Darksight

By DC Mallery

Twenty-four-year-old Audra Carter, a deejay in Manhattan, won’t let mere blindness keep her from living life her way, sometimes even riding her bicycle through town, using her keen hearing and uncanny instincts to guide her. This is all much to the dismay of her father, Jenson, a neuroscientist who has devoted his career to finding a cure for her particular form of blindness. He now believes he has. With a number of test subjects, including Audra, Jenson takes his research to the next level, only to face apparent failure. Before long, a string of bizarre deaths involving the test subjects alarms Jensen and the FBI. Jensen is blamed for those deaths and fears his experiment was hijacked. Soon, Audra is kidnapped. As Jenson races to discover the truth, avoid the FBI, and save his daughter, Audra struggles with her captors and with a new and dangerous kind of seeing: darksight. Audra must not only master her mysterious darksight vision and fight oncoming madness, but also confront her past, to keep them both alive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Black Opal Books
• Release date: Jun 8, 2019
• ISBN: 9781644370605

Book preview

Audra Carter, a popular deejay in Manhattan, won’t let mere blindness keep her from living life her way, sometimes even riding her bicycle through town, relying on keen hearing and uncanny instincts to guide her. Her father, Jenson Carter, a neuroscientist, has devoted his career to finding a cure for her particular form of blindness. He now believes he has. With Audra and several other test subjects, Jenson takes his research to the next level, only to face apparent failure. Jenson becomes alarmed by several bizarre deaths involving the test subjects. He fears his experiment was hijacked by former colleagues with a secret agenda, but the police blame him for the deaths. Audra is kidnapped and forced to survive a series of terrifying ordeals designed to hone a new and dangerous kind of vision that the hijacked experiment unleashed: Darksight. As Jenson races to discover the truth and find his daughter, Audra struggles to survive increasingly-deadly challenges. Will Audra master her mysterious Darksight and defeat her captors to keep both her and her father alive?

KUDOS FOR DARKSIGHT

The blade that clears the path for medical progress has another edge, one that often creates unexpected, unimaginable, even unthinkable side effects, both real and imagined. Such is the case with DARKSIGHT. A tightly-written, fast-paced thriller that will make you think—and disturb your sleep. Highly recommended. ~ DP Lyle, award-winning author of the Jake Longly and Cain/Harper thriller series.

Chilling, intense, and fast paced, this thriller will grab you by the throat from the very first page. ~ Taylor Jones, The Review Team of Taylor Jones & Regan Murphy

"Darksight is well written, fast paced, and intriguing, a fascinating page-turner that will keep you enthralled all the way through." ~ Regan Murphy, The Review Team of Taylor Jones & Regan Murphy

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many thanks to my Agent, Lisa Abellera, and to all the others at Kimberley Cameron & Associates.

DARKSIGHT

DC MALLERY

A Black Opal Books Publication

Copyright © 2019 by DC Mallery

Cover Design by Jackson Cover Designs

All cover art copyright © 2019

All Rights Reserved

EBOOK ISBN: 9781644370605

EXCERPT

She could see with her mind...but then she couldn’t!

Abruptly, the fresh air of the next gallery washed over Audra. Her nerves calmed, her vision returned. A spacious room shimmered into view, the closest people and objects first, then those farther away, and finally the most distant walls, like a wave spreading outward, ghostlike but gaining solidity, presence.

The guards were behind her now, so she hurried to the next doorway, heading toward the main exit of the museum. The guards followed along, keeping an eye on her. She wondered why her new sight seemed to abandon her at the worst possible times. Maybe the confrontation with the guard triggered a stress reaction that had blinded her. She’d have to be careful with her new vision.

It was a gift, but a tricky one, inconsistent, unreliable.

She worked her way through rooms and corridors toward the main lobby of the Met, passing now through a chamber of musty antiquities. The guards still followed discreetly behind her. She could see them through the back of her head and made the mistake of trying to watch them while still walking forward. Nausea surged within her. Then she saw someone else watching her. A bald man in a poorly fitted suit. He didn’t seem to belong among the inquisitive tourists and school groups. Maybe he was the same perv Mandy had seen in the park.

