Girl in the Dark Read online

  He did not respond, but it was good to feel him close to me, to sniff his deep-caramel smell, and to listen to his breathing. He fell asleep in fifteen minutes. I decided to let it go. Carefully I lifted him into his bed and stroked his tousled brown head.

  “I love you so much,” I whispered, hoping that he’d hear it and know it was the truth. “More than anyone else in the world. You do know that, don’t you?”

  I cleaned up the remnants of yet another failed meal and searched the hall closet for the appropriate carpet-cleaning product to remove the vegetable stains from the rug. I found one, too. While the smelly foam was doing its work, I pondered the mysterious R. Boelens. I knew just a few things. That he’d purchased the aquarium in 1990 from Van de Akker in Amersfoort. That the aquarium had been consigned to my mother in 2003. That there was something terribly wrong with him. Something that apparently had to be kept hidden, like a spot that won’t come out of the carpet and you cover up with a piece of furniture. Who was R. Boelens? I stood still outside the door of the study, which was still under lock and key, and wondered if I should try to open it. I knew, of course, that I didn’t have any right to poke my nose in my mother’s hidden things. I also had to ask myself if it was a good idea to risk a war with the only dependable babysitter I was able to count on. Once upon a time I had managed to wrestle myself free of her. But that freedom was long gone. I needed her, dammit; I needed her a whole lot.

  I stood there for a while with my hand on the doorknob. I could try jimmying the lock with a piece of wire. I could call a locksmith and pretend I’d lost my key. Then it suddenly hit me. Hadn’t Van de Akker said that the aquarium had won some sort of award from the Netherlands Society of Seawater Aquarians in 2001? I turned on my laptop and Googled it, together with the name Boelens. I got two hits. The first was a list of the society’s members. R. Boelens’s name was somewhere halfway down the page. Ray Boelens, name and address. He lived in a small village near Amersfoort. I knew where it was but didn’t remember ever having been there.

  The second hit was an address list for the Maastricht Soccer boys’ youth team. That Boelens was only eleven years old. Him I could cross off.

  I said the name out loud a few times. “Ray, Ray Boelens. Ray.” The name sounded familiar, although I had no idea why.

  CHAPTER 9

  RAY

  The Hopper Institute was made up of several units, Mo explained. We were on our way from the medical unit, where a doctor had listened to my heart and taken blood for an HIV test, to the orientation unit.

  There were two social workers in charge during the daytime; Mo was one of them. Besides hanging out in the ward—Skip-Bo was a favorite game in here, Mo said—you were expected to spend a certain number of hours a day working a job and going to therapy. You were also allowed to work out in a gym and sign up for different activities, such as the theater club or the gardening committee.

  At the start, though, I’d be staying mostly in the orientation unit, where I could get used to the place gradually, and where they could observe me and examine me. And then from here they’d figure out which unit I was most suited for. “The institution is divided into units for the various disorders; for instance, people with autism have different needs than people who are psychotic,” said Mo.

  The institution’s corridors were painted in muted colors. Back at Mason, we often played with color. A shrink would show me a color and then I’d have to name it. It could be a real, actual name, like brick red, but it could also be a made-up name, like hubbahubba, which turned out to be the only pretend name I could ever think of. If you asked me, the walls in here were like the tail fin of an Arothon hispidus.

  “You’ll be taking your meals in here for now. Usually a sandwich or soup and salad for lunch, hot meals at night. Tuesday is french fry day.”

  Mo took out an ID pass and waved it at a gray plastic sensor. There was an electronic whine and then the doors swung open. “Here’s the ward,” said Mo. “Think you can handle it?”

  The patients, or the criminally insane, were sitting at a long table eating their lunch. They ate neatly, with fork and knife, and passed one another the cheese or butter or mustard. All of them looked up when I walked in.

  “Boys,” said Mo, “say hello to Ray Boelens, the new resident.”

  I looked down at my shoes. Worn, brown lace-ups my mother had bought for me at the start of my prison sentence, eight years ago.

  “Ray-nus,” said a familiar voice. “That’s our Raynus.”

