlines shouting about rising inflationary indexes and stock market corrections, tension in Eastern Europe and suicide bombers in the Middle East, police shootings and urban lootings, the next variant leading to the next pandemic.
The anxious ones that feared she’d missed her chance to marry and have 2.5 kids and find the Happily Ever After she and her sister had giggled about as girls, then early teens, until…
Now her mind slumped fully into the darkness, those haunting memories of Grace swinging from the carved-out ceiling, the cloying smell of deathly rot already blooming in the stuffy, stifling double-wide.
She tried to climb back out, but it was no use. Tendrils of despair had wrapped themselves around Gina’s very soul—the more she scrolled, the more her memories surfaced of all the darkness from her life, past and present.
Until a dot of light spoke through it. Just a pinprick, really. A ray of truth slicing through the swamp and climbing toward the surface of her consciousness. A set of verses, from the Apostle Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians:
Indeed, we live as human beings, but we do not wage war according to human standards; for the weapons of our warfare are not merely human, but they have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle raised up against the knowledge of God, and we take every thought captive to obey Christ.
The verse jostled her from doomscrolling through her ShareFeed, awakening her from the mindless enslavement to her thoughts—the dark ones, the despairing ones, the hopeless ones.
Take every thought captive to obey Christ…
Indeed.
Gina stuffed the phone in her pocket and cracked the window, the blessed scents of onions and celery from the farms racing by grounding her in this reality—not the fake one crafted in the digital nether. Those dueling scents were joined by woodsmoke and manure. Heaven…
The jazzy trumpeter switched to a bluesy organ and tenor saxophone. Not her style, but the change in sound helped unwind those tendrils the darkness had wrapped around her heart and mind, the aural shift re-centering.
She considered those weapons of our warfare the Apostle Paul spoke about. Ones he goes on about in our journey with Christ to remain victorious against the Devil—our quest as citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven to stand against the Darkness as the Book of Ephesians speaks about, wearing the whole armor supplied by the good Lord himself: the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shoes of the gospel of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, the sword of the Spirit.
All of it is given to empower God’s children with the strength of Christ to take their stand against the darkness, their own personal darkness during the evil day when the Devil and his minions rise with menacing purpose.
Like in that moment, in that Escalade barreling down a country road, the trees parting some now to show forth a bright moon spraying soft silverlight across Warner’s fields and the small town assaulted by this present supernatural darkness.
Buildings from that town were coming into view as well, another mile down the way. Houses with husbands and wives trying to hold their marriages together in the face of those assaults. Children nestled in beds and dreaming dreams too wicked for words.
A shiver ratcheted up and down Gina’s spine at the thought, knowing the truth of that wicked assault. The personal truth of that wicked assault.
The Apostle James exhorts believers to resist the Devil, promising he will flee from those who stand against the darkness.
So she joined that promise with a prayer:
Dear Lord and Savior Jesus Christ: I hold up all my weakness to your strength, my failure to your faithfulness, my sinfulness to your perfection, my loneliness to your compassion, my little pains to your great agony on the Cross. I pray that you will cleanse me, strengthen me, guide me, so that in all ways my life may be lived as you would have it lived, without cowardice and for you alone. Show me how to live in true humility, true contrition, and true love.
“Amen,” she muttered, crossing herself.
That tension eased some inside her chest now, and light slowly faded into a strong hearing, the Word of God and Spirit of Christ chasing away the darkness.
For now.
She did feel lighter, though, like she could breathe again.
Sniffling and batting at her eyes, she thanked the good Lord above for his—
Something suddenly came into view out front.
On the road.
The headlights slicing through the nighttime darkness dowsing white beams against—
A woman. Blond and young.
Stepping out from the shadows.
Arms crossed against her chest.
Facing them with eyes closed.
Standing dead-center in their lane.
With only seconds to react.
“LOOK OUT!!!” she screamed.
Her partner joined her with a high-pitched scream of his own, joined by squawking brakes and squealing tires and a spinning world as Eli tried to avoid running the woman over.
Didn’t work.
Gina glimpsed the woman’s face just before it smacked against her window with a hideous slapping thud that would stay with her for days.
Right before a rumble underneath the car, the body crunching under the front tires and thudding against the undercarriage.
