The Shadow in the Dark Chapter Thirty One

 

The classic movie line, “Now I have a machine gun, ho-ho-ho,” came to mind as I glanced to my left and right, checking that the streets of Dunwich were still empty, which they were. The weight of the Glock 19M in my hands steadied me in a way nothing else had all night. Rain tapped softly against the roof of the car as I drew the weapon into the pool of the interior light, my fingers moving with a confidence that felt older than memory. I didn’t have to think about what I was doing. My hands simply knew. I went through the motions I had repeated a thousand times before — the ritual of safety, of certainty — checking, confirming, rechecking. I felt the familiar resistance, the mechanical precision, the subtle click and tension that told me the gun was exactly what it appeared to be. Solid. Real. Not a prop. Not a trick.

 

The magazine came free into my palm, heavy with weight. Too heavy. I tilted it slightly and saw the brass glinting back at me in the harsh white light — a full load. Fifteen rounds, just as it should be. My throat tightened.

 

This wasn’t just my model.

 

This was my configuration.

 

I slid the magazine back into place and continued the inspection, running my fingers along the frame, the slide, the grip. Everything felt familiar, intimate in a way that made my skin prickle. This gun had been an extension of me. It had lived at my side. I could feel that in my bones even now.

 

I checked the safety systems, the mechanisms that prevented accidents and misfires, the things drilled into every agent until they were instinct rather than thought. Everything was intact. Everything was correct.

 

Everything was wrong.

 

I lowered the gun slightly, staring at it as if it might suddenly speak.

 

Martin had held this earlier. Casually. Comfortably. He had produced it in the woods like it was nothing more than a reassuring accessory. He had refused to let me even touch it. He had told me it wasn’t safe.

 

A bitter, hollow laugh tried to rise in my throat and died there.

 

It wasn’t that the gun was unsafe.

 

It was that I was.

 

Not because I didn’t know how to handle it — but because I was never supposed to realize whose it was.

 

My fingers brushed the serial number again, as if touching it might make this less real. It didn’t. The knowledge burned just as sharply the second time.

Martin hadn’t found this weapon.

 

He had taken it.

 

And suddenly the empty street outside the car didn’t feel empty at all. It felt like the outer edge of a trap, closing in around me, one quiet, rain-slicked inch at a time. Again, I seemed to sense movement but when I looked around there was no one in sight. I was armed now. Let’s see what else I might find. 

 

The rain had softened to a steady whisper against the roof of the car when I noticed the envelope. It was tucked behind the gun, half-hidden against the back of the glove compartment, a flat rectangle of brown manila that hadn’t been there when I first opened it - or at least, I hadn’t seen it. My heart thudded as I slid the Glock carefully aside and drew the envelope out with two fingers, as if it might bite.

 

It was heavier than it looked. My name was typed across the front in black ink.

 

ASHLEE ELLIS

 

No address. No return sender. Just my name, precise and official, like it had been lifted from a database.

 

My breath came shallow as I opened the flap. Inside was a thick stack of papers, neatly clipped together, edges crisp despite the damp air. The top sheet bore a seal I didn’t recognize at first—then I realized it was the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. My eyes skimmed the heading, and my stomach dropped.

 

APPLICATION FOR AUTHORIZATION OF TEMPORARY INVOLUNTARY HOSPITALIZATION

 

M.G.L. c.123, Section 12

 

Section 12. The words meant nothing to me emotionally, but something in my bones recoiled from them. I read on.

 

The form was filled out in blocky, clinical type. My name. My date of birth. A time and location: a service station outside a rural town I dimly remembered, like a dream half-faded. Under “Reason for Application,” a paragraph described me in language that felt like it was talking about someone else. Subject exhibits fixed delusional belief that she is a federal law enforcement officer. Subject reports being hunted by unknown assailants. Subject displays paranoia, disorientation, and impaired judgment. Based on observation and credible third-party report, subject presents a danger to herself.

 

Credible third-party report.

 

My eyes slid down to the signature block. It wasn’t Martin’s name there - it was a clinician’s, some emergency psychiatric screener - but attached behind it, stapled carefully in place, was another document.

 

AFFIDAVIT IN SUPPORT OF EMERGENCY PSYCHIATRIC EVALUATION

 

I turned the page, my fingers numb.

