The darkest night, p.10
The Darkest Night, page 10
It of course had shocked some of the older, more conservative patrons of the Lorimar Club that Mr. Kettering did not own a chalet in the Swiss Alps, nor did he vacation in Mozambique during Christmastime, as did most other club members. However, the more accepting patrons of the crowd seemed overjoyed to welcome Mr. Kettering and most likely hoped his youthfulness would instill some verve into the activities we often indulged in. Customs had become somewhat tedious for most at the club, and even the stuffier, more traditionalist members of the club accepted Mr. Kettering with a politeness that was certainly not afforded to everyone who was accepted. No, certainly not.
In fact, it was usually customary for most first-timers to be subjected to a series of tests—a special course of endurance—in order to discern whether or not they were the right fit for our private coterie. Usually, these tests were the best method to root out those who were looking to advance their social status as opposed to really and truly reveling in the prospect of the wonderful community we had established.
What surprised me most about Mr. Kettering’s indoctrination to our association was that he was never given the test that all others must endure. When I asked one of the chief executives from our board of directors why Mr. Kettering hadn’t been tested like the rest, I was met with a frown and a stern warning to never question Mr. Kettering’s status ever again. Naturally, I found it rather peculiar that such care, such dedication went into making certain that Mr. Kettering was awarded membership without going through the once-mandatory protocol. But I simply figured that the club was desperate for newer, younger blood, and those in charge were willing to sacrifice tradition in favor of remarkable applicants.
It wasn’t until I received the letter from Mr. Kettering five days before Christmas that I realized something was dreadfully wrong.
I could feel it.
I could sense the threat of something approaching the same way harbor tides swell and churn violently when a cruise liner arrives at port.
Once my valet had abandoned me with the letter, I took the gilded letter opener that had been gifted to me several Christmases ago by one of the more affectionate and tender members of our club, Mr. Cedric Anton. I slid the sharp end underneath the crease and snapped the envelope open. Unfolding the letter, I began to read:
Dear Mr. Sutcliffe,
I hope this finds you well.
I also sincerely hope that you will pardon the forwardness of this letter.
It took great confidence to write to you in the first place, as I am told you are one of the most trusted and reputable members at the prestigious Lorimar Club.
I hope you will remember that we briefly met the other evening in the club’s main dining room and enjoyed a pleasant conversation about my recipe for lamb chops with a cognac Dijon cream sauce. You had asked me for the recipe, and I promised that I would supply a readable list of ingredients as soon as I returned from my business trip to Cherbourg. I returned late last night and wanted to send across the recipe as soon as possible. You will find it attached to this letter.
However, I must confess: I did not write to you merely to share my recipe for lamb chops. Instead, I write to you with the hope that I may call upon you for your trustworthiness. I hope you will not think it presumptuous of me to think you would be inclined to aid me in any way given that I am such a new and inexperienced member of the Lorimar Club. I know for certain that you are busily engaged, and I do not wish to waste more of your time than I already have.
I write to you today with a great trepidation in my heart. I’m fearful of something, and I do not know how I can possibly define my fear to you so that you can understand how this fear has already begun to eat away at the patchwork of my life. Not only my life, but the life of my wife as well. I cannot pretend to claim I’m sophisticated when it comes to explaining what ails me. I’m a poor patient when I am routinely seen by doctors and others in the medical profession. Although I may be underdeveloped when it concerns explaining what exactly is wrong, I can say with certainty that something, in fact, is wrong. I believe that something truly reprehensible will occur at the Lorimar Club before Christmas.
As you most likely already know, I joined the prestigious Lorimar Club with the intent of satisfying some of my more unconventional curiosities and predilections. (I hope you will excuse the vulgarity that I must adopt in order to fully explain myself.) While I understand that some of the club members keep their membership private from their families, my wife is fully aware of my involvement and has never made an attempt to impede my participation.
In fact, she was ecstatic when I was first accepted to the organization and had made numerous comments with the hope that my involvement with some of the members from the club might satisfy some of the intense urges I’ve been experiencing for the past several years—urges that have undoubtedly weighed heavily on my relationship with her.
Of course, some might find it exceptionally odd for a wife to willingly go along with her husband’s sexual escapades with other gentlemen. But my darling Valerie has always been so trusting and benevolent when it comes to our marital arrangement. She knows in her heart that I will never be hers fully, and how I love her and care for her differently than I do the gentlemen I seek out for sexual companionship. There’s an obvious difference between the attachment I feel toward Valerie and the intense hunger I feel for camaraderie with people of the same sex.
I needn’t bore you with the details or make an effort to justify my involvement with the Lorimar Club while being married to a woman. I know full well there are countless other gentlemen who belong to the organization who are in similar heterosexual relationships to mine. I don’t expect you to accept me or judge me. However, I greatly wish to impress upon you the feeling I have that something terrible will happen at the club before Christmas. In less than five days.
To better understand my suspicion, I will need to explain to you how I came to this sudden realization.