Brakes squawked, tires squealed, the world went twirling as Elijah sought to right the ship and keep from capsizing.
Then it all stopped. The rumbling, the crunching, the thudding, the squawking, the squealing. Only sound left was the echo of their cries and a mournful, haunting sax.
“Did I just hit someone?” Elijah asked in a rush on a horrified breath, the sound of his hyperventilating breaths joining that damn sax. “Did I just ram this Caddy into some poor soul out for an evening stroll?”
He was heaving desperate breaths, mouth open as if in a question and eyes just as wide.
“I believe so,” Gina said. She startled at her answer, then she spun to him. “I mean no! This was not your fault. She stepped out into your path. You didn’t do anything wrong. There wasn’t anything you could—”
Eli threw back his head in a primal scream that sent an electric charge of horror skating across her skin and belly slumping to the fine leather seat beneath.
Then he threw open his door and bolted from the SUV, tearing across the road and into one of Herb Warner’s fields.
“Eli!” Gina called after him, head pulsing with wicked pain and confusion and indecision—and paralyzed with what to do.
Could things get any worse?
Actually…watching Eli scramble over a downed portion of a fence butting the road, Gina knew they could.
And would, if she didn’t go after him.
She had a hunch what was coming.
And it would be no good for anyone.
CHAPTER 14
Gina threw off her seatbelt and threw open her door, a heavy summer humidity joined by onions cloying and clawing at her. Slamming her door shut, she raced after Eli.
But not before catching a glimpse of the victim. Number Eight, if her gut told her right.
What she saw was unrecognizably human.
She was pretty sure it was a woman, the victim wearing a tight-fighting white blouse over a buxom chest and an hour-glass figure. But other than those obvious tells, it would have been hard to know for sure.
Limbs were wrenched around a mangled figure sprawled on the cracked pavement, bent and broken, going this way and that. Face was a pulpy mess, the bridge of her nose smashed clear inside, along with her eyes and upper jaw. Her mug puckered like a donut at the forehead and chin, the inside a pool of raspberry jelly.
Blood shimmered black across her arms and legs in the silverlight of the moon. Soaking her clothes, streaking her hair and skin, pooling on the pavement.
It was a horrifying sight. Made sense why Eli had run.
Gina couldn’t worry about that now. Worry what had led this woman to end her life in such a way—involving them, even!
Especially Eli…
Tearing herself away from the sight, she followed after her partner, scrambling over the same downed fence portion—
And landing on her face.
Thick, wet earth shoved up her nose and in her mouth, tasting of worms and wet newspaper and those onions pushing through the soil.
Blech!
She spat it out and swatted at her face, taking a stumbling step forward.
When the sound of slamming car doors and a shout drew her attention: “Gina! What’s happened, what’s going on?”
She spun back around, glimpsing two shapes silhouetted in a pair of pickup truck headlights, a low-lying fog rolling in on a cool breeze now. The sight sent a frigid chill skating up her spine, the mangled body of that woman streaked by dark crimson shimmering in the moonlight several yards away.
Gina yelled back, “Going after Eli! There was an accident, and…”
She trailed off, her throat tripping over itself and running sandpaper dry.
“Is he alright?” Jae yelled in reply.
Her breath seized in her chest, along with any words. She didn’t have any, because she wasn’t sure.
She flat wasn’t sure.
But Gina prayed to the good Lord he was, because if not…
Well, then she and the Almighty would exchange a few choice words when all was said and done.
Spinning back toward her partner, Gina called back, “Stay there. We’ll be back!”
Then took off across the field, her partner several yards ahead and screaming now, with flapping arms and head thrown back with another primal scream that told her all she needed to know about what was happening.
Meltdown.
The kind she herself had had more times than she’d care to recall growing up. The kind autistic people sometimes struggle to keep at bay, but nothing like what she was witnessing.
Not a tantrum, as allistic people are prone to finger-wag. Meltdowns were the last leg in a slow burn when the overwhelm bloomed into an explosive outlet.
Understood completely what was happening, Elijah’s inner emotions boiling into a fierce frenzy. A physical welling inside that needed to escape. Like a vomiting sensation that found relief when one expelled the contents of their stomach.