Abruptly, vision left Audra again. She tripped and fell sideways, her head striking something hard, the sickening sound of cracking glass. She slumped to the floor beside a broken display case. Guards swarmed to her now. She fought sobs, but they came, hard and fast. She needed to call her father now. No more secrets.

She slipped a hand into her purse. Her phone was gone.

DEDICATION

For my Mother and Father.

PROLOGUE

WRAMC / AUTOPSY REPORT / CLASSIFIED / CPL CLARKE / JULY 13, 1991

Excerpts with redactions.

EXTERNAL EXAMINATION: Neck contusions are consistent with reports from Ward 54 that Corporal Clarke took his own life, using torn bedsheets to hang himself two weeks after he had forcibly extracted his own eyes with a canteen spoon.

INTERNAL EXAMINATION: Upon opening the vault of the skull, structural abnormalities due to previous wounds from shrapnel injuries sustained overseas are readily apparent. Wide shrapnel paths remain in the visual cortex, said wounds consistent with reports the patient lost all vision due to severe head injuries from a landmine explosion six months prior to his eventual suicide. The massive shrapnel insults to the occipital lobe no doubt rendered the patient cortically blind, long before the crude removal of his eyes with the spoon.

Even after removal of both eyes, and despite having been blind for many months, the patient claimed he could nevertheless see. He also described vivid visual hallucinations. Inspection of the midbrain reveals a possible source of the delusions--a profusion of fresh nerve growth crowding nearby tissues.

TOXICOLOGY: Analysis of histological slices of midbrain tissues indicates traces of [REDACTED]. The presence of [REDACTED] is consistent both with the profusion of fresh neural growth within the midbrain as well as the delusions. However, no conclusive diagnosis can be rendered post mortem.

As to claims by the staff of Ward 54 that they too observed many of the same visual hallucinations reported by the patient, these assertions are deemed non-credible.

Per Directive 4729, these autopsy notes and all associated files are hereby classified and the decedent’s body will be cremated forthwith.

Signed /S. R. Calverson MD/

CHAPTER 1

Present day, Bratton Township, New York:

The rain was heaven.

It poured from rooftops, splattered on floppy trees, splashed in puddles. It was playing. It was romping. It was alive. So was she.

Twenty-four-years-old but giddy as a schoolgirl, Audra Carter peddled her bike into the Bratton University campus quad. The splatter of light rain on the pathway ahead was sharper than on the nearby grass. She kept the hiss of the front tire between swathes of fuzzy-sounding turf that lay to each side. Raff trotted nearby, occasionally racing ahead and darting across her path, his paws thwacking the pavement for a moment, the sound then muffled again by grass. He’d yip to let her know a pedestrian was ahead. She’d swerve onto the lawn then cut back onto the pavement beyond. Her only worry was someone might be startled by the dog and blunder into her way, an umbrella blocking their view.

She rang the bell of her bike--an old beach cruiser that still smelled like last summer even amid the spring rain--and peddled harder, riding faster now than she ever dared back when she was still a college student here.

The rest of the quad stretched out ahead of her now. On most days, its expanse could only be sensed by the chatter of students, the chirp of birds, the faint reflection of sounds off brick and ivy. On snowy days, and there had been many each winter, it was a silent void, inscrutable. Today its bounds were clearly painted by the sound of the rain. She pushed her helmet back to hear better. Ivy-covered stone buildings to the left. Water skittering across brick structures to the right. And always, the reassuring sounds of her guide dog Raff, never far from her, his panting breath, his little warning yips, the flutter of paws on wet grass, the jingle of the little toy racecar on his collar. He loved the rain too.