 

The first line read: I, Martin Bastable, being duly sworn, state the following to be true to the best of my knowledge…

 

The world tilted.

 

I read his words in a blur at first, then more slowly, as the meaning sank in. He described me—how long he had known me, how worried he was. He wrote about my “beliefs,” my fear of masked men, my insistence that I was an FBI agent. He wrote about me calling him in a panic from a payphone. He wrote that he feared I would hurt myself or get lost or provoke someone into hurting me.

 

It was written carefully. Not cruelly. Almost tenderly.

 

But it was still a knife.

 

His signature was at the bottom. Not rushed. Not hesitant. Solid, confident ink.

 

I flipped the page with shaking hands. Behind it was Briarcliff letterhead.

 

PHYSICIAN’S CERTIFICATION FOR INVOLUNTARY RETENTION

 

Doctor Oliver Thredson.

 

His name was typed at the top, and beneath it was a clinical summary of my “presentation”: delusions, anxiety, agitation, identity disturbance. A recommendation that I be held for further evaluation. A checkmark beside “danger to self.”

 

Another signature.

 

Then more pages: a formal Petition for Involuntary Commitment, filed with a county court. Thredson’s report attached. Martin listed as “interested party.” A judge’s order authorizing my continued confinement at Briarcliff Asylum.

 

Weeks. Possibly months.

 

I stared at the words, my reflection faintly visible in the glossy surface of the paper, pale and rain-streaked and unrecognizable.

 

I had no memory of any of this.

 

Not the police.

 

Not the hospital.

 

Not the judge.

 

Not Martin signing me away with a pen.

 

Yet here it all was, official and meticulous and horrifyingly real. This wasn’t a trick typed up in someone’s basement. This was bureaucracy. This was ink and seals and statutes. This was the slow, grinding machinery of the state, and Martin’s name was threaded through it like a signature of ownership.

 

A sob caught in my throat, sharp and sudden.

 

The God Game.

 

I could see it now, not as a metaphor but as a structure - layers of authority and paperwork and people who looked like they were helping while quietly closing doors behind me. Martin hadn’t just found me in the woods. He hadn’t just followed me here.

 

He had been part of this from the beginning.

 

I clutched the envelope to my chest, the rain drumming softly above me, and for the first time all night I wasn’t afraid of the shadows in Dunwich. I was afraid of the man sleeping in the motel room, who had held me gently, spoken kindly - and who had once signed his name beneath the words that locked me away.

 

I popped the trunk with a soft, traitorous click that seemed to echo down the empty street. For a moment nothing happened. Then the lid lifted on its own, slow and heavy, and a breath of damp, metallic air drifted out toward me. The little trunk light came on, sickly yellow against the rain-dark. There were no suitcases. No clothes. None of the ordinary clutter of a couple on the road. Just a coil of rope.

 

It sat there against the carpeted wall, neatly looped, pale and clean, as if it had been placed with care. I stared at it for a long moment before my brain caught up to what my eyes were seeing. Rope. Not a bit of twine, not a frayed old length you might keep for emergencies - this was thick, strong cordage. New. Purposeful.

 

I swallowed. Without meaning to, I counted the loops. There was enough to bind someone’s wrists. Their ankles. Enough to secure a whole body if you wanted to. A cold line traced its way down my spine.

 

Next to the rope was a roll of black gaffer tape. Wide. Heavy. The kind that sticks to anything and doesn’t let go. Tape that would also, horrifyingly easily, hold a mouth shut or keep someone from struggling free. My fingers hovered over it, then pulled back as if it were hot.

 

At the far end of the trunk, half tucked beneath a dark blanket, something else waited. I lifted the fabric with a trembling hand and felt my breath leave me.

 

A body bag.

 

Full length. Black, shiny in places where the light caught it. A long zipper ran down the front, neat and utilitarian. It looked exactly like the ones I had seen in training videos, in morgue corridors, in all the places where things had already gone very wrong.

 

For a few seconds I couldn’t move. The rain pattered softly on the trunk lid above me, on the roof of the car, on the empty street. My heart was beating so hard it felt like it might tip me over.

 

Rope. Tape. A body bag.

