She could see herself, see the billowy clouds above her. And at the edges, wavering as the rain pummeled the puddle, she could see them, watching. And laughing.
Julie received only the briefest of warnings before her lunch burned its way up her throat and pattered, along with the rain, against the wet concrete.
The rest of that day and into the night, Julie was careful not to let on. She told Nicole it was only a case of lactose intolerance.
Nicole, ready to head out for work the following morning, wrapped the fluffy scarf around her neck and cinched her wool coat over her nurse’s uniform. “You sure? I can call in.” She looked completely unconvinced, but they both knew how much they needed Nicole’s paycheck, and Nicole’s boss had made it clear she’d been calling in quite enough, thank you.
“I’ll be fine.”
Nicole stared doubtfully for a few moments, but then pasted on her big-sister smile and headed out the door.
A few minutes later, when she was sure Nicole wasn’t coming back, Julie left. She dropped by the local coffee house and bought internet time—Nicole felt the internet wasn’t “conducive to full recovery” and so wouldn’t allow access at home—to find out more about the artist.
His name was Kane Reynolds, she remembered from the wrought-iron plaque above his booth. The first thing she came across was an exposé, an attempt to discredit him by revealing his technique of using the ash from human bodies to create the sticks of charcoal he used for his works, but it had served only to make people flock to him, to the point that he’d requested no one else donate their bodies. He had enough for decades of artwork, he said.
Julie exhaled noisily, drawing curious looks from the two gay guys sitting at the next table over sipping from their huge mugs of black coffee. She ignored them and stared in disbelief at the two-story, red-brick building Kane Reynolds now called his home. A fucking morgue.
There were at least a dozen sites that claimed to be dedicated to Kane’s artwork; I’m Kane’s number one fan, they all claimed. Like Laidey’s drawing, the children were always shown in a reflection of some sort—most in mirrors, but some in puddles, others a vacant store window. Nearly all of them were young—roughly three to five years old—and the few that were older, she realized with a sinking feeling, were of the same children as previous portraits, as if he’d somehow captured them again and again over the years.
Laidey’s little hand presses against mine, so warm and soft, so tiny. I grip her forearm gently and rub her skin with my thumb. So soft...
Would Kane do the same thing to Adelaide? Draw her once she’d had a chance to live through a personal hell for another year or two?
And then she saw it.
At an art show in New Orleans, Kane had debuted five new drawings plus seven that had never been seen by the public. The cover for his flyer was Adelaide, five years old in the picture. According to the caption, the drawing had been made only three months earlier.
Julie couldn’t take her eyes off the picture. Adelaide’s eyes were sunken and dark. Her lips were tense and her chin was lifted, as if she were on the near edge of crying. Her expression spoke of terror, but also of loneliness and an underlying fatigue, as if she’d nearly given up.
She looked so different from the Adelaide in Julie’s head that she started to question herself. Was this girl really her daughter? Or was this an extension of the fiction she’d created for herself—born, as the doctors saw fit to tell her over and over, from some deep-seated desire to have a child when she knew she couldn’t? The debate raged within her for hours, but she kept coming back to what she felt in her heart. She knew she’d had a daughter. She knew it. What she didn’t know was how her daughter was taken away.
But Kane Reynolds sure as hell did.
She left the coffee shop and took a cab to Kane’s studio: 311 East Main. There were no lights on. She snuck around to the rear of the building, where an alley ran north to south. A light rain began to patter against the concrete as she tried to open the three ground-floor windows in turn. Locked, as was the metal door. But there was a fire escape leading to the second floor and up to the roof. Her heart beat faster as she climbed on one of the nearby garbage cans to pull at the fire escape’s ladder. It clattered down and crashed into her garbage can, knocking her to the ground and scraping her knee against the concrete.
She sat there gripping her bleeding leg and listening for any sound of discovery, but no lights turned on and no calls of surprise or anger or anything else came from the surrounding buildings.
After wiping away the dirt and blood, she climbed up the ladder and checked the second-story window. She couldn’t see a thing—it looked like it had been spray painted black from the inside—but something still felt terribly wrong. The window made Julie feel the same way she did as when the Others were watching her, like tarot cards had just been laid out before her and she had no idea how to read them. She felt sick to her stomach yet so full of possibilities it made her dizzy with fear.
The window was locked, and although her fear was screaming at her not to, she tried to force it, but she wasn’t strong enough. The rain began to beat harder. With the sound of the rain so loud she debated on kicking in the window, but just then an old black Eldorado slipped into the alley.
Julie’s heart raced. Her knuckles turned bone white as her hands gripped the ladder rungs. She made herself small and pushed herself against the bricks as the car rolled to a stop. The driver’s door opened and Kane stepped out. He was wearing a black trench coat, only partially buttoned against the rain. He moved to the trunk and, after a scan up and down the alley, opened it. He hoisted a black body bag over his shoulder with practiced ease, slammed the trunk closed, and headed into the morgue through the alley door.
The door closed with a heavy thud, and then Julie was left with the cold rain beating down on her and the sinking feeling she’d made a big mistake. She couldn’t move. One step on the ladder and Kane was going to hear her. He would come out with a bat or a gun and that would be the end of Julie’s foolish and useless life.
