Where the Despair Lives

“Where does the despair live?”

I looked up from my computer at Ashley. Failing to come up with a witty response, I let my eyes linger on her figure instead, then raised my face to meet hers. “What?”

“Where does the despair live?” she asked again, still looking down at her keyboard. Her lips spread into an excited grin. Her pupils were wide, dilated. Something was thrilling her.

“I’m not asking, dummy, the test is. You’re going to love this, Dan.”

Ashley assumed a lot on the part of my taste, but I was lovesick enough to forgive this. Blood-red lipstick and blue eyeliner accented her expression of titillation. One ear was riddled with three silver rings, and her red skirt clashed with black boots. I’d never seen her plain, but I knew at her plainest that she had to be a beautiful woman. I loved all of her, even if I was too craven to say so.

What I loved the most, though, was the purple tattoo of a crescent moon on the inside of her right forearm. She could change her hair color, outfit, and makeup each day as her mood struck her. But that tattoo showed a commitment to her spontaneity that would never be discarded. Tattoos were forever.

I wanted to run my finger up and down the edge of that moon.

“What exactly am I going to love?” I asked, spring the trap she’d set; she wouldn’t share her find with me until I asked her.

She got out of her side of the booth, slid into mine, and shoved my half-eaten bagel against the café’s wall. She turned her laptop around to face us, and sidled close to me. These invasions of personal space were not signals of attraction with Ashley. They were claims of territory. We were not intimate, despite my intentions, but she’d staked her claim on me. I belonged to her and she knew it.

“This test is a trip,” she said. “Look.” She pointed at the screen.

The page was titled, ‘The Gray Trial.’ Below this was a phrase in what I could only assume was Latin: ‘Voir Dire’. I glanced at the site’s address, saw a meaningless jumble of letters and numbers, realized she was viewing the page with her Tor browser.

“You’re on the dark web? I’m not going to see some illegal shit am I?” I fought back an involuntary gag, and could taste bile. I’d let myself spend one weekend traipsing through the anonymous horrors of the dark web. The experiment culminated in an agonizing five minutes of what I’m fairly certain was a snuff film. I’d logged out of Tor and reformatted my hard drive. I’d felt spiritually filthy for weeks.

“Nothing like you’re imagining,” Ashley said. “I like an edge but I keep it classy. Jesus, Dan, its Halloween. We’re supposed to do spooky shit. Just look.”

The browser displayed what appeared to be a colorful geometric puzzle. A series of shapes filled a hazy field. On one side was a large circle, with the letter ‘A’ beneath it. On the distant end of the field, near the edge of the screen, was a small, five-pointed star. The letter ‘B’ was inscribed next to it.

At the bottom of the screen was the question, which was even more confusing: Where does the despair live? I could click one of two radio buttons, ‘A’, or ‘B’.

“What do you think?” Ashley said, her eyes still enchanted by the screen.

“I just see shapes. Colors,” I said. This kind of interactive media was beyond me. Chutes and Ladders is about as wild as I can get on my own power.

Ashley, however, was in her wheelhouse.

“Ease up and give this a real chance,” she said, putting one hand on my arm. “Just look at the picture, think on the question, and listen to your gut.” She knew how to get what she wanted out of me. I was her marionette, and she liked to pull the strings.

“Okay,” I said, looking at the screen again. I tried to let the shapes, the pulsing haze, sink into me, and to assess how I was reacting to each. Relaxed but engaged, I found myself starting to humanize the shapes, to ascribe feelings to them.

“The star,” I said. “The star is where the despair lives. It’s more alone, somehow. Click ‘B’.”

Ashley smiled, gave my arm one encouraging, exquisite squeeze, then clicked ‘B’.

Another image with a matching question popped up.

“There’s more?” I said.

Ashley shook her head. “There are lots more. And it gets weirder. That was your first one, you should do the whole thing with me. I already did it and got my results.”

“Results?”

