Darkling I Listen

Haunted by the malicious rumours that destroyed his acting career, Hollywood bad boy Brandon Carlyle returns to his hometown of Ticky Creek, Texas. Here he hopes to escape. From the obsessed stalker who calls herself Anticipating, and her disturbing, threatening letters. From memories of the scandal that sent him to jail. From the sorrow and shame of being a bright star that faded too soon. . . But Ticky Creek is no longer the safe haven of Brandon's childhood. Hidden within the town's quaint charm is a lurking, menacing danger. Anticipating is back, and so is a beautiful stranger, Alyson James - whose presence, and camera, threaten to blow open the doors of Brandon's worst nightmares. Brandon knows he shouldn't trust her, but he can't resist her. He isn't quite sure if she's the woman of his dreams - or the woman of his nightmares. But though she could be the one who destroys him, he rests his fate in her hands - and surrenders not only his body but his soul. . .

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Epilogue

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time

I have been half in love with easeful Death,

Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,

To take into the air my quiet breath;

Now more than ever seems it rich to die,

To cease upon the
midnight
with no pain,

While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad

In such an ecstasy!

John Keats—"Ode to a Nightingale"

^
»

F
ate was a bitch with a sick penchant for coldcocking men
at the zenith of their careers. Brandon Carlyle didn't think too highly of Fate. Neither was he
inclined
to believe the old adage that when God slammed one door, He opened another. When God slam-dunked
Brandon
's life and career in the toilet, He had not opened another door. He'd simply flushed. And kept flushing every chance He got.

Not that
Brandon
blamed Him completely. As his late pal John Kennedy, Jr., had once described one of his rebellious cousins,
Brandon
was, or had been, "a poster boy for bad behavior."

But that was then, not now. Christ, he deserved a break. Just a small one. Enough to make his climbing out of bed in the morning worthwhile.
Enough
to keep him from expropriating his uncle Henry's Smith & Wesson .357 magnum from the gun cabinet and blowing his own brains out.

He thought about that escape a lot these days. Just two nights before, he'd stood for half an hour in front of the glass-fronted weapon cabinet staring like a zombie at the impressive collection of rifles and handguns. His hands were sweating, his stomach roiling while he ticked off just how he could go about ending his life—or rather his existence. He had no life, after all.

He would take the .357 and drive down to Ticky Creek. His uncle kept a Sears bass boat there, decked out with a trolling motor and a sonar fish locator. He would motor up the creek a ways and put a bullet in his head. With any luck, his body and the gun would just disappear.

People would think he simply drowned while fishing. But then, his uncle would eventually miss his .357, and he would put two and two together. While the old man might survive
Brandon
's drowning, he wouldn't survive his only nephew snuffing himself.
Brandon
had enough on his conscience. He sure as hell didn't want to think that he would, in any way,
cause
the demise of the only person left on the face of the earth who gave a damn about him.

Obviously, he was feeling way too sorry for himself at the moment. Not good. Such self-pity led to black moods, and black moods agitated his temper, and his temper would ultimately get the better of him; he would start craving a fight … or a pint of Chivas Regal—both of which were tickets straight back to California's Corcoran State Prison to finish out his six-year manslaughter sentence. No thanks. Three years in that hellhole rubbing elbows with Charles Manson and Sirhan Sirhan had been enough to convince him that fighting and Chivas—as sweet as they were—were not sweet enough to tempt him back into his old ways.

Brandon
briefly closed his eyes and took a deep, calming breath. For a moment, he forgot the letter in his hand, the one that had sent him into his mental tailspin. He focused instead on the television chatter in the background, the whirring and buzzing of a chain saw outside. His uncle Henry was readying firewood for the first cold snap, predicted for the end of the week—not that meteorologists in
Texas
had ever nailed a prediction during
Brandon
's lifetime, but best be prepared, nevertheless. He heard, too, the companionable conversation of Aunt Bernice's home health care nurse, Betty Wilson, as she went about the delicate caretaking of her stroke patient.
Brandon
was well familiar with the routine: at straight-up
noon
Betty would feed a tube down Bernie's throat and proceed to carefully syringe Ensure into her stomach. Bernice's pale blue eyes would continue to stare into space, and occasionally Betty would stop and wipe the thin stream of drool from Bernice's lips.

