The Light In the Dark Read online

  Chapter 1

  She was dead. Drake Bollinger, a usually tough-looking seventeen year-old wearing a white t-shirt, faded blue jeans and black work boots stood above her body with a look of absolute disbelief on his face; trying to comprehend the reality that had just yanked the bottom of his stomach up into his throat and began choking him. He nervously ran his fingers through his medium-length brown hair, looking down at her with his dark brown eyes, trembling at the sight of his mother lying lifelessly on their bathroom floor. It didn’t look like the same woman that he had known his whole life, her body had whittled away to nothing from the toll of methamphetamine and her once vibrant blue eyes now vacantly stared off into the distance.

  His hands trembled as he pulled out his cell phone to dial 911. He sat down next to her on the floor in a daze… the rest of it all seemed like a slow moving haze of a dream. His aunt Helen arrived as his mother was being wheeled away by the coroner’s office and followed them all of the way to the van. Drake held her after she collapsed on the street and began sobbing like a child. He looked up to find a group of onlookers gawking and whispering. Close neighbors began approaching and circled around them. The circle was broken by Ted Rawlings; Drake’s wanna-be stepfather who turned his once wonderful mother into an empty shell of a drug addict. Ted towered above, looking down at them while running his hands through his greasy long blonde hair, as if he were grooming himself for a date.

  “What happened boy?” Ted calmly asked as he pulled a can of dip out of his back pocket and put in a chaw. Drake could smell the beer on his breath from the ground. He ignored his question and returned his focus to his aunt.

  “Did you not hear me?” Ted hollered… eyes bloodshot and obviously drunk.

  “She’s dead,” Drake answered, “now go away.”

  “Well shit,” Ted muttered as he began walking towards the house with his tweaker buddy, Lee Gold closely following him from behind. Drake looked down at his aunt.

  “Aunt Helen,” Drake whispered, “I need to go inside to make sure that they don’t steal anything okay.” She looked up at him and nodded, trying to pull herself together for a moment. Drake got up and started walking through the maze of emergency personnel and neighbors to find himself in his living room. He saw Ted and Lee at the top of the stairs, heading towards his mother’s bedroom. He raced up the stairs to find Ted ripping the drawers out of the dresser, clothes flying everywhere as Lee watched with a vacant stare.

  “Where the hell did she put it? That fucking bitch had better not snorted all of it!” he screamed, now searching through her nightstand.

  “Please, just get out,” Drake calmly requested.

  “Or what,” Ted replied, “what the fuck are you gonna do about it? You need to learn to treat your elders with respect or I’ll learn ya to do it! Now where did your mother put my shit?”

  “Did you not even hear what I said outside?” Drake said, now beginning to become angry. Ted stopped rummaging through the nightstand and made his way over to him.

  “Look, son…” he started with false apathy.

  “Let’s get one thing straight, I am not your son,” Drake interrupted.

  “Sorry… Drake; now I do love your mother and I feel terrible about her dying and all… but I’m about to get fuckin’ dope sick and I just need a taste,” he continued, boot tapping the floor with nervous intensity, “I just bought a ounce of fucking crystal this morning and left it here with your mother. You don’t want the five-o rolling up in here and finding it now do ya? That won’t look good on her boy, I’m just trying to keep her from looking bad.”

  “Hey man,” Lee interrupted with a slow southern draw, “maybe we should just leave and come back later. The boy don’t look right, his momma just died Ted.”

  “No, it’s cool,” Ted said with a smile. “Drake here is gonna tell us exactly where she put it, aren’t you son?”

  “Fuck you,” Drake coldly answered as Ted attempted to rub his shoulder with camaraderie. Ted smiled and turned to look back at Lee, who in turn shrugged his shoulders. Ted quickly swung back around and blasted Drake in the face, bouncing him off of the wall and onto the floor. Drake looked up, nose bloodied and in a daze to see Ted towering over him. Drake began to taste the iron from his blood in his mouth and he could feel a storm of rage brewing inside of his soul.

