seekwithin

Dear Daisy,

It's been a while. Hell, it's been a long time if we're honest. I've been meaning to drop by the club but you know how it is. Work's been steady. I just got back from Moscow a few weeks ago. Business as usual. I'd ask how you're doing, but I don't think I'll be around to read the reply. Don't get me wrong, I'm not jumping on the "A Train" from the end of a long rope or anything that dumb. It's a long story. I'll try to tell it the best I can.

So I got this picture in the mail along with a letter from Suzanna. We've kept in touch over the years. Phone calls are a little hard sometimes, what with the past and all, but letters don't sting as much. Anyway, Suzanna sounded scared. She didn't come right out and say what was up, but I could read between the lines. Near the end she dropped a bomb on me.

Dad's gone. The old man passed away three weeks ago. He didn't have a will or anything like that, and I guess nobody there knew how to find me. Suzanna said the county was planning on tearing down the old house. That got me thinking about Jake and this:

The Jolly Rodger. Well, that's what we called her anyway. Remember when we used to cruise up to the quarry. Sit out under the stars. Those were good times, maybe even the best times. Jake was still around then and it seemed like we'd never grow up.

Now he's gone, dad's gone, and Suzanna's missing. It's all gone to shit, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Like I was saying, no will, no deed, so the county was set to tear down whatever was left. I did the only thing I could do. I left town that night and drove straight through. Eight long hours of memories and regrets. A little whiskey to keep my eyes open and the tremors out of my hands.

This was all that's left of the house. Why the hell did the old man let it fall apart like that? He never was right after Jake died. He never admitted it, but I think in some ways he blamed me for it. Jake always said he was signing up to keep the country safe. I guess he never figured on dying in a hell hole half way around the world when a faulty pin snapped.

The Jolly Rodger was gone. I figured dad must have hit hard times and sold it. I went by Suzanna's place to see if she might've known who ended up with it, but she wasn't there.

Her mother said she'd been gone for days. I guess she filed a missing persons report but the locals didn't really do much. Not surprising since that idiot Davey Greer is sheriff now. The only lead I had was one of Suzanna's girlfriends, Alice. She'd mentioned her in a few of the letters. Dianne gave me the address. By this point I'm starting to get a bad feeling. I went right over, and that's when things went from bad to down right weird.

Alice was scared. To the point that it took me ten minutes of convincing and showing her Suzanna's picture before she'd even let me in the door. The place stunk. It was like an old paper mill that had been shut up all summer long. There was also this faint sizzle in the walls, like the wiring was shorting out.

I gave Alice a few shots from my flask and coaxed her, as best I could, into telling me what was going on. Her story didn't make a lot of sense. The parts were jumbled up together. She broke out into crying fits in between things and then wouldn't remember where she left off.

The most I could make out was something about a place called the Berksfield Institute out on Miller Road. It used to be woods and farmland. Dad always called it The Devil's Briar Patch. He made me and Jake swear to stay out of those woods when we were little. Told us all kinds of crazy stories about people going missing and strange lights in the sky out there.

By the time I got what I could from Alice it was getting late. I didn't wanna drive all the way out to Route 9 and try to sleep in one of those dingy motels. That's when I remembered Louise.

She still runs a so called bed and breakfast over near the library. It's not exactly the Ritz either, but it's in town and I was exhausted. Louise hasn't changed much. She's still nosy as hell. I did my best to play nice and talk my way into a room for the night. Eddie was there too. A lot taller and a whole lot stranger than I remember him being when we were kids.

He wears costumes all the time. Cowboys, detectives, wizards, but his favorite is the clown. He started having a fit downstairs that first night and it woke me up. I crept down the stairs and listened to Louise try to calm him down. She started telling him stories. Not like fairytales, just made up stories about kids birthday parties. Like I said, damn weird.

After a while Eddie got quiet. Louise went to bed. I figured Eddie as strange as he was, might know something about what was going on, and I was right.

Turn's out Eddie's a regular Picasso. Well, a painter at least. A skill he learned at the Berksfield Institute. He talked for a good hour about the place. There was some kind of experiments being done up there. Eddie claimed they were planning something big, something that would change the world. He seemed real excited about that last part, so much so that his antics started up again and he woke up his sister.

Julia Summers. There's a wildcard for sure. She came downstairs carrying a bottle of Jack in one hand and a leather strap in the other. She hit Eddie and set him crying as he scrambled back up the stairs. I didn't really know what to say. The girl's only nineteen and drinking like a fish but she seemed willing enough to pick up where Eddie left off. We went out on the porch and shared a cigarette or five along with the Jack while she gave me the real story.

It turns out that at least parts of what I'd heard were true. The Berksfield Institute was sort of like a private college. They used a combination of drugs, pseudo science, and spirituality in some kind of therapy. Julia claimed that it worked, but not only that. Evidently someone had made some kind of breakthrough and actually found a way to contact the other side. A place she called the Dusk Lands, whatever that means.