She shivered as light filtered through the window just next to her. The paint was thick in most spots, but there were several scratch marks that allowed her to see into the room if she pressed her face up to the glass. Vertigo struck Julie full-on. She knew it had something to do with this place—the morgue or perhaps this room in particular. She also knew she couldn’t do a thing about it but suck it up and persevere.
The room inside was huge. It must have taken up half of the second floor. Several gurneys littered the center of the room. On the left, occupying the entire wall, was a cold, brushed steel matrix of body vaults, all of them closed except one.
Kane was near the center, and he’d set down the black body bag on one of the gurneys. He took off his dripping trench and threw it over an ancient swivel chair and then removed a gun in a shoulder-holster and set it on the nearby desk. The gun looked like it could blow a hole through a concrete wall.
Julie gasped as Kane unzipped the bag. Inside was a three-year-old girl wearing a pink dress and white tights. One shoe was missing. She looked nothing like Adelaide, but all Julie could see was her baby girl lying on that gurney, waiting for whatever sick thing Kane Reynolds was about to do to her.
Kane picked the girl up and deposited her onto the readied vault bed. And with that he pushed the bed home and secured the door. He threw on his trench and left immediately after, his Eldorado rumbling down the alley and then losing itself somewhere in the city.
Julie remained where she was for long moments, the smaller part of her wanting to leave, to save herself.
I tuck Laidey in for the night. Laidey is so sleepy, but she never forgets to pull off the blanket I’d laid over her. She doesn’t stand for blankets.
She couldn’t leave. She needed to help that girl.
She tried forcing the window again. No good.
Julie stood and kicked the window. It held tight. She tried again and again, and on the fou
rth try it finally gave. The glass blew inward and a shrill sucking sound accompanied an almighty pull at Julie’s torso. She was sucked right into the shattering window frame.
In that short flight down to the floor, all those possibilities wrapped into the window pane coalesced into one, and suddenly the sick feeling at the pit of her stomach was gone.
Julie landed hard. She got up on her hands and knees, unable to breathe for several terrifying seconds. And then, blessedly, breath came in a long, stuttering gasp.
She stood as quickly as she was able, only then realizing her wrists and palms were bleeding. She worked the glass out of them and felt her way forward to the light switch Kane had used before leaving. She flipped it. She stood right next to the desk, right next to the gun Kane had left behind. The dangerous part of his work must be over, Julie thought, but hers had just begun.
She took the gun from the holster and moved to the wall of vaults on the far side of the room, scared shitless Kane was going to come walking in at any moment.
She opened the vault where the girl had been placed.
Julie swallowed.
The bed was empty. She stuffed the gun into her coat pocket and tried another. And another. All of them were empty. Every single one.
Despite her better judgment, she remained for nearly an hour, half-hoping that Kane would show up so she could question him. But at the edge of perception, she heard a thousand tiny mouths snickering, and she thought for certain she was imagining the whole thing—Kane, the girl, even the gun she was holding.
She finally left Kane’s home as the sun was brightening the eastern sky. The analytical part of her mind told her that Dr. Thierry was right—that she had never had a child and that she was suffering from some grand delusion—but the image of that little girl getting filed away like some useless government document wouldn’t allow itself to be forgotten.
Julie picked up a quart of whiskey before heading home. Safe in her bedroom, she tried real hard to avoid drinking it, but the girl in the vault, sliding home over and over and over... She drank most of it before passing out. She didn’t care if Nicole found her like this or not.
Nicole didn’t say anything about the alcohol the next day. She only asked about the blood on Julie’s knee.
Julie smiled. “Went out for a walk. You know how clumsy I am.”
Nicole nodded and went back to her crossword.
Julie felt like she’d been given a small reprieve. Nicole from six months ago would have hounded Julie until she’d had the entire story.
Julie stared at her sister, at the way she chewed her toast and cream cheese, picking through the puzzle like nothing was the matter, and it struck Julie how much they had lost because of Adelaide, because of Julie’s delusions. Julie found herself unsure which disturbed her more, Nicole’s growing apathy or her own.
Julie took to following Kane whenever Nicole wasn’t around. He took his Caddie mostly, but now and again he would take a drawing pad and walk the city. He never drew, though. He just walked, taking his time, sometimes standing in the same place for minutes on end with his eyes closed, but then he would move on like nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
But on the seventh day after breaking into Kane’s home, something strange happened. He stopped at a smallish park and sat on a bench, watching traffic along a street populated by hip antique and clothing stores. It struck Julie as odd since he always seemed wrapped up in his own world. To stop and interact with the world around him, in any small way, struck Julie as odd.
She stood behind a row of evergreen bushes, her right hand in her coat pocket, gripping the revolver she’d stolen from Kane’s place. She had debated on whether she should drop the gun into a trash can, but the simple fact was that it gave her confidence, something she dearly needed.
A recess bell rang behind Julie, and she turned to see a kindergarten class stream out from the small school and invade the playground that sat between Julie and Kane. She watched as the twenty children slipped into their play of hopscotch and four square and freeze tag as if class had never happened.
