The Shadow in the Dark Chapter Thirty

 

Rain woke me, though I hadn’t really been asleep.

 

It tapped at the motel window in a steady, patient rhythm, the sound soft but insistent, as if it were trying to remind me that the world outside was still moving even though I felt suspended somewhere between moments. I lay on my back, staring into the darkness, listening. Beside me, Martin slept, his breathing slow and even, one arm flung loosely across the bed but not touching me.

 

I had thought I would feel different.

 

That was the strange part. I had almost crossed a line I had guarded for so long - one I had imagined as monumental, irreversible - and yet at the brink of the point of no return I had screamed for Martin to stop. And Martin had stopped. I remembered the uncomfortable sucking motion as he withdrew the head of his penis from inside of me. My body had seemed to protest, to try and retain him somehow. What I felt now was not clarity or release, but a thick, uneasy confusion. The experience itself had been gentle, careful, almost reverent. Martin had been kind. He had done everything right, at least according to the version of events I had rehearsed in my head for years.

 

And yet the performance of sexual penetration had remained unresolved.

 

“Ashlee…” I could hear the frustration in his voice as his stiff penis seemed to stare at me in accusation. “You have some serious issues.”

 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…” I had wept into my pillow. 

 

Just take me! A voice had screamed inside of my head. Be a man! 

 

“I need to… do something about this…” Martin had said, touching his stiff shaft. “If you won’t.”

 

I didn’t say anything. Martin rose from the bed, walked into the en-suite bathroom and shut the door. He stayed in there for maybe ten minutes. When he came out, he was no longer stiff and hard. I had heard the toilet flush.

 

“I don’t know why I’m like this,” I said as Martin climbed back into bed. “I don’t want to be like this.”

 

“Get some sleep,” said Martin as he kissed me on the forehead and then rolled over. Sleep? How could I possibly sleep now? My body was on fire. I touched myself beneath the bed sheets and felt how wet I had been. I felt frustrated, angry with myself, and there was a little fear, too, a fear that Martin wouldn’t put up with this much longer. Kind, gentle Martin would grow tired of me and find a woman who wasn’t as repressed.

 

I didn’t want to lose him. 

 

“Can we talk about this?” I whispered in the darkness.

 

“Get some sleep, Ashlee. You’ve had a stressful day.”

 

I closed my eyes and tried to sleep, but my thoughts kept circling back on themselves. Had I wanted this, or had I simply wanted the fear to stop? Had I chosen it freely, or had exhaustion finally worn down my resistance? I couldn’t tell. The answers slipped away from me each time I reached for them.

 

Deep down, in a place I didn’t quite want to acknowledge, I understood something else too: part of me had wanted him to be stronger, more decisive, to take control in a way that would have absolved me of responsibility. The thought unsettled me. It didn’t fit with the person I believed myself to be - an FBI agent, competent, self-directed, unafraid. And yet the absence of that dominance left me feeling oddly frustrated, as if something essential had been missing.

 

I felt foolish for thinking it. Ungrateful, even.

 

The rain continued to fall.

 

Eventually, I slipped out of bed, careful not to wake him. The room was dim, lit only by the weak orange glow seeping in through the curtains. I stood there for a moment, barefoot on the thin carpet, suddenly unsure of where I belonged - beside him, or somewhere else entirely.

 

I found my powder blue party dress draped over the back of a chair. The fabric looked almost unreal in the low light, too bright, too innocent for how I felt. I slipped on the flared petticoat and the ankle socks. I pulled on the dress, slowly fastening it with trembling fingers. The childish bow at the front sat neatly where it always had. The Peter Pan collar framed my throat. Finally, I slipped my feet into the Mary Jane shoes and buckled them. in place.

 

I looked like someone else.

 

Or maybe I looked like the version of myself I was afraid I had lost.

 

I picked up the white ribbon that hung from the door handle and, gathering my hair back, tied it in place. I was still a virgin – it was perhaps fitting I wore the ribbon. Perhaps I would wear it until Martin decided to tear it from my hair and then…

 

What was I thinking? Martin was gentle. Martin was kind. Martin would never…

 

I felt hot, flushed, suddenly thinking of how he could press me against the wall of this room, strip the ribbon from my hair, press me down on my belly on the bed, kick apart my legs, and have me.