  I felt my face getting hot.

  “You know each other?” asked Mo.

  “Sure do. Raynus with the bunged-up anus,” said my former cellmate Eddie. “I’ll tell you all about it sometime, boys.” I heard laughter. It alarmed me.

  “Ray.” Mo said my name the right way with extra emphasis. “Would you like to shake hands all around, or rather not?”

  “Come on, man, sit down.” A heavyset guy with a silver lightning bolt stud in his ear pulled out the chair next to him.

  “That’s nice of you, Hank,” said Mo.

  I sat down and Mo took an empty chair across from me.

  “Brown or white?” The lightning bolt guy waved the bread basket under my nose. It held tasteless, industrial sliced bread. “The crust and the inside, they’re almost the same. Dégoutant,” Pierre would have said.

  “Brown.”

  “White bread’s so constipating, right, Raynus?” asked Eddie.

  “So, Raynus,” said a young man with gaping upturned nostrils you could easily push a marble into if you were so inclined. I hated that my old nickname was already catching on. His eyes bulged so wide that the whites showed all around the irises. “Let me guess: you couldn’t keep your paws off the little girls.”

  “I believe that isn’t one of your strongest points, either, Melvin,” said Mo. “Now, why don’t we all let Ray here eat in peace?”

  I made myself a peanut butter sandwich. Not because I was in the mood for peanut butter, but because the peanut butter was the only thing within reach. I tried to get my knife to spread the stuff smoothly on the bread, but my hand was shaking. They’d all see it and then they’d know I was scared.

  “Did you guys watch America’s Next Top Model last night?” asked a man with a small mustache.

  Then to my great relief they all started talking. There were two opposing camps. One side was rooting for Erica, the other for some girl named Beverly. I ate my sandwich and then made myself another one with liverwurst, because that plate had come to rest close to me. The peanut butter jar had flown.

  “Which one’s your favorite, Ray?” asked Hank, the lightning bolt guy.

  “I’ve never watched that show,” I said. “I’m more interested in Animal Planet or the Discovery Channel.”

  “Let me give you a little tip.” Hank leaned his colossal body closer. He stank of stale tobacco and had a fine scar running from the middle of his top lip to the bottom of his nose. He whispered, “You’re for Beverly, get it? That would be best, at least for now.”

  After lunch Hank said he was going to a social skills training session, but was first going to have a smoke in the yard. “Wanna come?” he asked.

  I looked at Mo questioningly. He said that was fine. “But after that you may want to go back to your suite for a rest.”

  The yard was a cheerless gravel patch running parallel to the common room. You could see inside through the glass. Two men were clearing the lunch dishes. In the middle of the yard was a big bucket overflowing with cigarette butts. Hank offered to roll me one, but I declined. The smell of smoke was already horrifying; I couldn’t imagine how disgusting actual smoking one would be.

  A camera clicked around at us. I looked up and heard it zooming in on us.

  “Listen, Ray,” said Hank. Now that I was standing next to him, it was even more noticeable how big the guy was. He could easily make mincemeat of me with a well-aimed fist.

  “I’ve been here awhile, so I’m going to help you a bit
with the unwritten rules. You’ll be taught the official rules by Mo and the other goons who run this place. But I’ll tell you what really counts if you want to have a nice time in here—who to stay away from and what to say and what not to say, what you have to do in order to get a leave, or permission to have visitors, especially a certain kind of visit, if you know what I mean. You’re lucky you have me to guide you. “

  I nodded.

  “As far as what you’ve done, I don’t give a shit. We’ve all had our moments of weakness, but you seem like a nice boy.” He tossed his cigarette butt in the pail and emphasized, “Real nice.”

  At that point Mo stuck his head outside. “Coming?”

  Hank put his big hand on my shoulder. “Remember what I told you. I’m one of the only ones you can trust in here.”

  Mo said, “I really appreciate your offering to show Ray the ropes, Hank.” But not even a minute later, as we were walking back to my room, he said, “Watch out for that guy.”

  That confused me. How was I to size up Hank? There was no scale on which to weigh him, so I could decide: too much or too little. Or: just right.

