Eyes to See

by Joseph Nassise

  I directed the driver to take me to Murphy’s in Dorchester. He grumbled a bit, not wanting to go to that part of town at this time of night, but when I flashed a few bills at him he shut up and drove.

  If Beacon Hill is Boston’s playground for old money and the nouveau riche, then Dorchester is home to the common joe. Annexed by Boston in the mid-1800s, Dorchester, like its neighbors South Boston and Roxbury, is one of the so-called streetcar suburbs, named for the areas connected to the city by the railroad and streetcar lines laid at that time.

  Because of its size, Dorchester is often divided for statistical purposes. North Dorchester consists of the area north of Quincy and Freeport Streets, including the major business district known as Uphams Corner and the Harbor Point area, home to the Boston campus of the University of Massachusetts. South Dorchester, on the other hand, is bordered on the east by Dorchester Bay and on the south by the Neponset River, and contains dozens of smaller ethnic neighborhoods in which families have lived for generations, places like Meeting House Hill, Neponset, Four Corners, and, of course, Savin Hill, the predominantly Irish neighborhood that I currently call home.

  It’s a rougher section of town than most people will admit, and the cabbie’s reluctance to go there at this hour wasn’t surprising. Ethnic lines still ran very strong in the old neighborhoods and people protected their own. God help you if you were caught in the wrong neighborhood with the wrong family background after dark. I’d been living there long enough that I’d gradually been accepted as a local, but I think my right of passage had more to do with an unvoiced sense of pity over my blindness than anything else. Whatever it was, I wasn’t going to object.

  Murphy’s was the only Irish pub in Boston run by a Russian. Perhaps the only one in all of Massachusetts for that matter. And not just any Russian, mind you, but one with the sheer stones and thickheadedness needed to fend off the Irish mob’s attention every time they decided that bringing Murphy’s back under their wing was a priority. The owner’s name was Dmitri Alexandrov, and rumor had it that he’d won the place from its previous owner, Sean Murphy, in an allnight poker game on New Year’s Eve in 1998. Rumor also claimed that Dmitri tore Murphy limb from limb with his bare hands when Murphy tried to welsh on the bet, but you know how rumors are—you can never quite separate the truth from the bullshit.

  A few blocks before we reached our destination, my fellow passenger opened her mouth and vomited up a thick mass of ectoplasmic residue that slopped all over the back of the seat in front of her. The driver might not have been able to see the spiritual mass dripping off the leather next to him, but the thick cloying stench of week-old garbage that came with it couldn’t be missed. I immediately felt his attention on me in the rearview mirror.

  I pretended not to notice, for, after all, how could a blind man see such a thing? He sniffed indignantly a few times, but apparently didn’t have the backbone for anything more because he kept his mouth shut and stopped staring.

  As soon as the cabbie looked away, I dug into the pocket of my coat and pulled out one of the envelopes I habitually carried. This one held a mixture of ground rosemary, hazel, and mint, just the thing for an unwanted ectoplasmic spill. I waited until the driver’s attention was captured by something on the street and then poured a handful of the mix in the shape of a simple glyph onto the seat beside me.

  The reaction was immediate.

  The scent of fresh herbs replaced the stink of garbage and the ectoplasm faded to a mere shadow of its former self.

  The old lady got out of the cab in front of Murphy’s at the same time I did, and I watched her for a moment as she slowly made her way up the street, until at last she faded from view. As I dug in my pockets for the fare, the cabbie finally found his nerve.

  “Hey!” he said sharply, pointing at the crushed herbs on the rear seat beside me. “Take your trash with you.”

  I pretended not to hear him as I sorted through the bills in my hand.

  He wasn’t content to leave it at that. “I said pick up your trash. You no mess up my cab!”

  That did it. I was trying to do the man a favor and all he could do was bluster and yell. He wanted the herbs out of his cab? Fine. I’d take the herbs out of his cab.

  I dropped the bill on the seat beside me, swept the sweet-smelling mix into my hand, and climbed out of the car without another word.

  With the herbs gone, the ectoplasm would rapidly regain its full strength. And it wouldn’t fade until sunrise.

  Good luck getting another fare tonight, you ingrate.

  I left the curb behind and crossed the short distance to the bar’s front door. Pushing it open, I stepped inside, then cautiously made my way across the crowded floor to the bar and took a seat at the first empty stool I could find.

  “Evening, Hunt. The usual?”