Audra let music flow through her mind, the Garbage song she loved so much. Only Happy When It Rains. She tugged her backpack tighter over her shoulders, her purse tucked inside, and peddled even faster. Raff soon yipped a warning and dodged left, so she swung that way too and then felt--more than heard--the mass looming in front of her. The uncanny feeling of pressure on her temples and on her chest. A keen intuition that something was there. She hit the brakes hard and swung even wider onto the grass away from the pathway.

What the hell? a man grumbled.

An older voice. Maybe some crotchety professor, head down in the rain, oblivious to the living and breathing world.

Are you blind? he growled as she road past him.

Not today, I’m not!

Audra grinned at the curious notion that rain sometimes made the sighted blind and vice versa. She peddled back to the pathway, Raff again at her side. The schuss of her bike’s rubber tires on soggy grass soon gave way to the hiss of asphalt. She knew just where the next turn would be as she followed the mental path charted out in her mind. She could hear the sidewalk slanting to the right, concrete instead of asphalt, a different pattering of rain. She turned and aimed for the wide gap between the buildings ahead. The structure on the left sounded pleasantly smooth, the old main library. The one on the right was angular, an ugly modernist behemoth, the newer campus research library. She wondered how the architects would feel if they knew even the blind found their building quite ugly.

Raff yipped again and Audra slowed, some voices ahead, more on the right. Something small skittered on the grass at her ten o’clock. Another dog! It yapped as if to confirm her guess. Probably a Pekingese. Raff swooped in to keep it from darting into her path. Raff was a yellow Lab, but he could herd other animals like a sheepdog. The yapping Pekingese now safely behind, Audra passed the library buildings marking the edge of the campus. She slowed as she approached the city street beyond and listened for traffic. Raff would warn her of any cars, of course, and would steer her to the side of the road. Still, one erratic swerve by a distracted driver and--

Screw it! Audra swung her bike off the sidewalk into the street. Raff sped up to run alongside, his nails loud now on the wet pavement. From his panting, he was nervous. Worried. Then the sudden sound of a car on a cross street.

Coming right at her. Fast.

CHAPTER 2

Audra heard Raff bark a sharp warning and dart right. She swerved, following his lead. The blare of a horn, the harsh squeal of tires, close, very close. Her bike wobbling now, she fought hard for balance, the mass of the vehicle just alongside her. She could feel it. But she did not hit it.

The driver blasted his horn again and swore at her as he sped away. Raff guided her to the far sidewalk. Reaching safety, Audra scolded herself for being so reckless. As a blind girl in a sighted world, she never wanted to seem timid, but she went too far today. She could have been struck by that car, badly injured, maybe killed. It was stupid.

She tried to compose herself as she cruised along a concrete walkway. Raff yipped yet another warning. A pothole? Audra jammed the brakes. Too late, the front wheel plunged into a jagged void. The bike buckled. She tumbled over the handlebars and thudded hard to the ground, the wind knocked from her. Raff was instantly at her side. She got shakily to her feet and pried off her helmet, catching her breath, rubbing a sore shoulder.

I’m okay, Raffy, she assured him. But how’s the cruiser?

Audra felt for the front wheel of the bike. The tire was now flat, the rim bent. She felt the fork, cracked. It was not the first time she wrecked a bike. It wouldn’t be the last. Her dad had an almost superhuman tolerance when it came to fixing the resulting damage. She’d get a polite but firm lecture on how dangerous it was to ride blind--Seriously, Audra, you could get hurt--but crooked wheels would be straightened, broken forks replaced, sprockets oiled, chains tightened. She could fix the bike herself, of course, but sitting alongside her dad on the floor of his garage tinkering with the bike amid the smell of grease and oil was quality time she cherished. No doubt, he did too, especially now that she no longer lived in Bratton.

So the bike would be fixed later. But for now the warehouse she was headed to was still blocks away. She’d have to walk. She brushed off her raincoat, slung the wounded bike over her shoulder, and strode off, Raff again at her side.

Rain started to fall harder now. She paused to pull the hood of her coat over her head, careful not to block the sound of the gathering rain, careful not to blind herself to the living and breathing and sometimes quite dangerous world.