When I was first accepted to the Lorimar Club, the association was flaunted to me as an organization where gentlemen of a certain pedigree can make significant connections with other compatible men. These associations may, of course, lead to sexual relationships, as is very common. I was, naturally, excited for this opportunity, as I had felt starved from so many of my cravings over the past few years. As you know full well, it’s nearly impossible to engage in this kind of secretive activity without risk of being outed.
Although the association was promoted as an organization dedicated to preserving sexual relationships between the more distinguished gentlemen in our city, as well as bonding over a shared love of expensive, uncommon cuisine, I fear something far more sinister is occurring.
Without insulting you with the graphic details of my most recent sexual transaction with one of the club members, I can simply tell you how unsettled I was by the whole ordeal. Naturally, I don’t expect the activity to be similar to the lovemaking I practice with my wife; however, there was something distinctly odd about the way in which the fellow club member solicited and consequently engaged with me. I feel queasy even writing this, but it felt as though he had every intention of devouring me whole.
The gentleman ordered me to permit him to nibble and chew on certain areas of my person—to pretend to consume my fingers, my toes, my nose, even my eyes. Of course, I felt obliged to obey him, seeing as he was one of the more senior members of the club. However, it caused me tremendous anxiety. More to the point, it made me wonder if this particular gentleman was acting out some secret fantasy with me that I wasn’t aware of—something he hadn’t told me. I was especially unnerved—“disgusted” is probably the more appropriate word—when he confessed to me how he wished I tasted better. “It’s not your fault,” he told me. “Infants and small children usually taste more filling.”
I wish I could tell you that this was an isolated incident.
However, it was not.
Instead, over the course of one evening, I became sexually engaged with several other older gentlemen—all senior members of the association—and our physical interactions ranged from basic foreplay to full penetration. Each gentleman I became involved with seemed to treat me as if I were some imported delicacy—a strange kind of meal to be savored. I became possessed with the all-consuming suspicion that they were using me for some perverted fantasy that they wouldn’t dare share with anyone else.
When I asked one of them if it was typical for the older members to ask the newer members to engage in this kind of unusual behavior, they simply waved me off and told me not to breathe a word of what we had done together. Of course, I found it peculiar when the first gentleman ordered me to keep quiet. But I found it somewhat dangerous to the integrity of this organization when three other gentlemen ordered me to keep the details of our engagement private as well.
I hope this provides some insight as to why I feel the need to write you. Perhaps I’ve overstepped my bounds, and perhaps you’re cross with me for being so vulnerable, so open with you. But I recalled the other evening when we met how you had said you hoped we would have the opportunity to chat again. You seemed so sincere. Far more sincere and trustworthy than the other club members I’ve had the pleasure of dining and sleeping with. I wonder if perhaps I feel so intrinsically drawn to you as someone safe because we haven’t coupled with one another. You’ve never asked it of me.
I do sincerely apologize if I’ve overstepped or offended you in any way.
There’s a point to all of this, I assure you.
My presence has been requested at the Lorimar Club tomorrow afternoon at three thirty p.m. Although I found it unusual that I would be requested to be present so early in the afternoon, that’s not what shocked me most of all. No. What truly disturbed me was that the senior officers of the club have requested my wife, Valerie, to be present for the meeting as well.
I suspect something horrible will happen at this meeting. Something truly unspeakable.
Although I do not intend to neglect this meeting, nor do I intend to deprive them of my wife’s presence, I am hopeful that you might be kind enough to meet with us as well. It would mean a great deal to me. Of course, I completely understand if prior commitments keep you occupied.
Regardless, I thank you for reading this letter and for humoring some of my concerns. Perhaps I am incorrect. Perhaps I am needlessly worrying.
I hope I am.
God, I hope I am.
Would you be kind enough to burn this letter after reading?
I do hope that I have not intruded too heavily upon your time. Thank you for your attention and your kindness.
With very best wishes,
Alexander Kettering
My eyes went over his name again and again for what felt like hours.
I could scarcely believe he had the confidence to send such a letter. After all, we hadn’t talked in depth. Of course, I thought he was attractive, and I had designs to engage with him at some point while he was a member of our club; however, it felt so strange to think a complete stranger like Alexander Kettering would confide in me something so devastatingly personal.
My mind began to race. I had several options. The first option: I could have my valet send for a courier to dispatch Mr. Kettering’s letter to the senior officers at the club so that they were aware of his misgivings. But could I really be so callous and unfeelingly cruel? Especially to a brand-new club member with so much untouched potential. The second option: I could dictate a letter to my valet and tell Mr. Kettering in no uncertain terms that I was occupied tomorrow afternoon at three thirty PM and did not wish to be involved in his affairs with the association. Once again, am I capable of being so uncaring and inconsiderate? It pained me to think how likely it could be that I am, by definition, a cruel, unforgiving person. The third and final option: I could write to Mr. Kettering and comfort him with the knowledge that I would attend the meeting tomorrow at three thirty PM at the Lorimar Club.
With much hesitation, I called for my valet and asked him to bring one of my fountain pens to my desk so that I could write a letter to be sent by courier at once.
* * *
The following day, I ordered my valet to send a car for me, as I would be going to the Lorimar Club. When he asked me if I had mentioned the proper destination—given how early it was—I told him that I was not mistaken.