“Well, the site called it a ‘summons,’ but it’s something like an analysis of your character,” Ashley said. “I think it’s a personality test. I haven’t done one of these since the Briggs Myers in psych when I was an undergrad.”

“So this thing is going to tell me if I’m an introvert or an extrovert but do it while teaching me to have fun with shapes and colors?”

“This is better, trust me. It’s much more than a personality test. Keep going.”

I kept going.

The next screen was a sea of colors, splashed across a digital canvas. Every few seconds, one of the bits of color would move, inching along like a worm, then stop. The question: Where is the danger? ‘A’ was in a morass of red curls, which I likened to blood and flame. ‘B’ marked a jagged arch of bone-white, reminding me of teeth. I chose ‘B’.

“I got that question too, but went with ‘A’,” Ashley said. “Red is dead. Don’t you know anything?” She elbowed me in the ribs, and I smiled, savoring the touch.

“I’m still not impressed. This… trial… is pretty tame for you. I don’t see what you got so excited about in the first place.”

She winked. “Just keep going.”

The next screen was a photo of a child’s bedroom. The figure of a boy, his back turned to the viewer, hid under bed covers. The question was: Which one is plotting? ‘A’ indicated a small, tattered clown doll, lying in one corner, its dead eyes oriented toward the bed. ‘B’ marked the closet door, slightly ajar.

“Okay,” I said. “You’re getting to me.”

As I clicked ‘B’, the photo faded from the screen, and I heard a faint snuffling, a child’s gasp, a faint whine, and then silence.

“Christ,” I said. The noises startled me, and my heart skipped a beat.

“It gets more immersive the further you get,” Ashley said.

It did, and as the test progressed, I was gnawed at by a sense of growing anxiety and gloom. The command, Find the treachery, accompanied the painting of a toddler stumbling toward the edge of a cliff. A masked troll held out a morsel, tempting the child. The child’s mother, exhausted and unkempt, watched on, failing to intervene. The chimes from a child’s music box played in the background. I selected the mother. The troll, suddenly animated, grasped the child’s foot. The child turned to its negligent mother for help as the picture faded to black.

The next screen showed a photo, which must have been staged. It portrayed a weeping, enraged man plunging a dagger into the chest of a naked woman. Both of these figures wore wedding rings. A second man, naked in the bed next to the woman, did not. I heard the slow creaking of a noose. The test asked, Who is the victim? My options were the adulteress or her lover. I chose the paramour, and was rewarded with the sound of a breaking bone.

The test consumed my attention. I felt like some perverse voyeur, and I absolutely had to see the next dark inquiry the test would conjure. My eyes darted from question to image, reading one, devouring the other.

Where is the redemption? A bleeding old hag, or a voluptuous, naked woman with a crow’s beak and webbed feet.

Why is it crying? The slit wrist of a man or the flames of the burning house that surrounded him.

Find the gloom. A crushed spider or popped balloon, strangely oozing with blood.

One of these is breathing. A tree-house with a crying child trapped inside, or the statue of an angel in the graveyard below, its face chipped away to nothing.

Faster and faster I scrolled through the questions. My palms were sweating. I was, embarrassingly, becoming aroused.

Let me see you. Yes or no, framed beneath a dusty, chipped mirror. I clicked ‘no’ without hesitation.

Where will you hold my hand? A photo of the interior of Ashley’s cluttered apartment, next to an image of a desolate field in the middle of winter.

“What the hell?” I said, sliding back in the booth like I’d been punched in the gut. A shot of panic burned down my spine.

“Just pick one,” Ashley whispered. She pressed tightly against me. I could feel her taught body against mine. Both our hearts were hammering. Her eyes were fixed to the screen. She licked her lips.

Slowly, I dragged the cursor over to the select ‘A’, Ashley’s room.

The screen faded to white.

Ashley leaned back away from me, laying her head on the back of the booth, and breathed deeply. “Oh, Danny boy, what a ride you gave me.” She turned to look at me, and drew her hair, somehow tousled, away from her eyes. “You threw me for some curves on a few of your answers. Wasn’t that a rush?”