She wondered, yet again, why she sometimes could be so damned reckless.

***

Blindness. One moment of blindness had maimed. It had killed. How could one moment of blindness be so vivid? Even after all these years.

Jenson Carter tried to shove those pestering thoughts from his mind and focus on the test subject--a heavyset black man who’d been blind for ten years--but the thrumming of rain on the warehouse roof grew louder. All that damned noise. It might affect the experiment. It might penetrate the white noise hissed into the man’s ears by the special headphones. He might then hear the location of the wooden crates of the obstacle course he was trying to find his way through.

Jenson nearly broke test protocol by mentioning his worries aloud to his graduate assistant Trent but caught himself. Even the sound of his own voice could help the blind man navigate the crude maze, giving him faint directional clues, invalidating the results. Meanwhile, the campus reporter waited nearby, a restless young man with hipster glasses and matching gray clothes. He was no doubt impatient for the interview Jenson had promised him earlier.

The noise of the rain grew still louder. Beads of sweat dripped now from Jenson’s brow, running past his horn-rimmed glasses, salty sweat trickling along pursed lips. The reporter looked concerned. Even Trent seemed worried now.

The thrumming of the rain grew ever louder until Jenson couldn’t bear it.

He flicked on the intercom and called into the blind man’s headphones.

That’s good enough, Mr. Washington. We’ll stop now.

You sure, Professor? The man’s Southern accent rumbled, filling the cavernous room from where he stood, halfway through the obstacle course.

Too much rain on the roof, Jenson told him.

I don’t mind no rain. Takes me back home to spring in Alabama.

Jenson nodded to Trent, who darted through the crates to hand the man his white cane.

How’d I do? Washington called back as he took the cane, expertly whipping its tip around him, whacking a nearby crate, grinning.

You did fine, Abe, Jenson replied. Let Trent lead you out. We don’t want you tripping over anything. Let’s have no injuries.

Washington laughed. "You know that won’t happen. I’m too good at this creepy ghost walking. He folded his cane and refused Trent’s offer of guidance. Washington took a couple of brazen steps before barking his knee hard against a heavy wooden crate. Damn! Did you move that one? Did you trick me?"

Like I said, let Trent lead you out. He’ll give you a quick ride home.

As Trent guided the man from the warehouse, Jenson jotted notes. Abe Washington had indeed done well, his blindsight impressive. But he hadn’t performed quite as well as some of the other blind test subjects, especially ones Jenson’s colleague Stefan Vanek had brought in: the stripper with the snake tattoos, her meth tweaker boyfriend, and that slovenly K9 trainer from here in town, the one who bred attack dogs. The undesirables, Jenson called them.

Stefan, though, was right to insist on a wide range of test subjects. Their NIH supervisory contact--Stanley Calverson--insisted as well, often reminding them their funding required testing a broad spectrum of men and women. Jenson never much liked Calverson, a micromanaging bureaucratic annoyance, but the man was right to insist. The experiment needed a wide range of patients, not just the ones--or rather the one--Jenson most wanted to test. She was late.

Jenson stepped outside and hunkered under the eaves of the warehouse. The rain had finally started to abate but still drizzled the thick March sky. In the distance, the older ivy-clad buildings of Bratton College stood defiant in that gloom, like stubborn sentinels, the neuropsych offices among them. The school reporter joined him now and offered a cigarette. Jenson realized he’d been fumbling in his suit jacket, searching for smokes he hadn’t carried in years.

Sir? the reporter asked, holding a pack of Gitanes. He was a slight man. Thin and calm. A senior with the school paper, The Bratton College Independent.

I quit. Years ago, Jenson told him. Thanks anyway. Larry, right?

Gary, the reporter corrected, lighting a cigarette for himself, eyeing him with concern. You okay, Professor? We could do this later if--

Now is fine. Sorry if I seem distracted. I don’t much like rain. He wondered why he felt the need to explain himself to this kid.

The reporter seemed to sense his annoyance and pulled out a recorder. Your project sounds fascinating. Could you explain it for our readers?

