Devils in Dark Houses Read online

  Ross Delvin, twenty-seven years old, college graduate, currently unemployed, star contestant of the soon-to-be-aired reality TV show “The Eye,” gave what he hoped was his best “Fuck You” smile. He turned his head to give the Eye another camera angle. He hoped the impression was of slightly defiant confidence mixed with a devil-may-care attitude. He’d studied viewer reactions to different types of character personas and thought he’d perfected one that worked for him. For Mad Dog.

  “You can make me shit,” Ross said, adding his middle finger to the screen shot. “But ya can’t make me quit.”

  Cut to black. The audience would go crazy over that one.

  2

  One little click was all it would take. All Brooke Merrill had to do was scroll down the tab, hit “Unfriend,” and Ross Delvin would be out of her life once and for all. Or at least out of her online life, which was the same thing. If she wanted the message to come across really loud and clear, she could even hit “Report/Block.”

  “It’s over,” she told the picture—not of Ross, but of a creepy, bloodshot eye being held open with what looked like forks bent into bizarre torture devices. Brooke could only guess why Ross had chosen it to replace the bland, smiling headshot that had been his profile pic ever since their last semester of college. In the years since Brooke, Ross, and their best friend Tyler had graduated, maybe there hadn’t been that much to smile about.

  No one could say Tyler wasn’t doing well. But then again, Tyler always did well. Her life was okay, at least on the surface. But Ross was a different story altogether. Ever since graduation, he’d been like a shipwreck victim being swept farther and farther out to sea. Already a speck on the horizon of their former lives, soon he’d be gone from view entirely.

  Brooke’s fingers were still frozen over the keyboard, the bloodshot eye staring her down like a challenge. It was hard to believe the man Brooke had once planned on marrying was no longer even fit to remain her friend on Facebook. But people change, and no one could argue that in the past six months, Ross Delvin had changed so much he was almost an entirely different person.

  Brooke had to admit she’d changed a lot lately, too. If Ross had been capsized by the tsunami of the real world, Brooke had been slowly drowning in the aftermath. At first, things had been fine—the PR job with Strategic Ideas less than three months after graduation, living on her own for the first time after moving out on Ross. She was finally beginning to feel like an adult, like a confident woman. But it didn’t take long for her to realize something was wrong. Every day after work she would come home and collapse on the couch. She’d spend hours wandering the Net, endlessly checking and rechecking her social media accounts, hitting link after link of “Top Five” comedy lists and “Celebrities Without Makeup” slideshows. Once she spent an entire evening randomly Googling people she’d gone to high school with, people she hadn’t thought or cared about in years. She’d doze on and off until heating up some premade dinner in the microwave and dragging her exhausted body to bed. Wake up, repeat.

  Weekends were no better. In college, the end of the week had meant clubs and parties, road trips without destinations and lost afternoons hiking the coastline. Now, by the time she bought groceries, cleaned the house, and finished the other million chores that piled up during the week, it was Sunday night and time to go back to work. That is, if she wasn’t at work on weekends already, which happened more often as projects piled up and deadlines loomed.

  Right before her sixteenth birthday, when Brooke had been dragging her feet about getting her driver’s license, her father had accused her of being afraid to grow up. Maybe he’d been right. But so far, growing up was turning out to be way overrated.

  The doctors told her it was depression, maybe anxiety. Maybe both. They tested her for Lyme disease and food allergies and a list of possible culprits so long she stopped paying attention.

  Her Internet searches started becoming more and more about symptoms and signs, diseases and diagnoses. When she was in the fourth grade, a classmate had been killed in a car accident. Brooke could still remember the teacher’s grave face as she made the announcement, the shocked bewilderment about how a boy could be sitting at his desk yesterday and not today or ever again. The boy’s name had been Tommy—thick glasses, sprinkle of freckles across his nose, hair as soft and golden as a field of summer wheat. That’s how Brooke remembered him, permanently frozen in time.

