Twisted Darkness

Chapter 1

The last thing Knox Quinn expected to hear was a gunshot. Two strides inside the kitchen, he slipped off his boots. Silence was of the upmost importance. Ciana's sporadic amnesia made her unpredictable. He dared not wake her before he reached the bedroom.

Moonlight off of Lake George speared the drapes. Filtered light defined doorways along the hall. The door to the master bedroom stood ajar.

Knox eased the door open.

Ciana scrambled off of the bed. She held a pistol in a two-handed grip. “Who are you and what are you doing in my house?” She sidled toward the bathroom.

It was the moment Knox dreaded. Interrogation training taught him to exercise control over his emotions. “It’s me, Ciana.” He stepped into the room.

She fired the pistol fired. Her left hand flew to her mouth. She dropped the pistol and sank to her knees. The pistol thudded on the carpet. “I’m sorry.”

Knox flipped on the bathroom light and embraced his fiancée. “It’s not your fault.” His gaze fell to the pistol. "Where did you get the gun?"

She lifted her head. Uncertainty filled her eyes. “I don't remember. What is happening to me?”

Four physicians had examined Ciana. They offered nothing more than conjectures for Ciana’s sporadic amnesia and chronic headache. “We’re going to find out when we see Dr. Novak this morning.”

“I have an appointment to see her?”

“Nine o’clock.”

Ciana threw her arms around his neck. “I thought you were an intruder.”

“Come on. We have to leave in an hour.”

“Are you hurt?”

He sensed no pain or burn associated with a gunshot injury and scanned the room. The bullet had struck the doorknob and furrowed a line on the door to the jamb. “I’m okay.” He picked up the pistol and looked at its markings. The Ruger LC9 was not a gun he owned.

“Mother’s.”

“Does she know you have it?”

Ciana shrugged. “I took it from her nightstand. I was afraid of being alone while you were gone.”

Knox dared not question her reason. Ciana had always proved fearless. He pressed the ejector button on the grip. The magazine spat out with a click. He pulled the slide. A chambered cartridge flipped out. He unloaded the magazine, shoved it back in, and held out the gun. “I won’t tell her, but you must return it.”

Two hours later, Knox and Ciana waited in quietness more nerve-racking than an owl’s screech. A placard identified the office in Albany, New York—Maren Novak, Neurologist. Ciana shuddered in the grip of unfamiliar turbulence. The effect leached into him.

That unrest worsened upon Dr. Novak’s entry. Her microexpression cued Knox to expect doom. The doctor extended her hand across her desk. Ciana wiped her right hand on the thigh of her designer jeans and placed it in the doctor’s.

“The news is not good, Ciana. Your tests came back positive for a genetic subtype of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which is usually detected in people between the ages of thirty and fifty, not twenty-three-year-olds. it's a severe degenerative condition affecting the area of the rain above the brainstem.”

Ciana's lower lip curled inward at the petite physician's diagnosis.

“What regimen will you rely on to combat this?” Knox asked.

She frowned before she spoke. “No cure exists for CJD. And we have no way to slow its progression.”

Knox and Ciana stumbled across gloom’s threshold into despair. Ciana bowed her head. “Am I going to die? Our wedding is in three weeks.”

Knox put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her to him. He studied Dr. Novak while she gave her answer.

“I expect a few months. Eight if you’re lucky. I wish there were more we could do. You may call me if you need to talk.” She looked at Knox. “I’m calling in a prescription for her pain and muscle spasms. take this literature I’d like for both of you to read it”

He nodded and pushed the chair back with his legs. The doctor showed no signs of misdirection. He appreciated her candor coupled with the compassion transmitted in her tone. Knox took Ciana’s hands and helped her out of her chair. She sagged into his arms. His chamois shirt quieted her sobs, soaked her tears.

“Why do I have to die?”

Knox kissed the top of her head. “Come on. Let’s go home.” The former safe house was the best place he knew to take her. He had no clue what fate awaited them beyond despair.

Ciana pushed away. "No. call another specialist. I want another opinion."

Dr. Novak frowned. "Any other neurologist—"

"I don't want to hear it." Ciana marched out.

Knox caught the door before it banged the wall. "I'll talk to her."

"She needs therapy. It will help her cope."

He envisioned Ciana's date with Death circled a date on its calendar. Neither he nor anyone else possessed any power to delay or defeat it. "I know someone."