He sent for the car, and in a matter of minutes I was being whisked away to the club downtown. I sat in the back seat, nervously wringing my hands together as I anticipated what was to come. I watched the windshield wipers snap back and forth; the clogged roadway ahead was blurred beyond a screen of snow that seemed, all at once, to appear and then hammer away at us.
Finally, we arrived in front of the club, and I climbed out of the back seat. Mr. Kettering was already standing there on the front steps of the entrance. He was surrounded by several senior officers—their hats dusted with freshly fallen snow. I came upon them, and they parted for my arrival.
“My dear Sutcliffe,” one of the senior officers said, greeting me with a halfhearted wave. “I didn’t realize you were going to be here.”
I noticed how many of the officers wrinkled their faces at my appearance, clearly bewildered by my presence.
“I invited him,” Mr. Kettering volunteered reluctantly, eyeing me for some semblance of approval, as if I were the one in charge. “I had such a lovely chat with him the other night. I thought it would be good to have him here while we met.”
The senior officers shrugged and began filing inside the entryway to the club.
Just then, I noticed a young woman pull on Mr. Kettering’s sleeve as she seemed to appear from out of the snow, like some kind of Yuletide spirit.
“You were going to wait for me, weren’t you, darling?” the young lady said to him.
“Yes, of course, dear,” Mr. Kettering said, glancing at me. “Mr. Sutcliffe, I’d like to introduce you to my wife, Valerie.”
The young lady’s chestnut-colored eyes flashed at me unreservedly while she adjusted a small pendant on her winter coat that bore an etching of a cherub from an Italian fresco.
“Delighted to meet you, Mr. Sutcliffe,” she said to me.
I offered her my hand, and we remained tethered there for an instant before we eventually broke apart and filed inside the private club’s foyer.
I watched her as Mr. Kettering removed her coat, and it was then I noticed something that immediately explained to me the poor man’s apprehension, his nervousness.
Mrs. Kettering rubbed her distended stomach—the unborn child she carried there.
“Oh,” I exclaimed, nearly forgetting myself. “How much longer?”
Mrs. Kettering’s lips curled when she smiled at her husband.
“The doctor says we can expect him very soon,” she told me, looping her arm around her husband’s. “We’re terribly excited.”
It was then I noticed how some of the senior officers seemed to circle around Mrs. Kettering, eyeing her stomach’s hidden and precious cargo, and it was then I truly understood the fear etched across poor Mr. Kettering’s face—the horror that seemed to churn relentlessly in both his eyes.
The older men congregated around us and regarded both Mr. and Mrs. Kettering as if the two of them were about to deliver a consecrated and divine gift—a hallowed and almost divine kind of feast.
“Perhaps we should retire to the board room,” one of the older officers suggested, pulling Mrs. Kettering along by the arm and farther away from the protection of her beloved husband.
“I’m positively famished,” he said.
THE BURIED CHILD
M. Rickert
AN EARLY FROST sparked rumors of a hard winter. The once-resplendent morning glories withered into brown blossoms on black vines; the mums, expected to brighten doorsteps for weeks, shriveled into corpse bouquets, but just when Marlene had grown accustomed to the coldest September on record, summer made its riotous return. Ground bees swarmed in grass that shot up like a threat in the night, and the star moss grew, once again, celestial. Even the roses bloomed well into October, clotted red sprouted like fairy-tale wounds from thorned branches. Yet, only death is said to last forever. One November night the temperature fell. A thunderstorm cut the sky with shards of light, and a howling wind tore the leaves from their branches, littering yards with the bright confusion of red, yellow, and gold that glittered in the morning with a whisper of snow.
* * *
When sirens screamed in the distance, Marlene paused in her raking, to face the juniper tree in her backyard, before looking up at the salty snow that had fallen intermittently. Blah, winter! She stuck out her tongue, and a flake landed there, melted before her lips were even closed.
Such a simple thing! Nothing, really. A single snowflake when she would soon be surrounded by so many. Still, it felt like she’d swallowed a secret. Not the rancid kind from her past. A secret filled with light.
Hope, even.
Marlene went about doing her errands (the Piggly Wiggly for groceries, the mill for ice salt) in a state of enchantment she attributed to winter’s surreal arrival—crimson petals in the snow, asters encased in ice, geese flying north instead of south—pretending no interest in the murmuring buzz of gossip that reverberated around her, the same word repeated over and over again.
Bones.
Only after Marlene was home, settled with her tea by the fire, did she indulge her curiosity, as if it didn’t matter. But, when she upset her cup as she leaned over to extract her phone from the purse set by her feet, spilling brown liquid onto the arm of the chair, she ignored it in order to scroll through the community Facebook page.
Bones. Found by a child walking with her father who had ascended the small hill on the south side of town to restore what he thought was a Halloween decoration upset by the storm. The property looked abandoned but clearly wasn’t. What other reason could there be for toy bones to be scattered there? He stood for a while, brushing his thumb across a gritty spot on the thing, his reverie broken by the sound of a child singing.