What lured
Brandon
into opening the long-closed door of The Shrine, he couldn't guess. Or maybe he could. It was the letter again, taunting and leering up at him in streams of flourishing black ink on stark white stationery. The door stuck, gave with a sudden scrape of warped wood against the linoleum floor, then sprang open with a creak and a rush of cool, stale air that felt and smelled like wind from a grave.

He left the door ajar just enough for the sounds of
All My Children
and Henry's saw to infiltrate the quiet of the room.

He felt as if he had been swept up in some macabre horror novel: a confused, brain-twisted protagonist being sucked down a vortex. Any moment he'd wake up to find
himself
knee-deep in excrement, because that's what hid beneath all the glittering, beautiful images lining the walls and shelves; images depicting a life of happiness and success.

Bullshit. It was all bullshit. An elephant graveyard, bones of his past jutting up out of dust and shadows. Musty, dark, and looming with treasures of his life, right down to the shimmering gold Oscar that resided by a life-size cardboard cutout of himself as Jesus Christ leaning against the wall like a mummy's sarcophagus. He stared at it, feeling his face go from hot to cold to hot again. The critics had crucified him for his role in
The Resurrection—
not
because he'd done a shitty job of it—hell, he'd been nominated for a second Oscar for his portrayal—but because his own life had hardly reflected anything remotely resembling virtuous.

As a critic for
People
magazine had snubbed: "It is hard, if not impossible, to suspend reality long enough while watching
The Resurrection
to believe that the man on the screen playing Jesus Christ is anything more than the Hollywood Tomcat and Tinsel Town Terror who couldn't even attend the premier of the movie because he's locked away in Corcoran State Prison—for manslaughter, no less. And while
The Resurrection
may prove to be one of the most successful box office smashes of the year, we all know that the women lining up to see this movie again and again have less interest in the Divinity than in seeing the Hollywood hunk walk out of baptismal waters buck naked."

He gave a dry laugh.
The Resurrection
had not only proven to be the biggest grosser of the year, but of all time. Church attendance had risen twenty-five percent in the month following the movie's premier, as reported by
Newsweek,
which plastered his Jesus image peering out through cell bars on the cover. The article, "From Icon to Idol, Something Is Wrong with This Picture," included photographs of the District Attorney getting pelted by stones and protesters storming the prison gates demanding the "Lord's" release.

As if
people's
warped reasoning and skewed realities were his fault.
Brandon
shook his head free of the memory and reluctantly looked around the room.

More relics were showcased behind glass: an unopened General Mills cereal box with his grinning, snaggle-toothed image beaming up at the buyer. Sales had risen fifty percent within six months of his gracing the box, along with the commercial that debuted during the Super Bowl. That commercial had led to others: cola, candy, games, children's cold medicine, Jell-O pudding (which he couldn't eat, because every time he so much as smelled it, he puked).

By the time he turned eight, he'd landed his first television series, and his face was emblazoned across
TV Guide
four times over the next five years, each time after the show won an Emmy for Best Drama Series. The series had been about a family of delinquent foster care kids—Brandon billed over the adult star, who eventually became so pissed at being billed below a "brat whose mother slept with the producers to get the little shit his star billing" that he refused to renew his contract for a sixth season.
Which was just as well.
By the time
Brandon
reached his thirteenth birthday, the rumblings of trouble had begun to filter through
Tinsel
Town
as ominously as earthquake aftershocks. The once cute as a bug, angelic-faced Brandon Carlyle had a King Kong-sized attitude and a streak of wildness that would eventually put Charlie Sheen and Robert Downey, Jr., in the shade.

Now
Brandon
peered down through the glass case at the preserved
TV Guides.
With each edition his image subtly shifted from the sparkling, wide-eyed enthusiasm of an eight-year-old, to the evolving sharp-edged adolescent with turbulent, cut-to-the-quick eyes that made most adults uncomfortable. He wasn't
America
's darling any longer; nevertheless, they came to see him on the big screen in masses because there was something hypnotic in the way he sucked them in and rattled their defenses. The critics likened him to James Dean and a young Marlon Brando. Cool. Tough. Wicked. Heartbreaking. Accomplished. Brilliant. Perhaps the finest young actor in the last three decades.