“This is a lot for anybody to handle. Have her take the medication and lie down for a while after you get home.”

He nodded and thanked the doctor. No reason to blame her.

Knox caught up to Ciana at his black Chevrolet crew cab. The sky growled in the west. Although his heart felt similar to the dark clouds headed their way, he remained optimistic for Ciana’s sake. He embraced her and opened the truck door. He helped her up on the seat and buckled the seat belt around her.

Ciana jolted when the buckle clicked. “Where are we?”

“We’re still in Albany.” He stuffed the literature in the compartment attached to her seat back.

“Did we get to see Dr. Novak?”

He touched Ciana’s cheek. His forefinger trailed to her chin. “We did. She called in a prescription for your headaches. I’ll pick it up on our way home.”

He closed the door, marched around to the driver’s side, and climbed in. Ciana reclined the back of her seat to forty-five degrees and closed her eyes. She opened them near the end of their ninety-minute drive when he pulled up to the drive-through window at the pharmacy in Lake George.

She looked around. “What are we doing here? I thought I had an appointment with Dr. Novak … Oh, I did, didn’t I? What did she tell us? Am I going to get through whatever this is that is wrong with me?”

Knox laid his hand on Ciana’s forearm. He forced a smile. Heaviness rebooted in his chest. “Dr. Novak assured me this medicine will help you.” He opened the bottle, shook a capsule onto Ciana’s palm, and handed a bottle of water to her.

She placed the pill on her tongue and took three sips.

Twenty minutes later, Knox parked his truck in front of their bungalow off 9L. An ominous cloud formation towered over land west of the lake.

“Hurry,” Ciana said. “I want to take pictures of that thunderhead before it gets too close.”

He rounded the front and opened the passenger door. Ciana slid off the seat. She darted to the steps as if the prescription had stimulated an adrenalin release. He entered his code on a stainless-steel keypad recessed in the wall. The time stamp above the pad displayed green. He unlocked the side door, pulled it open, and stepped aside.

While Ciana dashed to their bedroom for her camera, Knox pulled the Chordoma articles out of the truck and secured them in a tool drawer in the garage. The sliding glass door to the back deck stood open by the time he entered the kitchen. He put the prescription bottle and water on the counter. A flash lit the den before he crossed halfway to the door. A shock wave shook the house. Knox got to the door in time to see Ciana collapse and flop to her back twenty feet from the water’s edge. The camera bounced and rolled to a point of rest ten feet to her right.

“No!”

Knox sprinted to her. He sank to his knees at her left side. Her eyes shifted to look at him. She opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Red tree-like branch patterns traversed from the back of her right hand to her right shoulder. He pulled out his phone at the moment the clouds released a deluge. He called nine-one-one, touched the speaker icon, and shielded the phone.

“Nine-one-one what’s your emergency?”

“I need an ambulance. I think lightning struck my fiancée.” He gibbered out their address and described Ciana’s injuries.

“Please, sir, tell me your location again.”

Ciana spluttered while he repeated the address. The dispatcher assured him that emergency responders were on their way.

Knox grasped futility when he cradled Ciana in his arms. “Please, stay with me.” Few to eight months the doctor surmised for Ciana curtailed to seconds when Death’s tug snapped her last wisp of life. Finality anchored in the depths of his soul. Ciana’s head lolled in the crook of his arm. Her pupils became black pits. He gazed, focused on Ciana’s eyes lost in their severed continuity until he felt someone tap his shoulder.

“Please back away, sir. I need to assess her.”

He identified the voice above the rain’s white noise before he saw her face and lifted his head. “Felice?”

“Knox? Oh, my God.” His twin, Felice Quinn, dressed in firefighter gear, slumped to her knees. She put a hand to his cheek.

“She’s gone.”

Felice pressed two fingers to Ciana’s neck. “I thought you were wherever it is you were supposed to be. Dispatch made it sound like the call was for someone docked off the lake. I never expected to see either of you here.”

He gazed into his sister’s eyes. Kinesics’ verbal indicator alerted him to her last statement. It sounded somewhere between the truth and a lie. Felice knew where he and Ciana lived. Whom did she expect to discover at his lakefront home?

“I returned early this morning.”

She removed a penlight from a small black case and aimed the beam at Ciana’s eyes. The look on Haley’s face confirmed Knox’s dread. She studied Ciana’s right hand. Her palm and fingers exhibited third-degree burns. She lifted her head.

“Did you see what happened?”