Disoriented, I shook my head. The test had taken me from nauseous to aroused and back again, and those are two feelings I don’t like to mix.

“How did it get a picture of your apartment?” I wiped my sweaty palms on my pant legs.

Her eyes brightened. “Oh, that! That’s one of my pictures, it’s saved on my laptop. The site’s code probably snagged the file and loaded it to freak out the user. It’s a pretty sweet trick.”

“Don’t you have to upload that manually? Or download something for the site to work that way?”

She shook her head. “Not if the site’s code is elegant enough. I’m sure it did something malicious to my machine if it could pull one of my photos like that, but I’m not even mad, I’m impressed. This is why I back up my files up every week, so I can play with toys like this.” She pointed at the screen. “Your reading’s up.”

The images and questions posed by the trial had so engrossed me that I’d forgotten about its end-state; to read me, analyze me.

I faced her laptop and read.

The Gray Trial weighs you, and your nature is revealed.

You will be a victim and the pain you suffer will define your life. Only the Dark Star can adjust your fetters. Lose yourself in its light, its light, its blind-gash light and you might find a shred of Truth.

You may die young, and if so, by your own hand. If you survive this agony, a brief fortune will be afforded to you, but it will be hollow. You will recognize it as such but you will seize upon it anyway. The light of the old faiths may protect you for a time but you will fail the test that will save you.

You submit to manipulation until you die, even though you are left empty handed. You are a coward at heart. Counter this with the consumption of raw meat in the light of Orion’s belt.

“This is… insane,” I said.

My eyes were wide. I wanted to discount these maddening paragraphs as gibberish, but parts of them left me breathless.

Ashley gripped my arm as she read. “Twisted, right? Not another hackneyed exercise in self-affirmation. This stuff… penetrates. I didn’t feel good about what it said about me, but it was damn precise. Yours too, right?”

“No,” I said, too quickly. “This is an elaborate fortune-cookie. It’s trying to tell me my future.” I didn’t want to address the parts that were readings, discuss my tendency to be manipulated, to look at the strings that tied me to Ashely’s hands. “And what’s the Dark Star? And this… ritual, I guess? To eat raw meat in the light of Orion’s belt?”

Ashley curled a strand of her hair on her finger as she deliberated, reading the screen again. “It’s not all fortune-telling,” she said. Mercifully, she didn’t point out the parts that weren’t. “There’s more, if you want,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“You can take the next step.” She put her hands on top of mine over the keyboard, moved the cursor to a button at the bottom of the page marked ‘proceed’, and clicked it.

Weep the gray tears, Seeker, the next page began. You, too, might be shriven. We may be summoned, and the Doctors will tally the blood of the veil. Open the gate, and we shall enter.

Below this invitation were boxes for inputting personal information: name, address, phone number.

And beneath this was a photo of a doctor in a white lab coat, his back to me. A string was tied around the back of his head, as though he wore a surgical mask. He had one comforting hand, wearing a medical glove, on the head of a child. The boy’s back was hunched, clutching his elbows, as though warming himself.

“Absolutely not,” I said. I shoved the laptop over to Ashley.

“You’re not the slightest bit curious?” she said.

“Yeah, but my spider-sense is sounding all five alarms. I wouldn’t give my info to anyone via the dark web. This is how you end up as a victim on ‘Faces of Death’. This has bad vibes written all over it, Ash.”

Her eyes flicked to me at my use of her pet name. “Then maybe I want bad vibes.”

My eyes widened. “You filled this out? You gave them your address?”

She was enjoying the grinder she was putting me through. “Yeah,” she said, moving back to her booth. “Trick or treat!”

I opened my mouth to protest, then closed it. The damage was done. She couldn’t take it back.

“I know what I’m getting into,” she said. I doubted that, but her face told me I’d never convince her otherwise. “I get it. Whoever made this is off his rocker. But I want to know what the next step is, if there’s even a next step at all. What are they going to do with my information? Try to convert me to their crackpot philosophy?”