  Sometimes Brooke thought Tommy had been the lucky one.

  In bed at night, she would lie awake for hours playing her favorite new mind game: What if? What if she would have gone to graduate school and put off working full-time for a few more years? What if she’d married Ross like she’d once wanted? Better yet, what if she’d married Tyler like she knew he’d wanted?

  But she hadn’t done any of those things, and didn’t really want to. What she really wanted was to go back to that last year of college, before everything got so serious all of a sudden. She wanted to go back to the fun times, the good times when all that mattered was her, Ross, and Tyler. The Three Musketeers. Together Forever. All for one, one for all.

  All a load of bullshit. “Every man for himself” was more like it in the “real” world.

  After months of tests and referrals, the phone call finally came. Brooke could still remember checking her messages and there it was—the kind of “we need you to come in and discuss the results” call that only means one thing.

  When she called the hospital back, no one would give her an answer over the phone. She begged and threatened all the way up to Dr. Crispin, her primary care doctor, but he wouldn’t budge, either. She had to come in for an appointment. So Brooke did the only logical thing left—she hung up and deleted the message. She went to work the next day, came home to the couch like always, and forgot the phone call existed.

  Or at least pretended to forget. Her exhausted, aching body had a much better memory.

  The Internet searches continued. Late at night she’d sit with a bag of junk food and a six-pack of beer, obsessively trolling medical sites, message boards—anything that seemed to fit her symptoms. After one marathon session, the clock ticking passed 3 a.m., she finally found it: multiple sclerosis, more commonly referred to as MS. Fatigue and muscle weakness, check. Neurological symptoms such as depression and unstable moods, definitely. And come to think of it, she had been experiencing some numbness and loss of sensation lately. Some of the other symptoms didn’t sound right, but all of the websites said MS was one of those diseases that affects everyone differently.

  Sitting there at her computer, Brooke felt a numbness that had nothing to do with MS. Maybe I’ll find out what it’s like to die young after all.

  She wasn’t entirely surprised to find that the idea didn’t scare her as much as it should have.

  Whenever a call came from the hospital, she deleted it without even listening to the message. Maybe that’s what eventually caused Dr. Crispin to break protocol and send her an email urgently requesting a follow-up appointment. It surprised her even less than the idea of an early death when the words flashed out at her from his message: progressive multiple sclerosis. MS.

  From the moment of that 3 a.m. discovery, those two little letters had been lodged in her brain like bullets. It was all she thought about, every second of every day. MS had even invaded her dreams. In some ways, she’d been waiting for that email from Dr. Crispin ever since.

  Within minutes of finally confirming what she’d known all along, Brooke found blogs and support groups with smiling people and brightly colored “Living with MS” affirmations. She already knew the basic write-up by heart: “Multiple sclerosis often presents in the twenties to thirties. Although currently there is no known cure, with proper care, life expectancy is only five to ten years lower than the unaffected population. Although most people lose the ability to walk before death, ninety percent remain capable of independent walking ten years from onset, and almost forty percent reach the seventh decade of life. Only tw
o-thirds of MS deaths are directly related to the disease.”

  Brooke already knew that suicide is a far more common cause.

  On Monday she went back to work as if nothing had happened, because as far as she was concerned, nothing had. But she carried the MS around with her like an invisible weapon. When she was a child, she used to surround herself with stuffed animals before falling asleep at night. They were some of her happiest memories, those blissful moments when wakefulness gave way to sleep in the safe haven of her bedroom, her parents on the other side of the door, guarding and protecting her. Brooke now felt that same sense of safety. In fact, she hadn’t felt this peaceful since that last perfect year of college.

  She decided not to tell anyone about her diagnosis, not even her family. Not even Ross or Tyler.