Of course. Jenson felt his mind clear. It was discovered years ago. Blindsight that is, the remarkable ability among some of the visually impaired to sense objects even though they have no visual field, even if totally blind.

It’s a form of echolocation, right? the reporter asked. I read somewhere that bats can--

No, definitely not. That involves sound. Blindsight is different. It occurs in those with cortical blindness. The retina still functions, so do the optic nerves, but the visual cortex is damaged--the part of the brain that processes vision. He pointed to the back of his head where that tissue lay just beneath the skull. Our test subjects are all completely blind. No visual field whatsoever.

Like Mr. Washington?

He had a stroke several years ago. Blunt trauma can damage the cortex too. Bullet wounds, that sort of thing.

"He can’t see anything?"

Jenson nodded.

The reporter looked incredulous. "He avoided the crates, most of them anyway, without his cane."

Well, that’s the idea. Even though these men and women are blind, their brain can still detect objects.

"That’s the ghost walking he was talking about. It does sound spooky."

There’s nothing supernatural about it. With cortical blindness, the eyes are undamaged, so light is still captured by the retina, signals are passed along the optic nerves, but the damaged visual cortex simply can’t process those images. People with complete cortical blindness report no visual perception at all.

Yet they can somehow sense objects?

Objects, walls, other people. It was quite a mystery until doctors came to understand other parts of the brain can process signals from the optic nerves too. Subconsciously. The midbrain, especially. Some of the optic nerve is routed into those primitive neural circuits, which react to objects instinctively. Maybe it evolved as a way of sensing predators ready to pounce. Regardless of the original purpose, that instinct is still in us, one of the subconscious functions of the brain.

"So in people with cortical blindness, primitive parts of the brain allow them to see objects even though they can’t really see them?"

Exactly! It works in all of us. If something suddenly flies right at you, you’ll duck before you consciously recognize the threat. The phenomenon is far more interesting in the cortically blind, as it presents a unique opportunity for them.

Which is?

Jenson grinned. "To cure them. To restore their vision."

Her vision.

As if on cue, Audra strode around the street corner, her guide dog Raff by her side, her bike slung over her back. No doubt, she had wrecked it again.

Are you okay? he called out as he hurried to her.

Yes, Dad. I’m fine, she replied and then added with a bright smile, the pothole broke my fall.

CHAPTER 3

You should be more careful, kiddo, Jenson tried to keep his voice even, as he gave Audra a warm hug. He was proud of her fierce independence but worried she’d crash into something far worse than a pothole, even with Raff guiding her. "What would the police say if they caught you riding a bike around town?"

Audra grinned. "After reading them the ADA riot act, they’d say this: ‘No, ma’am, sorry, ma’am, we did not know preventing you from riding your bicycle violated the Americans with Disabilities Act.’"

Very funny. Seriously, though, you could get hurt.

Raff brushed now against his leg, and Jenson scratched him behind a floppy ear. He’d spent many months helping Audra acquire the dog back before college. At the time, Audra had insisted on a guide that would work well in New York City. Jenson had hoped Audra would change her mind and remain here in Bratton after graduation, but she’d been living in Manhattan for two years now, a DJ working various nightclubs, with ever fewer trips home. He couldn’t blame her. The thrill of NYC or the rust belt charms of Bratton Township? Bratton, New York: Where Diesel is King! Or had been a hundred years ago when mighty factories once dominated this part of the Hudson River Valley.

How was the train ride up? Jenson asked as he led Audra and Raff to the warehouse, the reporter waiting near the entrance, finishing his smoke.

Fine, Audra replied, sounding chipper, though she must have worked late last night. "Took a cab to the house. I was glad to find my old beach cruiser still in good shape. Seems like someone even kept the tires inflated for me."

Guilty as charged, Jenson knew. Yet if she insisted on riding the damned thing, it should be properly maintained.

The reporter crushed out his cigarette and joined them. You must be the professor’s daughter?