  My mother sometimes said, “You’re a good sort, Ray.” But most of the time she’d yell at me. “Don’t be such a sucker, Ray. Can’t you see that your friends are using you? They make the trouble, and you get stuck with the blame. Or they’ll needle you until you snap and then they can laugh their heads off. You’re like a bad TV show. A runaway train. You’re always just steamrolling ahead, you don’t seem to have any brakes, no inner warning system, nothing. You do such dumb things that to this day I can’t figure out what the hell is wrong with you.”

  Thinking of my mother yelling at me made me have bad memories. Some people down the street had a dog. It was a mean little pest that growled at you and would go for your ankles if you got within its reach. They let that dog roam free and sometimes it even came into our backyard.

  I was scared of it. My friends said, “Bet you can’t hit that dog with this rock, Ray. Wanna bet? Bet on your momma?”

  “What about her?” I asked.

  “We’re going to pull your momma’s pants down so she’ll be standing in the middle of the street with a naked cootie. Unless you hit that dog.”

  I was very sure that I didn’t want my friends to see my mother naked. I took the rock from them. It was round and smooth; it felt good in my hand.

  “Throw it! Throw it!” they shrieked in my ear. There were at least seven kids crowding me. I couldn’t think clearly.

  The dog was trotting along a grassy patch about fifteen yards from where we were standing. It was sniffing at a Popsicle wrapper on the ground, still on its leash.

  “Throw! Throw it!”

  I raised my arm. The rock fit perfectly in my hand. I bent my wrist back slightly.

  “Throw! Throw!”

  I hurled the rock forward as if my hand wasn’t a hand but a catapult. It was my best throw ever. The rock sailed through the air and hit the dog right between the eyes.

  The little dog didn’t make a sound. It took a few wobbly steps and then its legs gave way. There was a moment of silence.

  “Run!” yelled one of my buddies. “Ray killed Bonnie!”

  Within seconds they’d all scattered, and I was alone with the dog. I didn’t know what to do. The sun was shining and the dog looked like it could jump up and nip at my ankles any moment, but five minutes later it was still lying in the grass, not moving, next to the Popsicle wrapper. It wasn’t such a big deal. I decided to go home and play with my Lego Technic.

  That night the neighbor came to our door. I was already in bed, but the yelling woke me up. Then I heard my mother’s footsteps on the stairs. She flung open the door to my bedroom and screeched, “Is it true you threw a rock at that dog’s head?”

  “Yes, Mom.”

  She stormed up to my bed and started shaking me. “Have you lost your goddamn mind? How the hell did you get it in your moronic head to do such a thing? Not a day goes by that you don’t manage to do something incredibly stupid. What am I going to do with you?” She collapsed on the edge of my bed and began to cry. I started patting her hair; I didn’t know what else to do. She had very soft hair, the color of the sand on the North Sea Beach, my mom.

  But she slapped my hand away and stomped out of the room. I listened to her angry footsteps on the stairs and then heard her talking to the neighbor. I stared at the poster of the universe pinned to the wall above my bed and recited, “Mercury is closest to the sun, then Venus, then Earth,” but I knew something was terribly wrong.

  Two days later my mom told me that I’d be living at the Mason Home, that it would be good for me. They would be able to give me the help I needed.

  “But I don’t want to be away from you, Mom.”

  “You’ll thank me for this someday. Trust me.” Since she said it with a smile, I assumed that she was right.

  But after all the time that had passed, I still wasn’t grateful. I asked myself how long it would take before I was finally able to thank her.

  “I want to go to my cell,” I said. “I’m tired. And sad. But mostly tired.”

  “Fine,” said Mo. “You can stay there until dinner.”

  CHAPTER 10

  IRIS

  The street where Ray Boelens lived, or used to live, was lined with dismal fifties-era row houses. After the war, the town planners’ focus had not been on aesthetics; everything was squalid and gray. Shabby and nondescript. I parked my car in front of number 13.

  “What we doing?” asked Aaron from the backseat.

  “We’re looking for Ray. Ray is the owner of the fishies.”