She was talking more to herself now than to me. I couldn’t shake her from her line of inquiry. “And who’s to say this guy, or these people, are nuts at all. Christians were cultists until Constantine blessed off on them. Maybe this guy’s selling something I want to buy.” She was all defiance then, flashing her characteristic commitment to dip into the discomfiting. But whereas I’d be content with a look, Ashley needed a taste.

“Ease up, Dan. They won’t come and find me,” she said. I hadn’t even considered that, and the fact that she had, and dismissed it, made me even more concerned. “The dark web is for anonymity.”

“It is until you tell someone your name,” I said.

Ashley pressed on. “He doesn’t want to be found, and he doesn’t want to find me. He just wants to give me the next test. And I want to take it.”

Earlier in my failed, clumsy courtship I might’ve continued pleading with her. I knew now that this would only make her dig her feet in deeper.

“Yeah,” I said, giving what amounted to a blessing. “The next test.”

“Besides,” she said, collecting her laptop and standing up, “If anything goes wrong, I’ve got you around to protect me.” She looked at me, clasped her hands together and tilted slightly to one side, the perfect damsel in distress.

I sighed internally, resigned to my own weakness, and the pleasure I felt from even this most transparent appeal to my chivalry. “Yeah. You do.”

“Gotta go,” she said. “Happy Halloween!”

…

The next test arrived the following day, an overnight delivery. This frightened me.

“Overnight’s expensive. And it shows an intense interest,” I said, all caution.

“I know!” Ashley said, all delight.

She’d shown up at my loft unannounced, in a red and blue flannel shirt over a purple skirt and fishnet stockings. A chill autumn wind and a few dried leaves followed behind her like a bridal train, or a corpse’s dress. I closed the door behind her and reached out for the package.

The manila envelope clashed against her fingernails, painted blood red. Written on the front of the packet, in ominous, bold script, was one word: REVELATIO.

No return address, just a title: ECCLESIA.

She dumped the contents, a card and a few photos, on my table, inviting me to look. Written by hand on a small card, in a twitching scrawl, was an invitation:

Your insight has been reviewed by the Doctors. You might soon bask in the vacuum and the resplendence. The light. The light! Your fetters are aligned. All can be shriven. Grasp the chains and revel in your slavery. Answer truly and Truth in turn is revealed.

Stamped at the bottom was a meaningless garble of letters. I pointed at it.

“The dark web address I used to submit my response,” she said.

“Response to what?”

“These,” she said, setting the card aside and laying three photos side by side.

Glancing at them, I grew ill.

The first showed a man, his face wide in a mournful wail, lifting the cold, white corpse of a woman in a bride’s dress out of pond. The man was marked ‘A’, the corpse, ‘B.’ The question: Who is happier?

The second displayed a paramilitary squad from some South American fascist regime, their rifles raised, eyes wide and anxious, sighting in on a group of blind-folded priests and nuns, some with mouths open in protest, pressed against a wall. The gunmen were ‘A’, the religious were ‘B’. The question: Where does the revenant grow?

The third demonstrated tragic precision. A comely young woman stepped into a street, her smartphone raised just below her face, her long, smooth leg about to be clipped by the car speeding through the cross-walk. The driver was in view as well, one hand on the wheel, the other on his own smart-phone. It was inevitable that the woman would be crushed beneath the car. Neither driver nor pedestrian had registered this yet. The driver was ‘A’, the woman was ‘B’. The task: Find the regret.

I shoved the photos away walked over to my sink. “God. I think those are real.”

“I think everything’s been real,” Ashley said, her voice a whisper. She slid the photos together, kept her hands pressed upon them, rubbing them with a reverent touch, as though they were jewels, or prized heirlooms.