  “I told you… you talk to me like that and I’ll learn ya you little son of a bitch,” Ted said with a cocky smile as he motioned for Lee to follow him downstairs. As they left the room, Drake slowly got up and walked over to his mother’s bed. He squatted down and put his hand between the mattresses and pulled out a large knife that she had kept hidden for protection. He calmly made his way down the stairs and into the living room, where he found Ted and Lee pulling the cushions out of the couch. He looked out through the front door, which remained open and saw two police officers consoling his aunt. His aunt Helen looked at him with eyes as big as silver dollars… knowing exactly what he was about to do.

  He pounced on Ted and plunged the knife into his kidney with brute force. Ted wailed in pain as Lee quickly sprinted through the door. Drake pulled the knife from his kidney and pulled Ted’s head back by his long, greasy hair and held the bloodied knife to his throat. The police officers burst into the room, weapons drawn.

  “Put down the knife son,” one of the officers directed.

  Drake paused and then leaned into Ted’s ear, whispering “if you ever say another word about my mother or if I ever see you again I am going to gut you like a fucking fish… you understand?”

  “Yes,” Ted answered with a frightened whimper. Drake removed the blade from Ted’s throat and took a step back, dropping the knife. Ted fell to the ground, blood gushing from his side as he wailed in pain. The police forced Drake to the ground as he looked up at his aunt, her eyes filled with tears. He stayed frozen in that moment until…

  “Drake!” Ed Franklin yells, interrupting Drake’s daydreaming recollection of his horrid past and snapping him back into the present moment. Drake slouches back in his chair and gives Mr. Franklin an uninterested look. Drake snaps back to his present reality… which is unfortunately sitting in a hot room on a July afternoon at John J. Brask Psychiatric and Chemical Dependency Center in Pinewood, Kentucky. Ed, a metro-sexual twenty-six year old mental health associate looks like someone you would see on a billboard in New York modeling for a clothing line rather than working in a sweltering psychiatric facility. He is sweating profusely as he watches Drake stare at a box fan. Drake reaches his hand out to touch the fan and is once again interrupted by Mr. Franklin. “Drake!”

  “What?” Drake asks.

  “We were getting somewhere,” Ed says “please continue.”

  Drake shakes his head in defiance and disagreement, “It’s too hot in here to concentrate, even the wall is sweating,” Drake says, “can’t we just leave?” Ed looks around at the other teens in the room, which are laboring through the heat and trying to pay attention.

  “The air conditioning unit will hopefully be replaced tomorrow, now in the meantime I think that we need to discuss why we are here and what we need to change,” Ed says.

  “Why do you keep doing this shit? It’s like we haven’t done this fifty fucking times already,” Drake complains, which makes Ed visibly frustrated. Drake begins picking at the zip-ties on his boots that are given to all of the patients to replace shoe laces and eliminate an easy means of committing suicide.

  Ed leans forward in his chair, trying to reason with him, “Drake, do you want to have recreation time this afternoon? You have been here the longest, I expect you to be a leader.” Drake looks down at the linoleum floor and begins rubbing black marks on the floor with his boots.

  �
�Whatever,” Drake says, still concentrating on the floor as he digs his boot even harder into the linoleum.

  “Then continue…” Ed says.

  “My mother died and I was the one who found her body,” Drake reluctantly states, still trying to avoid eye contact with anyone.

  “And how did finding your mother in such a way make you feel?” Ed asks.

  “It felt fucking fantastic, it was like climbing Mount Everest” Drake says with a flat and masked smart-assed tone, “I mean that is the kind of shit that people your age can relate to being awesome right?”

  “Drake, we always get to the same spot here and I always get friction from you when we talk about this,” Ed says with a therapeutic tone. “Now I am going to tell you something, if it didn’t faze you then wouldn’t have reacted the way that you did.” Drake slowly looks up at Ed with a crooked smile on his face and leans forward in anticipation of where the conversation is going.

  Ed raises his voice, “Come on, Drake, you are looking at your mom lying dead on the floor, you can’t help her; you can’t do anything…” Hiram Gutierrez, quiet, muscular sixteen year-old Hispanic male with a military-like buzz cut and all black clothing gently interrupts.