  “Kee-Kon?”

  I kicked myself, realizing it wasn’t smart of me to have broached the subject. Aaron hadn’t asked for King Kong all morning; he had even been behaving unusually sweetly, and I wanted to keep it that way. I sometimes thought Aaron was a bit like a radiator that needs the excess air let out from time to time. After a big blowup he was always remarkably calm and good.

  Before he could give King Kong too much thought, I said quickly, “Let’s go get an ice cream after this, okay? What would you like? A cone with candy topping or a Popsicle?”

  “Candy!”

  “Right. That’s what we’ll do.” I lifted him out of his car seat and put him down on the sidewalk. “First you’re coming with me like a good boy, to see if Ray is home.”

  We walked hand in hand to the front door of number 13. The house looked seriously neglected. The front yard was untended, although you could tell that in some distant past it had been lovingly maintained. Someone had once planted lilacs here, hydrangea and delphinium. But the flowers had not been deadheaded; there were weeds everywhere and the overgrown hedge looked as if it might explode.

  A worn burgundy curtain hung at the window. It was drawn, although it was nearly noon.

  I felt uneasy, but rang the doorbell anyway. Nothing happened. After half a minute I decided to try again. I heard the bell ringing somewhere inside. After what seemed like hours I saw a shadow lumbering into the hallway.

  At least four locks were turned. The door opened.

  “Yes?” Facing me was a man of around forty in a dirty pair of jeans and no shirt. A pile of mail lay at his feet, shoppers’ guides and flyers. A musty smell assaulted me. I had to repress the urge to pinch my nose.

  “Ray?”

  He didn’t respond and went on staring at me aggressively from beneath his greasy hair.

  “Are you Ray Boelens?” I tried again.

  “He doesn’t live here anymore.” The man was about to slam the door shut.

  “Do you happen to know where he lives?” Aaron had crouched down and started playing with the envelopes on the mat.

  The man began to laugh. A loud, unpleasant sound. He struck me as the type who only laughs about unpleasant things. “Hey, there’s a good one. Where oh where might Ray Boelens be? Try jail, I’d say. And if he ain’t there, you could try hell.”

  I
wanted to say something, but the guy was already shutting the door. “And tell Mr. Smartypants here to keep his fingers off my mail.”

  I picked Aaron up and mouthed asshole at the door as it was slammed in my face.

  As we walked back to my car, I heard all four locks being turned again. “Asshole,” I said again, this time out loud.

  “Asshole,” Aaron repeated, and began to shout with laughter.

  “You think that’s funny, don’t you? And now we’re going to get an ice cream.”

  I belted Aaron into his car seat again and kissed him on the forehead. “What a good boy you are today. Good for you!”

  Around the corner was a bakery that also sold ice cream. While waiting in line I watched the baker at work behind a glass wall.

  “It isn’t as good as it used to be,” confided an old lady standing next to me. “The baker they used to have, he was great. This one’s just so-so.”

  Aaron and I took our ice cream cones and sat down on a bench across from the store. If Ray really was behind bars somewhere, it should be possible to find out. I could check the aquarium’s logbook for the date Ray had stopped looking after the fish. Then I could try Googling again. I realized that I should probably try Ray B., as last names of convicts were always initialized because of privacy reasons.

  I took out my iPhone and typed his name. Slaughtered, I read. And Ray B., the Monster Next Door. In the Daily Record I read that Ray had become obsessed with his neighbor, and had murdered her and her daughter because she hadn’t returned his love.

  I felt sick to my stomach. What was my mother doing with an aquarium belonging to a murderer with the same last name as hers?

  The chocolate ice cream was dripping onto Aaron’s shirt. I took a wipe out of my bag and dabbed him clean. “You have to lick quickly, sweetie, before it all melts.”

  The two bodies had been found in the front hall, bathed in blood. The woman had been stabbed fourteen times with some sharp implement, the little girl five times. An innocent little kid. But the most gruesome detail of all was the one about the cigarette stubbed out on the little girl’s body. After his savage rampage, Ray sat there puffing on a cigarette. How could anyone be so utterly depraved?