…

The next morning, Ashley received another envelope. She invited me over this time, and I gladly accepted. A garish, purple shawl hung from her shoulders, and a dark blue bowler cap rested on her head. Her apartment, as always, was a mess. Half-finished paintings were leaned against one wall, and unfolded laundry was strewn over the couch. Incense burners and mostly used candle-sticks sat on shelves. Her small black cat slept beneath a dust-covered acoustic guitar propped up in a corner.

She tapped a wooden crate sitting on the counter she used as a dinner table. “They cranked this shit up to eleven.” She was stone-faced. I’d been expecting her to be watching me with her usual anticipation, waiting to thrive on my discomfort. Something, finally, had bothered her.

One word was splashed across the side of the crate in that same wild scrawl, like some kind of charm, or warning: TRANSCENDENTIAM.

Inside the crate, resting on top of packing hay, was another greeting card:

The Wardens see glimmers in your path. A supplicant was castigated and the entrails revealed the greatest pleasures. The Haruspex wants his hands on you. Yield, yield, place your neck beneath the blade and be saved. Drink the marrow in the light of the new moon. Answer truly and Truth in turn is revealed.

At the bottom of the card, another garbled dark web address.

With dread, I set the card down.

“What’s inside?” I asked.

She shook her head at me and gestured at the box. “Seek and ye shall find.”

I slowly moved toward the box, my arms heavy and reluctant. I picked away at the packing hay, half-convinced that some horror-movie monster would leap out and grab me.

Instead, I found a jar of murky formaldehyde, with a crude letter ‘A’ inscribed on the lid. I set it on the table and stared. I could make out the twisting, corkscrew form of some dark shape. “What freak-show biology experiment is this? A pickled eel?”

“Try anatomy experiment,” Ashley said.

I looked closer, and recognized the organ’s curves. “Christ! Intestines?”

She said nothing, could only nod and turn away.

I threw up my hands. “I draw the line at human organs. Ashley, you’ve got to step away from this right now.”

“If that was where you draw the line, then exhibit ‘B’ is beyond the pale.”

“What is it?” I imagined lifting up another jar to see a severed head staring back at me.

“Nothing so macabre as that,” she said, nodding at the intestines.

Glaring at her, I swore again, and turned my attention back to the crate. Inside was a small, foot-long box with a jagged ‘B’ written on it. The box was heavy for its size. Whatever was inside had to be dense, perhaps something metal.

I opened it.

A small, black handgun, oiled and clean, slid into my free hand. I’d seen it in dozens of war movies and recognized it instantly.

It was a luger. Inscribed on the pistol grip was a swastika.

“Jesus!” I shouted. “A goddamn Nazi gun?” Images of SS Stormtroopers flashed across my mind. Alarmed, as if the luger would go off on its own, I set it on table, its barrel pointed away from us. “Is it loaded?”

Ashley swallowed and took a small black rectangle out of her pocket. “I already took the magazine out.” She handed it to me.

It contained a single round.

“No question?” I asked, steadying myself and clearing my throat.

“There’s always a question,” she said, and with one swipe of her hand, she tore the rest of the packing hay out of the box. Painted on the bottom in large, threatening letters, was the question: Which offers freedom?

…

There was a pounding at my door.

“Open the door, goddammit!” Ashley’s voice was shrill. I’d never heard her so shaken. I jumped off my couch, rushed to the door, and opened it.

Ashley leapt inside, shut the door, and bolted it.

“Jesus Christ, Dan, don’t you answer your phone anymore?” she asked, nearly shouting.

Even through her anger, I knew her voice shook mostly from terror. I’d only seen Ashley this livid when a drunk driver crashed into her parked car outside her apartment.

But I was completely taken aback by Ashley’s appearance. For the first time since I’d known her, she looked plain. No wildly clashing colors, no extreme bracelets or hooked jewelry, no purple eye shadow or blue lipstick. Nothing to hint at her rotating styles of noir, goth, or avant-garde. Ashley came as she was. Blue jeans, white t-shirt, and tennis shoes. Her hair hung loose and wild, unkempt. This was Ashley as she’d look first thing in the morning, forced to throw her clothes on in a rush. Ashley in the raw. Resplendent. Wholesome. Her makeup and roguish- accoutrements, I realized, served only to hide how gorgeous she truly was.