  She’d stayed at her job at Strategic Ideas until the day she’d stumbled and fallen in the hallway and then stayed there, sprawled on the carpet unable to get up. She’d come clean with her boss, who agreed to let her work part-time from home. Then part-time from home became full-time from home, then part-time altogether. Brooke knew it wouldn’t be long before she got the call: “We’re sorry, but we need someone who can give us one hundred and ten percent. Our clients deserve no less.” When that time came…but Brooke didn’t like to think about what would happen when that time came. Despite the help from her parents, she was already almost three thousand dollars in debt plus student loans.

  Even as it began to gnaw away more of her life, Brooke made only one concession to her disease: she joined an MS support group and quickly made friends with three women on the site. In less than three months they’d become a more important part of her life than people she’d known for years. It was as if everyone could be separated into “before” and “after” categories. Even though he didn’t know about her diagnosis, Tyler was one of the few people capable of crossing the line between the two. Ross, the person she’d once banked her future on, had been trampled in the dust of “before.”

  Even after she’d moved out, Brooke hadn’t been ready to let Ross go. She still wasn’t, not completely. But whenever they met up, Ross never noticed her failing health. Or if he noticed, he chose not to say anything. C.J., Brooke’s closest friend from the support group, said that was even worse than not noticing. Sarah and Anna, her other two friends from the group, agreed.

  In their private messages to each other, C.J. had once asked a question that had struck Brooke’s heart like a fire iron: “Honey, if he doesn’t even take notice of you now, how in the hell is he going to take care of you later on?”

  C.J. was in a wheelchair and could hardly dress herself in the morning. She’d been diagnosed less than a year after she’d gotten married, and her husband had stuck by her for twenty years now.

  Brooke opened her desk drawer and took out a framed picture of her and Ross. It had been taken during their last semester of college. They were huddled close together, looking up at a snow-filled sky. They were both smiling, but the drooping outer corners of Ross’s pebbly blue eyes gave him a permanent hangdog look even when he was happy.

  Brooke sighed and tossed the picture back into the drawer. For one crazy moment she felt like throwing on a coat, driving over to Ross’s apartment—their apartment—and telling him everything. Asking him to get back together again, maybe even get married. Then she caught sight of the bloodshot eye being held open by forks.

  Without hesitating this time, Brooke scrolled down Ross’s profile page and hit “unfriend.” Then she dialed Tyler’s number.

  3

  Sarah Lawrence, self-described MS “warrior” and active member of the online support group “MS Strength in Numbers,” uploaded a picture of a pincushion stuck full of needles onto her timeline. She wrote, “Feeling like this after today’s doctor appointment.” She then added a frown emoticon for good measure.

  Within minutes, another MS warrior and support group member named C.J. Porter, whose profile picture depicted Snoopy dancing in the rain, hit “like” and added her own comment: “Aw, honey, hope you’re feeling better soon.”

  Ten minutes later, a woman named Anna Williams wrote, “Cookies—100% cure for bad doctor days,” followed by three heart emoticons. Anna’s profile pic was a blurry snapshot of her standing in front of a waterfall in a lush green forest.

  Tyler Wickett sat back and waited to see if Brooke would join the conversation. He knew she was on Facebook, stalking Ross’s timeline again. Tyler didn’t really have time for things like Facebook and Twitter anymore, but it was still the best place to keep tabs on his friends. And enemies. When he’d first installed the tracking device, he was sure Brooke would find it right away. It was sophisticated enough to get past her cheapo security system, but he still never figured he’d actually get away with it. But for almost a year now, Tyler had been tracking Brooke’s every online move. And so far she didn’t suspect a thing.

  It never failed to amaze Tyler how trusting people could be. Kind of like sharing personal information with complete strangers they’d never even met. Or complete strangers that didn’t even exist. Strangers like Sarah Lawrence, C.J. Porter, and Anna Williams.