Gina caught up to him as he fell to the hard soil, hyperventilating between screams and desperate cries to the good Lord above why this had to happen, combined with a few choice words that would make a sailor blush.
She wanted to put a hand to his back, let him know she was there, give him a small measure of comfort through human touch. Knew that would be the wrong move; would be for her, as well.
Instead, she went with: “This wasn’t your fault, Eli!”
“B-B-B-But I—” He heaved a breath, eyes bugging out and lips curled back in horror. “I. RAN. OVER. HER!”
“No, you—”
“YUUUU-PPEEEERS!” he screamed. Something primal, something that sounded not of this world.
He rocked back and forth, sobbing and blubbering like a child.
Had never seen her partner act like this before. Was the stoic, solid one between them. To a fault. Figured it had something to do with his childhood, and what had unfolded in the Baptist church was the floodgates opening from decades of bottled-up emotion.
But this…
This was a whole other level.
What was she going to do?
“The s-s-s-SOUND!” Eli said, a shudder racing through him.
“Sound? What—“
“SMACK!” he shouted with sudden surprise.
Then again: “SMACK, SMACK, SMACK!”
More rocking, more sobbing.
“Like the birds used to SMACK into the big picture window at my orphanage. Robins and cardinals.”
Gina’s head was reeling, a horrifying fright gripping her at the sight.
Elijah grabbed his hair, clenching it and twisting up his face. “Just keeps ringing, ringing, ringing in my head, head, HEAD!”
He let go and smacked a hand against his forehead.
SMACK!
Then again: SMACK!
The sound eerily like what she recalled from the woman’s face SMACKING into her window.
Now he was going at it with both hands, all over his head.
SMACK, SMACK, SMACK!
“Eli!” Gina cried out before grabbing his arm and wrestling him down to the ground.
Which jolted him from his self-abuse, the touch neither of them tolerated much resetting him. He recoiled from her but relented, doubling in on himself in the dirt and wailing.
Gina’s heart was rending in two at the sight of her partner, her friend, unraveling. She wanted to pull him into an embrace and tell him it would be alright—that he would be alright, was alright.
Because that victim, whoever she was, was just that. A victim—and of suicide, by the way it all went down. Probably their eighth.
Instead, she quoted Scripture, using Psalm 23 as a prayer—as a weapon against whatever manner of dark, supernatural wickedness was coming against them.
And manner of despair was rising in Elijah.
She cleared her throat, quoting: “‘The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures.’”
It was exactly what Peter had quoted earlier in the day—or yesterday, who knew what time it was—in the middle of his own dark night of the soul after Katrina had shot herself in the head.
Whether it would work now, with Eli, helping bring him back from the brink…
She didn’t know. Prayed to the good Lord it did. But flat didn’t know.
“‘He makes me lie down in green pastures,’” she went on, willing the Word of God to act as a healing, comforting, calming balm for Eli’s meltdown, his pain. “‘He leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake.’”
Her voice faltered, squeaking out the final words through a tightening throat thick with emotion. She didn’t know if she could finish.
Gina went for the second stanza, when a small voice cut in through the noisy field fauna.
“‘Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil…’”
The words sounded barely above a whisper with all the racket around from crickets and tree frogs, but they were there.
And they were Eli’s!
Which loosened her throat enough to join him: “‘for you are with me; your rod and your staff—they comfort me.’”
Remained hunched, but no longer hushed. Supposed that was a start!
But now he was sitting straighter, voice more sure of itself, more determined. Resolute even: “‘You prepare a table before me.’”
Gina went silent as Elijah went on, rising some now in tenor and tone, “‘in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.’”
Her heart burst with compassionate empathy for the man who was her partner, but it quickly turned into admiration for his courage to face the darkness—his own darkness that he had been carrying, and that had been unleashed through this case.
Their voices joined together for the final stanza, in a lament as much as into growing resolve: “‘Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long.’”
The darkest valley was right…
Always loved that Hebrew poem, and its honest assessment of the sour end of life’s stick along with the promise of the Lord’s goodness and mercy.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, where’s the promised goodness and mercy?
They were drowning, she and Eli, though he was the first one to break. She wasn’t close behind, with all the dark thoughts rising within and the threat of random people jumping in front of their car!