I’d never seen her this way before. Something was terribly wrong.

“I’ve been calling you for the last hour, what the hell?!” she said again, shoving me.

“My phone died, it’s charging now,” I said. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

She pushed past me, muttering a litany of swears under her breath. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were wide. She bit on her thumb-nail, and looked around my loft, rapidly surveying it. She strode over to the windows and threw the curtains shut. She shook her head, sighed, and thrust herself onto my couch. She clutched her body with her arms and bent over, staring at the tops of her shoes.

“Daniel,” she said, not looking up at me. “I think I messed up.”

She’d never called me by my formal, given name. I sat next to her. I was hesitant to touch her, thought she might spook. She shook again. Ignoring my trepidation, I took her hand.

“Tell me,” I said.

“I wasn’t going to answer the last question,” she said. She still wasn’t looking at me, still staring at her shoes, but her hand clutched at mine. “I was going to throw that shit away. Maybe sell the gun, I don’t know. Put the card in the trash. But I was stupid. I wanted to know. I needed to know what would happen next.”

“What the hell, Ashley?” I said. “You said you were going to take that shit to the cops!”

She looked up at me, biting her lip. Her eyes were full of remorse. I said nothing. She continued.

“So I went to the website and answered. I picked the jar. The jar had the ‘freedom’, whatever the hell they meant by it. I don’t think it would’ve mattered what I picked, just that I did pick.”

“Oh, God, Ash,” I said.

I would’ve picked the gun. I could guess at what kind of freedom the mad designers of this sick battery of questions meant. The gun felt clean, one trigger pull and it was off to the big sleep. The intestines had implications that made me ill.

“Get me a drink,” she said. “That’s not all.”

I poured myself some whiskey and mixed her a gin and tonic. I brought the drinks over, handed her the cocktail, and she threw it back in one pull. Then she took my whiskey, took a sip, wiped at her mouth, and continued.

“I woke up this morning. Stepped outside to feel the weather on my skin. Gauge how to dress, what to wear. Turned around to go back inside. There was something on my door. On the walls.” She took another drink.

I could feel blood rushing into my ears as anxiety gripped me. “What was it?”

“The next question,” she whispered. “Written on the door. It looked like blood. Maybe something worse. The choices… ‘A’ was on my door, and ‘B’ was on my window. The question…”. Her voice trailed off to silence.

I felt the cold shot of fear dribble down my back like ice cold water. “What did it say?”

Her hands shook. The glass of whiskey fell to the ground. She looked me in the eye.

“’Which is the right way in?’.”

Everything Ashley assumed had been wrong. Someone was close, knew where she lived, walked right onto her porch. The only thing between her and this raving lunatic she had summoned over the dark web was the glass of her transparent window, and the thin plywood of her rickety door.

She broke down crying. I felt myself panicking, but had to keep my head in the game, get hers back in it, and figure out the next step.

“Okay. We’re calling the police. We’ll get them to sweep your house, maybe keep a patrol car around. You can’t go back there. You can stay here, you can-.”

“I looked it up,” she said, interrupting me. “I pretended to know then so you didn’t think I was stupid, but I didn’t know so I looked it up.”

I didn’t understand, just stared at her, let her talk. She clearly hadn’t been listening to me before anyway.

“Haruspex,” she said. “From the card. ‘The Haruspex wants his hands on you’. Those were the priests, from ancient Rome, the ones who told fortunes by… They cut open animals. Live animals. Took out the guts and took a good, hard look at them. Learned the future.” She took both my hands in hers, gripped them until her knuckles were white.

“I don’t want to be shriven!” she said. “I don’t want to grasp the chains! I don’t want any of it!”

She was raving now. I seized her, hugged her tight, and made as many soothing noises as I could, like I was calming a panicked animal. “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay,” I said, like a prayer, a mantra.