Kane had been sitting there, almost motionless for over an hour, but now he took out his pad and began to draw. Julie looked at the children, then Kane. He was still facing the traffic and the stores. Why now? Why wait to draw some street scene until the children were present.
Then the sun reflected off a passing red pickup truck, and it hit Julie. The glass in the storefronts... From Kane’s vantage, he could easily see the children playing. He was drawing them, and Julie couldn’t help but wonder if he had drawn Adelaide like this before he’d taken her. He must have.
She moved her right hand to her pocket and grasped the gun, then strolled along the edge of the park, watching Kane and the children, both.
Laidey runs to a puddle, stomps on it and laughs. By the time I reach her, she is so wet I jump in the puddle too. Both of us giggle for minutes on end, drenching one another.
Julie suddenly realized who Kane was drawing.
In the reflection of the shop windows she could see a girl sitting alone on the concrete stairs surrounding a fountain. She was leaning over her legs as if she had a tummy ache, and her curly auburn hair fell over and around her face. None of the children were playing with her, and though the teachers seemed to glance at her now and again, they otherwise left her alone.
Julie moved beyond the tree blocking her view, hoping to get a decent look at the girl’s face, but the fountain was empty. Julie looked back at the store windows—there she was, her head still between her knees. The girl jerked her head to one side, as if something had startled her, and then she hid herself between her knees once more.
Julie had seen enough. She marched forward—utterly confused yet totally committed—and placed herself between Kane and his shop windows. Even though the drawing was upside down, it was clearly a picture of the girl. There was something else there, too—a thin form towering over her. More than that she couldn’t tell, because when Kane realized she was standing there, he closed his drawing pad with an audible snap and set it on the bench next to him.
He looked up at her, and a moment later, recognition came. “You were at my show. Downtown.”
Julie gripped the revolver more tightly, ready to draw it out if he made any sudden moves, then she pulled out the flyer cover she’d printed up at the coffee shop. “How do you know this girl?”
His expression flattened, as if he knew what sort of person he was dealing with now. “I don’t.”
“Bull fucking shit.” She shook the paper at him. “This is my daughter. She was taken from me over a year ago. And now she shows up on the cover of your flyer. I need you to tell me where she is, and I need you to tell me now.”
Kane stood and began gathering his stuff into a ratty green courier’s bag. “This isn’t the time, lady.”
Before Julie could think, before she could talk herself out of it, she stepped forward and pressed the barrel of the pistol against his ribcage.
Kane froze.
“Don’t make me use it. I’ve lost her already, and I don’t give a shit what happens to me as long as I take you out.”
Julie backed off and put the gun back in her coat pocket, but kept it trained on Kane. He inched upward and glanced into the shop window.
“Don’t you look at her,” Julie said, realizing he was watching the girl again.
He paused. “You can see her?”
“Yes.”
“Then you should be able to tell she’s in trouble.”
Julie didn’t say a word. She couldn’t. She had no idea what he was talking about.
He pointed slowly over Julie’s shoulder. “Look.”
Julie stepped back to a safe distance and spared one quick glance. The girl was staring straight at her—no, straight at Kane—with a look of outright terror and desperation.
“That’s Theresa Hernandez. She’s already gone, but I’m trying to get her back.”
“Like that girl in the morgue?
”
For the first time, Kane seemed unsure of himself. He stared down at her coat pocket. “You were the one who broke into my house.”
“And I saw what you did. I don’t know how you made her disappear, but I’m not letting you do it any more.”
“Listen, we need to talk”—he glanced in the window again—“just not now.” He shuffled backward ready to turn and run.
“Don’t take another step.”
“Please, it’s almost too late.” He took another step backward. “I need to save her.”
At the school a half-block away, the recess bell rang.
Kane turned and ran toward the fountain.
“Stop!” Julie yelled. She pointed the revolver at him. “Stop!”
He didn’t.
Julie couldn’t let him go. He was a liar and a predator and she wasn’t going to let what happened to Adelaide happen to this girl.
She squeezed the trigger.
Her right arm jolted from the recoil as the sound of the firearm filled the park and echoed among the buildings. The sound of traffic and wind and pedestrians and children ceased momentarily.
And then all was chaos.
The children began screaming and running. The teachers shouted and herded the children toward the school. A light blue Fiat ran a red light, clipping a VW Bug. Two women carrying yellow bags from the vintage clothing store stared Julie full in the face, then sprinted in the other direction.
Kane was on the ground, face down, ten yards from the fountain. A pool of blood inched outward from beneath him.
Julie turned and viewed the reflection in the shop window. Her fingers shook and she dropped the gun into her pocket before her fingers failed her completely.
The girl was still sitting there, as she was before—her knees pulled up to her chest, her head resting on her legs—but now Julie could see the shadow standing above her, the one Kane had been drawing. It was a frail and deadly thing, and it had the smile of a Cheshire cat. It was pleased at what she had done, though how she knew this she couldn’t guess.
Lest Our Passage Be Forgotten & Other Stories Page 13