I asked her about Suzanna. She got this funny look on her face then. It was like spite, and humor at the same time. It gave me the creeps. She said Suzanna had been chosen. That she'd "gone over." That she "belonged to them now." I asked her where, and who, exactly she meant but at that point she was done. She told me to go see for myself.

So I did. The place looks normal enough on the outside at least. It was quiet though, too damn quiet. I figured my best chance at finding Suzanna was to check the main building first, so that's where I started. Funny enough, none of the doors were locked. I went right in like I owned the place.

Things looked like you might expect, at least at first. The buildings up there are old. Thirty, or forty years at least. Nothing's falling down, but it's not fancy either. Kind of like a quiet neglect that's creepy but not bad enough to be a problem. It got stranger the deeper in I went.

I found a sensory deprivation tank. Eddie had mentioned that, only he called it the dark bathtub. He said they put you in it for a long time, until time stops mattering and then the green light comes. I didn't get inside to see if it was true..

Some rooms were mostly empty. I figured they used those for their meditation sessions or whatever it is they get up to. The longer I stayed inside though, the more I felt like I was being watched. It sounds stupid I know, but the lower levels of this place are enough to set anybody's nerves on edge.

I didn't figure anybody would believe me, so I snapped a few shots as I went of the most bizarre stuff. A couple of times I got lost. You'll think I'm crazy but it seemed like the hallways were shifting around me. I had to be at least four floors underground before I found the old man.

There were these fleshy vines everywhere. Growing out of the walls. There were rows of machines, some kind of computers built into these long cabinets and this constant humming, plus that same burning electric smell that I noticed back at Alice's. It was the sound of laughter though that drew my attention.

I swear it was laughter. Not a happy cheerful roar but a kind of bulbous chuckle that can only come from madness. When I stepped into the room though, the man fixed me with a hateful, scrutinizing stare that made me shiver.

He knew I was coming, or so he claimed. He said he also knew why I was there, and that Suzanna was gone, beyond the reach of any mortal man. I tried to speak, tried to yell, to get closer, but every fiber in my being betrayed me. It was as if he could see into the heart of me. As if he could hear the silent scream of outrage and indignation welling up inside.

For a brief moment, the old man offered me a brief, almost embarrassed smile. He introduced himself as Charles Edward Berksfield, founder of the Institute, modern day prophet and savior. He went on to talk in grandiose fashion about his life, starting as a handicapped boy. His fond interest in the occult and his sharp wit that had culminated in a life's work of the esoteric and strange.

During a pause in his speech, I tried, albeit in vain to ask why. Why Suzanna? The words would not escape my trembling lips, but the man seemed to know anyway. He said that she was a promised gift for those that dwell beyond. That soon they would cross over, and reshape the world as we know it.

I offered myself as an alternative. It sounds braggish to mention it here but I'm just trying to lay it all out, that's all. Berksfield gave me a look then that might have been pity, if his heart had been capable, but I think it was probably disdain.

He told me to leave. To go home and forget about it all. He said if I was smart, I'd go far away, somewhere out in the country and build a place to try to survive what was to come. I don't remember much else. The room started to tilt, then slide. I was falling and I hit something hard.

When I came to, I was back in my car. It was parked out on Springs Hill, on the side of the shoulder just at the junction that forks out to Miller Road. I threw up before I could get the door open. For a long time I just laid there in the grass watching the ants crawl back and forth.

I started thinking, is that all we are? Just ants crawling back and forth, and if so, will these things from this Dusk World, just come over here and wipe us out, enslave humanity like a bunch of helpless creatures?

No. Not on my watch. I've lost too much already. I don't hold out any hope of finding Suzanna alive. Berksfield didn't flinch when he said she was out of reach. Whatever her and I might of had back then, died a long time ago, well most of it anyways.

When I left town all those years ago, Suzanna was pregnant. Neither of us knew. She wrote to me a year later and told me she'd given the baby up for adoption. I was angry at first, then heartbroken and sad. In the end I told her it was probably for the best.

Our little girl's out there somewhere right now. She deserves a chance to live, to grow up, to fall in love. That's why I've decided to go back. I've got a forty-five and a twelve gauge pump. Maybe if I can catch Berksfield off guard, I can get a shot off or two. If he's dead maybe it'll stop this crazy shit once and for all.

I know this is a lot to lay on you, and I'm sorry for that. the truth is, I don't have anybody else on this god forsaken earth to reach out to. If things go as planned, I'll come by and we can get shitfaced in the VIP lounge and celebrate. If not, well, maybe that whole thing about hiding out in the country isn't such a bad one after all.

Listen, just, if weird things start happening in the next few weeks. See if you can get in touch with your aunt Mary. She still works at the county, she's got access to the adoption papers. Tell her you need to find out what happened to little Emily. Tell her I'm sick, I'm dying, or whatever the hell will get her to cough it up.

Please Daisy. Do this one thing for me. Find her, keep her safe...