  “Sir, I know we just had a snack, but can I have another one?” Hiram asks. Ed looks at him with distaste and shakes his head.

  “No, not during group and dinner is minutes away… please don’t ask again and don’t interrupt when someone is talking,” Ed says. Hiram puts his head down in disappointment. Ed gets up out of his chair and walks right up to Drake and squats down in front of him, looking him directly in the eyes.

  “Would you rather talk about it in private?” Ed whispers. Drake starts laughing and slouches back in his chair.

  “You know, at first I thought you worked here with these other dim-witted fucks because it’s the best job you could get… but I’m starting to think that maybe you’re some kind of sadist that gets a hardon pretending to be a psychiatrist or something,” Drake taunts, “you know what Ed? You don’t want to be in my head, believe me. I don’t live in a fucking shiny happy little world where I wake up in the morning and think that everyday is going to be a great day. I am only here because juvie sent me here because I said I wanted to kill myself. I don’t want to kill myself… but at the same time I also don’t want to sit here and fucking run my mouth like a fucking pussy when the reality of the situation is that nothing is going to change the way it all went down. So leave me alone Ed… please.”

  Ed slowly gets up, sits back down in his chair and calmly gives Drake a disappointed look, he then slowly switches his attention to Kris Edwards, a very thin and nervous, hyperactive fourteen year-old with that seemingly doesn’t belong amongst this group of delinquents. Kris takes off his glasses and cleans them on his button-up shirt.

  “Kris,” Ed says.

  “Yes sir,” Kris responds.

  “How is your new medication treating you?” Ed asks.

  “Um, it’s okay I guess,” Kris says as he puts his glasses back on.

  Ed smiles at Kris, “Fantastic, if we can get your regimen down and you keep taking your medication it looks like you might be able to go home shortly,” Ed says. Ed’s conversation with Kris is erupted with the loud crack of Drake kicking a chair across the room.

  “What was that?” Ed asks Drake with an escalated tone.

  Drake leans back in his chair and puts his arms behind his head, as if he were in a Corona commercial, staring at the ocean without a care in the world.

  “What was what?” Drake replies with a fake inquisitive inflection. Someone in the room giggles, Ed looks around the room to see who it was. Everyone has a straight face except for Ed, who has had quite enough.

  “That’s it, I’m taking away your gaming privileges,” Ed says to Drake, flaunting his authority.

  “Yeah well, fuck you and your stupid privileges,” Drake calmly responds.

  “Okay, how about I take away television?” Ed asks.

  Drake looks away but can’t refrain from engaging, “Eat a dick,” he says. Giggles are heard from around the group, but this time Ed doesn’t look to see who’s laughing. Amy Jones, a young nurse who has only been on the unit for about a month, cracks the door open a bit and breaks the tension between Ed and Drake. Ed walks over to her and they begin whispering. Ed and Nurse Jones enter the room with Tyrone Wilson, a fifteen year old African- American who looks more like a twenty year old man than a child. Ed takes Tyrone’s chart from the nurse and points for a place for Tyrone to sit, which happens to be between Drake and Kris. Tyrone sits down and examines the baby blue painted walls, the sanitary smell of bleach and the other boys that surround him. After he takes everything in, he glances at Ed and stares back down at the floor.

  “Would you like to introduce yourself or should I do it for you?” Ed asks. Tyrone doesn’t say a word.

  “Everybody, this is Tyrone, he is fifteen,” Ed says. He leans towards Tyrone using his annoying therapeutic tone, “Our purpose here is to discuss what got us to where we are and work on the root problems that got us here so we don’t continue to make bad choices in the future.”

  “Yeah and with the powerful combination of know-nothing psychiatrists, domineering staff, useless group meetings and mind-numbing drugs they will whip you into shape in no time at all,” Drake chimes in.