 

I was breathing hard, just thinking of it. 

 

Is that what I wanted? Would that emotional trigger absolve me of any guilt? There was little point in speculating. Martin would never do it, unbidden, and I could never ask him to. We were both trapped by our own politeness.

 

I was going to lose him. I knew that now.

 

Martin’s car keys lay on the nearby table. I reached with my hand and picked them up. There was something I had to do. 

 

On a whim that felt both reckless and inevitable, I stepped outside into the hallway and walked toward the front of the building - the dining area I had somehow assumed would always be there, always lit, always occupied.

 

But it wasn’t.

 

The lights were off. The windows were dark. The door was closed.

 

I stood there under the overhang, listening to the rain as it fell harder now, streaking the glass, pooling on the pavement. Beyond the front of the Inn, Dunwich stretched out in silence - empty streets, shuttered buildings, shadows deepened by the wet sheen of asphalt. The town looked watchful, patient, as though it had been waiting for me to notice it properly.

 

The unwelcome, but catchy chorus of ‘We’re All Dancing to Another Tune’ crept into my head. I heard myself singing it. Was I mad, or was the world trying to drive me mad? A chill ran through me that had nothing to do with the cold. I pressed my arms around myself and stared out into the rain. Somewhere behind me, in the motel room, Martin slept peacefully. Somewhere behind me, I had left the person I had been only hours earlier.

 

I knew, with a sudden and aching certainty, that I didn’t want to be a virgin. I didn’t want the weight of that label to define me going forwards. I would try again. Perhaps it had been the stress, the fear. Maybe if we went away somewhere romantic, somewhere warm. I felt sure that once I lost my virginity things would be easier going forwards. I just had to overcome that vanishing point on the horizon, and that self-knowledge felt heavier than I had expected. 

 

Outside, Dunwich lay under a thin, steady rain that silvered the streetlights and darkened the empty road. The night smelled of wet stone and leaves, and something older underneath, something mineral and cold. The petticoat rustled softly with each step, a faint, childish sound that seemed obscenely loud in the silence. My white socks were already damp, the Mary Jane shoes slick on the pavement. The bow at my waist was still neatly tied, absurdly proper, as if I were dressed for a school recital instead of wandering an empty town after midnight.

 

I told myself I was doing this for a reason. For protection.

 

Martin had a gun. The knowledge had lodged itself in my mind earlier and refused to leave. I kept seeing the way he’d said it - casual, almost reassuring. I’ll deal with them. As if violence were a simple errand. As if I were something fragile to be kept out of harm’s way.

 

I hated how that had made me feel. Small. Dismissed. Like a child being patted on the head.

 

I was FBI, I reminded myself as I walked away from the Inn, the mantra automatic. Trained. Capable. I shouldn’t be sneaking around borrowing car keys in the rain. I shouldn’t need his protection. And yet my hands trembled as I closed my fingers around the metal keys. They felt heavier than they should have, as if weighted with consequence.

 

I needed a weapon, and Martin’s gun was the obvious choice. I had been trained with firearms. If I was going to confront the people who were tormenting me, I would need to be armed. 

 

The streets of Dunwich were empty in a way that felt deliberate. Storefronts were dark, curtains drawn tight, doors locked. The rain ran down the windows in thin, wavering lines that distorted whatever lay behind the glass. Streetlights hummed faintly overhead, their light pooling and thinning, leaving long stretches of shadow between them. I felt exposed moving through those pools, my pale dress too visible, too present, like I was something placed deliberately into the scene.

 

My thoughts kept sliding back to the motel room. To the awkwardness. To the way Martin had been kind - too kind, maybe. Gentle when some part of me had been screaming for certainty, for decisiveness, for something that would silence the doubt instead of amplifying it. I had pulled away, confused even by my own body, my own impulses. And now, out here alone, I wondered if I had made a terrible mistake - if my hesitation had cost me something I couldn’t name.

 

The rain blurred the edges of everything. The town felt less like a place and more like a set, waiting for actors who hadn’t yet arrived.

 

The car was parked a little way down the street, half under a tree whose bare branches creaked softly in the wind. I could see the dark outline of it ahead, beads of rain glinting faintly on the roof. Relief fluttered in my chest, thin and nervous. Almost there, I told myself. Just get the gun. Then you’ll be safe. Then you’ll be in control again.