She broke away from me, wiped at her face, and looked at me.

“No it’s not,” she whispered. “Nothing’s okay.” She grabbed me by the hair and kissed me. I kissed her back.

Later, she fell asleep. I held her, tracing my finger along her crescent moon tattoo. I could lose myself in the curving ink. I refused to wonder if the moment had been as significant to her as it had been for me. I didn’t want to think about the probable disparity in how we valued one another. I did want to think about holding her, in my arms, like a lover. Because I loved her.

I bent my head to her arm, placed one last tender kiss on her tattoo, and slept.

…

An hour later, I awoke. Ashley still slept, clutching me. I was starving, knew she would be too when she woke up. Her appetites were haphazard through the day but she was always ravenous after sleeping. My bachelor’s rations consisted mostly of cereal and liquor.

I decided to run to the corner market. I could pick up some bagels, orange juice, maybe some eggs and butter. Splurge on some fresh coffee. When Ashley awoke I wanted her to feel cared for. All I’d been able to offer her before was an open door and a spare place to crash at the end of one of her long nights of mysterious escapades with people far more exciting than me. Now I could feed her proper, help her feel safe. I imagined her giving up her exoticism, and living the same boring routine that I’d been carved for myself. I imagined Ashley coming home to me every day.

I eased myself out of Ashley’s grasp, and watched her breathe as I put on my shoes. She jerked slightly at some ominous dream, trembled briefly, muttered something indecipherable, and then was still. It reminded of the small, sickly rabbit I’d briefly owned as a child, whimpering in its cage the first night in my home after I’d bought it.

I slipped out my front door. Despite the chill, it was a beautiful fall morning. The wind whipped at me, the changing leaves lit the trees like a sunrise, and I could still smell Ashley on my shirt. I breathed in deeply and, for the first time in a long time, felt the warmth of real contentment.

When I got back from the store, the bed was empty. Ashley was gone.

It shouldn’t have surprised me that she’d jet after being intimate. She wouldn’t want to deal with what had happened, or talk about any change in our relationship. If she’d stuck around, she might’ve tried to joke it off, and pretend it was a lark.

“No,” I said, shaking my head. I wanted her. She’d wanted me. I wasn’t going to let this slip away. I picked up my phone and dialed her.

It went straight to voicemail. Perhaps she’d turned her phone off on purpose, to prevent me trying to talk it out until time had passed and things had cooled.

But the more I thought about it, the more wrong it felt. As scared as she’d been last night, after seeing that message on her door, why would she leave? She wouldn’t go back to her place. I tried to call again, and once more, her phone went straight to voicemail.

There were dozens of places Ashley could’ve run off to, other haunts, other friends and flings I’d never met, or seen only in passing as Ashley dragged me along to some grim art-house cinema or used occult book store. She could’ve crashed with any of them as easily as she’d crashed with me.

But the memory of her panic and tears flashed through my mind. I remembered again the scared rabbit I used to own. Forced myself to recall how I’d lost it, and what its body looked like after a fox had gotten to it.

I drove to her apartment, ran up the steps to her porch, knocked on the door, and then stopped, taken aback: The marking, or message, that had so terrified Ashley wasn’t there. Wiped away, or never written, I wouldn’t know. I knocked again, and when there was still no response I tried the handle. It was open. I went inside.

“Ashley?” I called out, entering cautiously. I looked around, was met with the typical mess. Her cat climbed out from the bottom of a pile of laundry, sat down in front of me, and meowed. I reached down, scratched it behind the ears, and surveyed the rest of the apartment.

Empty.

I refilled her cat’s food and water, went outside, and sat on her porch. I stared out at the gray skies, felt the bite of the wind on my face and hands. My eyes threatened to fill with tears, and I fought them back.

The police, when I called them, asked their typical boilerplate questions, filed a report, and did little else. They figured Ashley for another of a thousand free spirits who dip out of town every year to start life again somewhere else. They told me grown adults were free to disappear if they wanted, that she’d show up again when the road wore her out.