  “I’ve had enough of you young man… one more comment from you and you will spend the rest of the day in your room,” Ed states calmly and coldly, trying to eliminate the notion from the boys that he has lost control. Drake smiles at Ed with a cocky glare; yet responds vocally without sarcasm, as if he’s struggling not to provoke Ed any further.

  “Yes sir,” Drake says.

  Ed looks at his watch, “Okay gentlemen, get up, let’s get ready for dinner and then right after that we’ll have recreation time in the gym and I’ll turn you over to Jeff.” Ed walks out the door and the class follows. They walk into the hallway and everyone sits down on the floor. Drake taps Tyrone on the shoulder and motions for him to sit down next to him. Ed begins pacing up and down in front of the group of boys as if he were a drill sergeant preparing them for inspection. “Hallway rules: No talking, no touching, no looking at people on other units. You can’t handle those simple rules; you don’t go the next time. Let’s go!” The group approaches the access door at the end of the hallway. Ed inserts his key and looks at the nurse.

  “I’m taking them to dinner,” he says, “Jeff will return with them after recreation time.”

  “Okay,” she says with a flirtatious grin as she continues prepping the med tray.

  Chapter 2

  If you looked at David Wayne Bell gently strolling through the thick woods of Pine County on this warm evening you would pass him by and not think a thing. His short, neatly kept brown hair goes nicely with his meticulously kept beard. He is dressed in a carefully selected getup comprised of a red flannel shirt, a pair of faded blue jeans, a backpack and a pair of hiking boots that are caked in mud. He is trying to appear as if he is a true nature enthusiast… taking pictures, kneeling and smiling with an absent grin on his face just in case anyone walks by. In reality though, he is seeking out the perfect spot to lay out his next victims. It has to be perfect… just has to be. He’s been doing this for so long it has almost become an art form… at this point it has become second nature.

  He looks through the trees to ensure ample lighting. He is pleased to see the light from the moon beaming through the trunks and illuminating the ground before him. He calmly strolls to the nearest trail to ensure that a passer-by could easily spot the body in the sunlight and quickly contact the authorities when morning comes. The well-lit open spot in the woods is highly visible from the trail and this pleases him. And if the body is spotted at night… so much the better, as the eerie glow coming off a body at night is something to truly behold. It adds a dramatic effect that the daylight cannot bring. The audience reaction isn’t the most satisfying part of the act to him, but he
does love his trade and he can’t come off as looking amateurish.

  The sounds of crackling branches and light laughter coming from the distance alert David that he is no longer alone. He sees a couple approaching from the trail and he gingerly creeps behind a large tree, carefully watching and waiting for the giddy couple to pass. They stop and look around, taking in the beauty of their surroundings. The female camper points to Pine Lake, which is barely visible from afar due to the time of the evening. He thinks to himself “Stupid fuckers, probably college kids. Look at them, smiling and basking in their own ignorance.” He looks at the woman, who is smiling and chatting with her companion. “Yeah bitch,” he thinks, “I guarantee you wouldn’t have that grin on your face if I got a hold of you.” The walkers finally pass, but he waits to move until they are completely out of sight and the coast is clear. This gives him more time to think, “The Baptist Butcher, what a thoughtless and ridiculous moniker. I wish it had perhaps been something more creative, something more refined. But that’s what happens when you don’t leave a calling card. When you let other people handle your business for you, they always fuck it up.”

  David looks back to the open spot in the woods, which is still visible to his vantage point and begins fantasizing about his first kill. He sees a younger version of himself materialize, lying on the ground in front of him making out with an attractive young lady of the same age. The older David watches, as if what he is seeing is real. Young David tries to slide his hand down the jeans of the attractive teenaged girl, but his attempts are repeatedly thwarted. She shows him her neck, as if she wants him to kiss it and then flirtatiously pulls away. This irritates young David, but he attempts to further his advances as he gently kisses her on the back of her neck and whispers “I love you.” She smiles and quickly turns around, floored and aroused.

  “Really?” she asks.

  “Yeah, really,” David responds. She immediately pounces on young David with a passionate fury, kissing him while trying to unbuckle his pants.