There were framed movie posters on the walls. And magazine covers. He'd made
People
eight times, once as Sexiest Man Alive. There was
Movieline, Entertainment Weekly, Vanity Fair,
and even
Cosmo,
as the man most women fantasized about while having sex.

Of course there were other photos.
Brandon
with women: models, actresses, a photo of him in
Paris
with Princess Diana snapped just weeks before her death. Another Rollerblading with John Kennedy, Jr., in
Central Park
. But the photograph most cherished by Bernice and Henry was the one that included
them,
taken backstage moments after
Brandon
had won his Oscar for Best Actor in a Dramatic Role, for
A Dark Night in
Jericho
.
He'd flown Henry and Bernice in on a Lear. Treated them to a shopping spree on
Rodeo Drive
, put them up at the Beverly Hilton. Before several billion people he'd dedicated his Oscar to Bernice and Henry for their love and support … and not a breath had been wasted on his mother, also in the audience. As the camera panned in tight, Cara Carlyle's expression had turned as stiff and white as a corpse's. The next morning the headlines had declared: "Mommy Dearest Snubbed at Oscars!" Cara's quoted response to
Brandon
's success had been "The committee must have had their heads up their asses."

Darling
Brandon
. I don't know how much longer I can go on like this. Years of dreaming, hoping, watching…

Brandon
blinked the film of sweat from his eyes and reread the letter in his hand. Somehow, it seemed appropriate to read it here, surrounded by memories of
who
and what he used to be: a movie star, a heartthrob to millions. But that was then, when such success invited all sorts of perverted idolatry and fanaticism. Now he was
a nobody
living in Bum Fuck,
Texas
, a washed-up, has-been actor, a recovering alcoholic, an ex-con with about as much sex appeal as week-old roadkill.

I've been watching you. Always you. Morning,
noon
, and night. But you look right through me. Oh, how I despair. Cruel, cruel man. Because of you I have been half in love with easeful Death. Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To
take into the air my quiet breath. When the time is right, my sweet Darkling, we'll be together. I didn't follow you from
California
to let you slip through my fingers now. Until then, I am simply…

Anticipating.

"Mr. Brandon?" A hand touched his back.

Brandon
jumped and turned.

Betty Wilson, his aunt's nurse, took a startled step back, her eyes wide and her mouth slack in surprise. "My goodness, dear, I didn't mean to startle you. Gracious, you're white as a sheet. Is something wrong?" Her gaze dropped to the letter in his hand, and her thin, black eyebrows drew together.

Shaking his head,
Brandon
refolded the letter and slid it into the back pocket of his jeans. "No. Nothing wrong." He released a shaky breath. "The room. It's creepy. Like a boneyard. I don't know why I came in here. It's depressing as hell."

He stepped around her, back into the warmth of the sunny yellow kitchen with its frilly white curtains on the windows and the smell of a raisin pie wafting from the oven. The security of it nestled around him like a fuzzy blanket. His heart slowed; the rush of adrenaline subsided, leaving him a little woozy and feeling stupid for allowing the idiotic letter to unnerve him. He'd been getting letters from the same unknown correspondent for years.

"Anticipating" had adored him in one sentence; in the next, ranted that if she couldn't find satisfaction in their nonexistent relationship, she fully intended to take him out with an Uzi. The threats had been annoying and only a little intimidating during his flourishing career, hilarious when they were dumped in his prison cell. But when they began arriving at his uncles' farm four months ago, his annoyance had congealed into a cold knot of dread—especially since they were postmarked Ticky Creek.

The fact that she'd followed him all the way to Ticky Creek was bad news. Very bad. Her obsession with him was not some passing fantasy to be ignored any longer. Since walking away from Corcoran State Prison, he had managed to keep his whereabouts hidden from everyone except his agent and the minuscule populace of
Ticky Creek
,
Texas
. Ticky Creek residents protected his privacy. Brandon Carlyle was the hometown boy who made good, regardless of the fact that his career had ultimately crashed and burned. They didn't blame
Brandon
so much as they blamed his mother. Poor
Brandon
was a product of his upbringing, and there wasn't a soul residing in Ticky Creek who considered Cara Carlyle anything but a child-abandoning slut who went through husbands as often as she changed her
Frederick
's of
Hollywood
panties.