  It had been too easy to resist. Brooke Merrill was the one thing in life that Tyler Wickett had wanted and not gotten. Even after graduation, when she’d moved in with Ross, Tyler couldn’t take the relationship seriously. Who could ever take Ross Delvin seriously about anything, let alone as a rival? For a while, Tyler had continued to go over to their place for pizza, hang out at the beach on weekends—the same happy threesome routine that had gone on in college. He’d been patient then, waiting for “the Ross thing” to fade.

  But maybe he’d been too patient. One afternoon Brooke had launched a guided missile straight into his inbox: “Hey, Tyler, since we all know Ross is the champion of anti-initiative, I’m thinking of asking him to marry me. Want to be best man at the wedding?”

  He’d sat there staring at the screen until his wooden fingers could type out a reply. “Fantastic! As you know, I throw one hell of a party—bachelor first, then bachelorette!”

  He changed both of the exclamation points to periods and then changed them back again. He replaced “Fantastic” with “Congrats” and hit send.

  That same day he’d installed the tracking device and started spying on Brooke. No sense calling it anything else. In fact, Tyler kind of liked the idea of this secret version of himself, this superhero alter ego who didn’t have to follow the rules. Tyler never had been one to follow the rules anyway.

  You’d just better hope the good folks at Boost Communications Marketing don’t find that out, Tylerman.

  Sometimes after taking a shower, Tyler would stand admiring himself in the bathroom mirror with nothing but a towel draped around his shoulders like a cape. “There’s Batman, Superman, and now—Tylerman!” he’d tell his appreciative reflection. Sometimes this aroused him so much he had to take a quick detour to the toilet before getting dressed.

  Not like that would help him much if the suspicious amounts of money that had been “moving around” at Boost Communications stood still long enough to catch up with him. He hadn’t really stolen the money, not really. All he’d done was change a few numbers around, move a few files, hit a few buttons. Too easy.

  Three days ago, he’d stopped by the vice president’s office to run a new project by him. But the V.P. hadn’t been alone. Five top executives were sitting around his desk with very worried expressions on their faces. When the secretary ushered Tyler in, every single one of them had turned to look at him, and then gone dead silent.

  Things are finally catching up with you, Tylerman. May be time to retire the cape and move in with Ross.

  Tyler laughed and shook out a couple of pills from one of the many bottles lined up alongside his row of computers. In addition to his three phones and tablet, he had seven laptops running 24 hours a day, seven days a week—foot soldiers in Tylerman’s world conquest. When he sat at his command center, anything was possibl
e. And now the prescription pills could join the campaign—amphetamines to wake up and keep him going throughout the day, sleeping pills to score at least four to five hours on a good night, and opiates for all the rest. Sometimes, a little voice of reason in the back of Tyler’s brain tried to warn him that he was going too fast, taking too many pills and risks. But Tyler never did have any interest in little things—voices, people, or otherwise. Tyler was all about big, big, BIG.

  As long as those idiots at work didn’t find out how big.

  Brooke had been a part of the conquest from the very start. The tracking software was how he’d found out about her multiple sclerosis. For weeks she’d done nothing but visit medical sites and MS blogs. As he watched her looking up everything from progression of symptoms to longevity reports, he found himself getting oddly excited, kind of like wearing the superhero cape. If Brooke was sick, he would save her. He would provide for all in a way that a loser like Ross Delvin could never hope to match. In fact, the more he sat up late at night at the command center, the more an idea took hold of him and grew into a plan—The Plan that would solve all of his problems.

  Who needed a loser firm like Boost Communications anyway? Tyler had earned six figures straight out of college without even breaking a sweat. True, his last couple of projects had crashed and burned, which is why he’d had to start getting “creative” with a few of his client accounts in the first place. But those were just minor setbacks. The world was full of opportunities, and here he was being held down by a bunch of stuffed suits who didn’t even know the rules let alone have the balls to break them. There was a brave new world out there, and it belonged to guys like Tyler Wickett. First he’d win over Brooke, then quit his job before the idiots even knew what hit them. In fact, he’d skip the entire damn country, maybe head for Singapore or some other place on the up, up, up.