"That’s what my birth certificate says, or so I’m told. Audra grinned. You?"

"Gary Saunders, with the campus paper. Your father was telling me about his project with the--with those without sight--with the nonsighted?"

Audra shrugged. I’m blind. Please don’t get hung up on semantics. I don’t.

The reporter blushed. He seemed smitten by her casual beauty--most young men were--by her stylish pageboy brown hair, her turned up nose, her bright and effortless smile. But mostly by her striking blue eyes, eternally beautiful yet oddly distant, at least to those not accustomed to them. Blind now for fourteen years, Audra had long since lost the ability of the sighted to effortlessly track the eyes of others, to make that natural connection. She always made an effort to look at others, following their voices to find their eyes, but the slight disconnect threw some people off. Given her beauty, and her often snarky sense of humor, some thought the lack of eye contact meant she was pretentious and aloof. Audra was anything but that. She was warm and kind.

Looks like you’ll need a new front wheel and fork, the reporter told her, eyeing the damaged bike. "It is your bike?"

Bought it myself. Santa never came through when I kept asking for one for Christmas. She smirked at Jenson.

Jenson sighed. On days like today, he wasn’t too worried about her bike riding. Her ability to see in the rain was uncanny. He worried about clear days when the world was not painted in acoustic daylight. Worse, there were too many electric cars and hybrids now. Too damned quiet. Audra could drift in front of one, lost in the driver’s blindspot, slipping unaware across a centerline, doomed to a head-on collision. He didn’t want to go there, but his stubborn mind always did, punishing him, tormenting him. Tears brimmed his eyes.

Dad, you okay?

Audra turned her face to him with those eternally beautiful eyes, deep and blue. Her eyes somehow found his as if she weren’t blind at all, as if it wasn’t even Audra who gazed at him now, but Jessie. Offering forgiveness. Offering absolution that Jenson could not and would not accept. They were always so much alike, she and her mother. More so, now that Audra was grown. They looked so damned much alike. It still tortured him every day to know Jessie had not survived the crash that night. Audra seemed to sense his anguish. She always had an uncanny knack, even before her blindness, of sensing the discomfort of others.

Let’s go inside. Audra took his arm and led him into the building, as if it had been his sight that died that night fourteen years ago, not hers.

***

Stuffy, the interior of the warehouse hit Audra with a hundred dank and musty odors. Raff paced nervously before settling on the floor nearby to rest. The reporter set the damaged bike to one side. Her dad would have to haul it home later. Audra paused to listen to the expansive space.

Light rain on the roof gave her some sound to see with, muted though. Unlike rain heard outdoors that would brightly paint the exterior of buildings, the rain pattering the warehouse roof gave her only a muffled view of its interior, like a blurred photo. The space was about a hundred feet long and fifty feet wide, she figured. Somewhere out there lay the obstacles of the maze her father wanted her to navigate. Blind and deaf. Or deafened, at least, by the hiss of special headphones.

Miss Carter, are you part of the experiment too? the reporter asked. Is your blindness cortical?

Audra, you don’t have to answer that, her father cut in. You’re not the one being interviewed.

Dad, I don’t mind. He was always so protective of her. She loved him for it, but it was so often unnecessary. She could handle herself. Yeah, cortical blindness, she told the reporter. A head injury cut off blood to the visual cortex. She tapped the back of her skull where she’d been hurt.

What Audra is referring to is also known as the striate cortex, her dad added. In her case, at least some extrastriate cortical tissue was also affected.

"When I finally awoke in the hospital, I kept trying to open my eyes. It wasn’t until I poked a finger in one--and scratched my eye pretty bad--that I realized they were open already. They tied my wrists down after that."

So everything looks dark to you? the reporter asked. Black?

Do this, Audra told him. Keep your eyes open and wave your hand behind your head. She waved hers behind her own head to show him. "What do you see back there? Does it seem dark to you?"

The reporter paused to try it. "No. Not dark, just nothing. Void."

"That’s the way blindness looks to me. Except the void is all