I slowed as I approached, my steps cautious now, each one measured. That was when I noticed it - the sensation, faint at first, like a trick of peripheral vision. A flicker. A shift of shadow where no shadow should have moved.

 

I stopped.

 

The rain continued to fall, steady and indifferent. My heart began to pound, loud in my ears. I scanned the street ahead, then behind me. Nothing. No one. Just empty pavement, dark windows, the low hiss of rain.

 

I took another step.

 

Again, that sense of movement. Not directly in front of me - never where I was looking - but just off to the side. As if something had passed briefly between streetlight and shadow and then vanished. My breath caught. I told myself it was nerves. Exhaustion. An overactive imagination fed by fear and too many unanswered questions. The woods can play tricks on you, Martin had said. So can towns like this.

 

But this wasn’t the woods. This was open street.

I broke into a half-run toward the car, the rain slicking the pavement beneath my shoes. The petticoat hissed and rustled with every step, far too loud, announcing me to a street that felt like it was listening. My fingers were clumsy on the key, slick with rain and sweat and nerves. I fumbled once, swore under my breath, then finally felt the lock give.

The car door opened with a soft, traitorous click.

I froze, half inside the vehicle, heart hammering. Something had moved—hadn’t it?—at the far end of the street. A shift. A flicker. I turned my head sharply, rain stinging my face, breath caught halfway in my chest.

Nothing.

The street lay empty, wet asphalt reflecting the jaundiced glow of the streetlights. Closed buildings. Dark windows. No footsteps. No voices. Just the rain.

But the certainty wouldn’t leave me. I knew I’d seen something.

I slid into the driver’s seat anyway and pulled the door shut, the sound suddenly too final. The car smelled faintly of Martin - clean fabric, coffee, something vaguely metallic, and of course his signature cologne. My hands were shaking as I reached for the glove compartment. For a moment I hesitated, aware of how deliberate this felt, how irreversible.

Then I opened it.

The compartment dropped down, and there it was.

The gun lay exactly where it had hours earlier when Martin had produced it so casually, as if it were nothing more than a flashlight or a spare map. I swallowed hard and reached for it, my fingers closing around the grip with a familiarity that felt instinctive rather than learned.

I switched on the interior light.

The glow filled the car, harsh and revealing, and I brought the gun closer, rainwater dripping from my hair onto the upholstery. My stomach sank almost immediately.

Glock 19M.

There was no mistaking it. The shape. The finish. The weight. A 9mm with a fifteen-round magazine. The standard issue sidearm. My sidearm. The one I should have had with me. The one that had been gone when I’d woken up in the wrecked car, along with my badge, my credentials, the small anchors that told me who I was.

A chill ran through me that had nothing to do with the rain.

My thumb moved automatically, checking the condition of the weapon, my hands suddenly steady in a way my mind wasn’t. I angled it slightly and leaned closer, squinting at the frame.

The serial number stared back at me, crisp and unmistakable.

I knew it.

I didn’t have to reason it out. I didn’t have to tell myself why. I knew that sequence of letters and numbers the way you know your own name, the way you know the shape of a scar without looking. This wasn’t just the same model. This wasn’t coincidence.

This was my gun.

The one that had vanished.

The implications slammed into me all at once, stealing my breath. My pulse roared in my ears, drowning out the rain, the silence, everything. Martin had it. Martin had been carrying it. Martin had refused to let me touch it.

A cold, awful clarity settled over me.

This wasn’t random. This wasn’t misfortune. This wasn’t my imagination running away with me in the dark.

This was orchestration.

The God Game.

The phrase surfaced unbidden, heavy with meaning. Elaborate. Psychological. Dangerous. A test designed to strip you down piece by piece, to make you doubt your memory, your instincts, your very identity. And Martin - gentle, reassuring, condescending Martin - wasn’t just with me inside it.

He was part of it.

My grip tightened on the gun as another flicker of movement tugged at the corner of my vision, closer this time, or maybe I was just more aware now. I snapped my head up again, scanning the rain-streaked windshield, the empty street beyond.

Still nothing.

But the street no longer felt empty.

It felt like a stage, lights dimmed, waiting for the next cue.