Two medics jogged around the corner of the house on their way to them.

“I saw a flash and heard a clap of thunder. By the time I looked out, she was on her way down. How did you get here so quickly?”

“We were in the area when dispatch notified us. Let’s go to the house, okay?”

He looked around, nodded. He kissed Ciana, lowered her to the ground, and pushed to his feet. “We saw the oncologist today.” Hot tears mixed with cold rain on his face.

One of the medics assessed Ciana. She turned to Felice and shook her head. The other one got on the phone to the coroner’s office. They flinched at lightning’s sonic boom. The first medic gathered up her gear. She dashed to the rescue vehicle parked beyond sight. She returned clutching a white sheet.

Knox watched the medics spread the sheet over Ciana. Rain molded the fabric to her lifeless form.

Chapter 2

Anguish forced Knox to a knee. Felice laid her right hand on the back of his head. Knox latched onto her arm and buried his face to her side. After two minutes, he pushed to his feet. Together, they slogged through the torrent to the house. Neither spoke until he perched on the front edge of the sofa’s cushion and let his head sag above his knees. Water dripped to the cerulean rug.

“I’ll get a towel.”

“Why, Felice? Why did God take her away from me? The doctor told us she still had months to live.” The question churned inside him.

Felice paused at the corner. “I don’t have an answer, Knox. I wish I did.”

He flailed his arms. “First, she gets in incurable cancer. Now this. Why did it have to be her and not some vile low-life menace to society? It’s. Not. Fair.” He pounded his right knee in tempo with his cadence.

“Knox?”

“What?”

“Take a deep breath.”

“I need to vent.”

“Breathe.”

He did.

After Felice waited through his three deep inhales and long exhales, she said, “I’m going to call Mom. Do you want me to call Ciana’s parents?”

“I’ll take care of it.”

“I don’t mind.”

Knox tensed. “I said I’ll do it.”

Felice disappeared down the hall. She returned holding a blue bath towel and a brown blanket. She dangled the towel in front of him. After he snatched the towel, she draped the blanket around his back, crimped it around his shoulders and hunched next to him.

He leaned on her shoulder. “I’m sorry for snapping at you.”

“Let me have your phone and I’ll call them for you.”

Knox dabbed his face and dried his hands. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and entered his passcode. He buried his face in the towel while Felice talked to Ciana’s mother, Judith. The cry heard on the other end gouged his chest. Death claimed a soul at their expense. He lost the woman he was about to marry. Douglas and Jillian Nye lost their only daughter.

Knox looked at the sliding door. The mist on the glass and deluge beyond prevented him from seeing more than the three shadow images hovered around Ciana. Chaperons of death wearing coveralls lifted her on a backboard and strapped her to a gurney before they slogged out of sight. The third, an investigator out of Warren County Sheriff’s Office, paused beneath an umbrella and looked toward the house. She took two strides toward the house before she veered and followed the medics.

“Where are they taking her?”

Felice handed his phone back to him. “The coroner sends all unnatural deaths to Warrensburg Health Center for post-mortem exams. Once the pathologist completes the exam, they will release Ciana to the funeral home. That won’t be until Monday.”

“I should speak to them.”

“I’ll handle it.”

The side door opened. A woman in firefighter gear stuck her head inside. “We’ve got a multi-vehicle crash on 87.” The woman ducked out.

Knox looked up in time to see the woman’s profile before the door shut. “Is she a new volunteer?”

Felice said, “Her name is Ali. Another department sent her to help us. I have to go.” She leaned down and kissed his cheek. “I’ll check on you later.”

After Felice closed the door, Knox cast off the blanket. He slung the towel across the room and trudged into the storm. Wind tore at his shirt. Rain pasted the chamois to his skin.

The camera remained where he had last seen it. Ciana’s shoe was gone. He picked up the camera, ambled and dropped to the spot where he last held Ciana in his arms. The body of the camera once in contact with her palm and fingers showed fusion of tissue with the Nikon D750’s carbon-fiber reinforced plastic. The lens hood had melted around its fractured lens. This camera was one of many Ciana had chosen for the success she aspired to achieve.

An engine roared in the cove to his left. Its rumble increased, faded somewhat beyond the trees before the craft came into view. The boat skimmed the storm-stirred surface left to right at a speed Knox judged close to or above the 45-mph limit. The operator cowered behind its short windshield. He wondered why anyone would be out on a boat on a day like this.