 

These weren’t random. They weren’t camping supplies or some grim coincidence. They were a kit. A set. Tools gathered for a single, terrible purpose.

 

For me.

 

The realization slid into place with awful, icy clarity. Martin hadn’t just had my gun. He hadn’t just had the papers. He had been prepared for this. For me running. For me panicking. For me needing to be taken back under control.

 

I stepped back from the trunk, shaking, suddenly aware of how exposed I was standing there in the rain with the car open behind me. The shadows at the end of the street seemed to thicken, to lean closer, as if the town itself were listening.

 

Whatever game was being played, I was no longer just a piece on the board.

 

I was the one being hunted, but I had no idea why.

 

I closed the trunk very carefully, as if the things inside might hear me and wake up if I was careless. The lid latched with a dull, final sound that made my stomach twist. For a moment I just stood there in the rain, my hand still resting on the cold metal, my breath fogging faintly in the damp night air.

 

The Glock was heavy in my other hand.

 

Not unfamiliar. Not frightening in the way it should have been. It sat in my palm with a terrible rightness, like something I had always known how to hold. My finger rested along the frame, just as it was supposed to. Trigger discipline. Muscle memory. Training that I could not remember acquiring but that lived in me all the same.

 

I was armed.

 

I was not helpless.

 

That thought steadied me, even as everything else inside me threatened to fall apart.

 

The street was empty, but it didn’t feel empty. Rain slid down the darkened shop windows of Dunwich, blurring the warped reflections of streetlamps and boarded doors. Somewhere far off, something clanged once, then went still again. The town felt like it was holding its breath.

 

Martin was back in the motel room, asleep in the bed we had shared only hours ago. The same man who had held me while I trembled. The same man who had kissed me gently and told me I was safe. The same man whose car contained rope, tape, a body bag… and my gun.

 

My chest tightened until it hurt.

 

I pressed my free hand against my sternum as if I could physically hold myself together.

 

This couldn’t be real. Not him. Not Martin with his quiet voice and steady eyes and ridiculous stories about his job and the way he always ordered too much food and insisted I take the last bite. Not the man who had looked at me like I mattered.

 

And yet the evidence sat in his car.

 

My gun. My papers. Tools for taking me away.

 

The God Game.

 

The phrase echoed in my head like a whispered curse. An elaborate, far-reaching performance designed to make me doubt myself, my memories, my identity. To make me compliant. To make me break.

 

I wiped at my eyes with the back of my sleeve, angry at the tears that kept forming anyway. They blurred the streetlights into soft halos, made the whole world feel unreal. I hated that I was crying for him. For the man I thought he was.

 

But feelings didn’t vanish just because the truth was ugly.

 

I looked down at the Glock again. Real. Solid. Thirteen… no, fifteen rounds in the magazine. I had checked it. I knew it was ready. I knew, with terrifying certainty, that if I had to, I could use it.

 

I didn’t want to.

 

I just wanted answers.

 

Going back to the motel room felt impossible. Too small. Too intimate. Too full of lies. If I confronted him there, with the bed and the thin walls and the possibility of someone knocking on the door, everything could spiral out of control in seconds.

 

I needed space.

 

I needed somewhere quiet.

 

The woods.

 

The thought came to me fully formed, as if it had always been waiting. The dark, rural stretches of Massachusetts just beyond Dunwich, where the trees closed in and the road disappeared and there was nothing but rain and leaves and shadows. A place where there would be no witnesses. No interruptions. Just him and me and the truth.

 

He had wanted to go into the woods before.

 

Now I would be the one to choose it.

 

I tore off a long length of the gaffer tape and taped the Glock pistol to my right thigh which was covered by the rustling petticoat and my powder blue party dress. I smoothed the voluminous skirt back in place, concealing the weapon perfectly. No one would see it was there. The size of the petticoat alone would hide it from view. My heart was still pounding, but beneath the fear, beneath the grief, there was something harder beginning to form.

 

Resolve.

 

He would tell me what this was. What he was. Who he was working for.

 

And if he tried to lie to me again…

 

Tears slid down my cheeks, warm against the cold rain, as I turned back toward the motel. I loved him. Or at least I loved the man I had believed him to be. That was what hurt the most.

 

But whatever he really was, I was done being a pawn.

 

I was going to make him talk.