I told them about the cards and their mad ravings, the morbid photos, the intestines and the gun, told them about the website and the Gray Trial. They asked me to produce these articles. But every card, every photo, every physical object attesting to the trial had disappeared from Ashley’s apartment. The officers asked me if I was currently receiving psychiatric treatment, on any medication, and if they could help me find my doctor.

They left, and I realized how insane I must have sounded. I’m a logical person. I applied the cut of Occam’s Razor. The simplest explanation was that Ashley had gone to ground, spooked by our unexpected intimacy. She’d turn up in a day or so.

…

After two weeks I was certain that she’d bailed on her whole life. I tracked down everyone I thought she knew, but knew where she could be. I was the last person to see her. She didn’t even come back for her cat. Instead of making the depressing pilgrimage to feed the animal each day, I adopted him, brought him to my loft to live with me.

I skipped work and spent days online trying to get a lead on where Ashley went. I trawled through every form of social media, searching every alias I figured she might cook up, hunting for any clue. I put every picture of her I could find through reverse image searches, hoping to turn up some hint as to where she could be. All to naught. I followed up with the police, and they were as flummoxed as I was.

She had vanished without a trace, and everything leading up to her departure went back to the unsettling events surrounding that damnable trial.

The only lead I had was buried in the anonymity of the dark web. So I followed it.

I went back to Ashley’s apartment, now with a bright eviction notice pasted on the front door. I stole her laptop and brought it home.

I fired up her computer. The Tor browser was still open. It was on the home page for the Gray Trial. I could play this game again with a single click.

My fingers trembled.

Click.

The first images were innocuous enough. It began like last time, with shapes, colors, and paradoxical inquiries. I answered with instinct, and completed these questions instantly. Click.* Next, as before, the drawings, animations, and disturbing sounds. I felt bile rising in my throat, but moved through each horror. My heart was racing, pounding in my chest. Click. Click. Click. Then came the photographs. As real in appearance and as unsettling as those that were mailed to Ashley. I was gasping, sweating, wiping at my brow. Each submitted answer was like a shot to my gut. Click. Click.

Click.

The last photo broke me.

Tied to a chair was a woman with a plastic bag over part of her head, bound tightly just above her nose, concealing her eyes and hair. A ball was stuffed in her mouth, strapped to her head like some bondage prop. Her lips, even confined by the ball gag, were stretched back in a scream. She was dressed in a sack-cloth, like an Old Testament penitent. Her wrists were strapped to the arms of the chair.

Behind her was a masked man. The mask had the contours of a human face. Where eyes should have been, there were wild, black, cutting scribbles, as though the eyes had been spitefully gashed out from the photo. The man wore a white doctor’s coat. Over that was a black butcher’s apron.

One gloved hand wielded a filet knife. The edge of the blade was placed against the woman’s arm.

Just below the blade was a purple tattoo of a crescent moon.

I nearly seized. I gripped the edge of my table, tried not to get sick, found myself hyperventilating. I couldn’t take my eyes off the photo. Even through this veil of disorienting shock I was able to find the markings, read the question. The blade was marked ‘A’. The woman’s head was marked ‘B’. The question: Where does the despair live?

Weeping, I answered.

And when the test ended, and the prompt rose in front of me, inviting, just as it had before, Open the gate and we shall enter, I could do nothing else but submit. I gave them my name. I gave them my address. I invited them in; summoned them.

I wanted them to show me the way to Ashley. At the worst, I’d know where they took her before the end, and show some of them what it means to be shriven, if that’s what they wanted.

But they have yet to come. I am still waiting. I trace a crescent moon on the inside of my right forearm with one finger. The chill autumn wind blows dry leaves across the street, like a bridal train, or a corpse’s dress, and as I watch it, I realize where the despair lives.

It lives in me.

Submitted January 01, 2019 at 08:57AM by BAKreiger http://bit.ly/2Rp7bED