  Dmitri. I couldn’t see him, the light in here being far too bright, but I turned my face in his direction and nodded. I’d been coming here a few times a month for the last several years and that was the extent of our conversation each and every time. I’d order my drink, Dmitri would deliver it with quiet efficiency, and then he’d leave me alone. Just the way I liked it. Regardless of how Murphy’s had actually come under his control, one thing could be said about Dmitri: he was a damned good bartender.

  He put my glass of Johnny Walker Black down exactly six inches in front of me, right where he put it every time, allowing me to find it without difficulty. It was little things like that that made me really appreciate him. He didn’t ask me where I wanted it, didn’t try to put it in my hand or anything like that, just treated me like every other customer he served, and in doing so made me feel normal again, even if it was only for a few minutes. It was what kept me coming back, rather than frequenting any of the twenty or so other pubs in the area.

  Word on the street said that Dmitri was a fixer, the go-to guy for those in need. If you were looking for something, no matter what it might be, he could get it for you, no questions asked. There was a price to be paid, obviously, and his services didn’t come cheap, but then again, you get what you pay for and Dmitri was rumored to be well worth the cost.

  I didn’t know if there was any truth to it all, didn’t care either way, really, but I did know that Dmitri was one of the Gifted, just like me.

  There are all sorts of creatures living on the streets of this fine city, and after getting over my shock of discovering that they existed in the first place, I’d split them into broad groups just to try to keep them straight in my head.

  First you have the Normals. They’re your average, everyday people, without any particular abilities beyond those that the good Lord has graced them with, be they good looks or the ability to figure out the square root of 6,849,531 without the help of a calculator. If I had to guess, I’d say that the Normals make up at least 95 percent of the city’s population and live in blissful ignorance of the creatures that walk, and sometimes hunt, among them.

  Then you have the Preternaturals, creatures out of myth and legend that live among the rest of us like wolves among sheep. Frankly, there are far more of them than I ever expected or am comfortable knowing about. Vampires, revenants, and shapeshifters. Goblins, ghosts, and ghouls. Nagas. Chimeras. Kengu. Lamia. Spider folk. The list goes on and on. Demons of every shape and color are particularly prominent among the upper reaches of Boston society life, and in the years since I’ve gained the ghostsight I’ve even caught a glimpse here and there of their opposite numbers, the angels.

  Finally you have the Gifted. That’s what I have taken to calling those of us who, either by nature or design, have abilities above and beyond the average. The woman born with the sixth sense. The guy who suffers a terrible head injury, and awakens with the ability to hear the thoughts of those in the room with him; the dowser who can find anything with his dowsing rod; or the necromancer who can raise the dead, provided they haven’t been gone too long: humans who have gained the ability to tap into the supernatural essence of the world and u
se it for their own means.

  Sometimes their abilities are the results of deliberate effort and practice, like those who focus on ritual magick and sorcery. Other times they’re simply nature’s way of stirring the pot. If you could do something the average individual could or should not be able to do, you got lumped in with the Gifted.

  An odd side effect of the ritual that had taken my sight was the ability to “see” people for who they really are. Normals, Preternaturals, or the Gifted; it doesn’t matter. I can see them all. They might hide by shielding themselves with a powerful glamour, but then the presence of the glamour itself will tell me that they are not what they appear to be. It is similar to what I’d experienced when viewing Brenda Connolly’s corpse, a faint shimmering aura, though the aura is much stronger in those still among the living. I know the physician in charge of the emergency room at the Deaconess on Monday nights is really a ghoul, for instance, surreptitiously feeding on the life essence of those who can’t be saved. And at least one, maybe two, of the nuns at the Convent of the Blessed Mother are succubi, gorging themselves on the suppressed lust and erotic dreams of the newly initiated. Things like that.

  Dmitri is no different. When he’s near me I can feel him pushing against that same spot in the back of my brain that responds to the presence of the dead, but in a different way. When I use what’s left of my sight to look at him, I can see the slight shimmering that surrounds him, a hazy aura that clearly marks him as one of the Gifted.

  I’ve never tried to find out more. I figure he’s entitled to his privacy, just as I am. He serves good whiskey and that’s enough for me.

  A quick glance around the room showed me a couple of other pockets of luminescence, which meant the crowd tonight wasn’t entirely Normal. I wasn’t surprised; given who and what he was, Dmitri’s bar tended to act as a sort of meeting place for all kinds of creatures.

  Facing front again, I sat and nursed my drink, thinking about what I’d seen back on the Hill.

  I’m not a trained investigator like Stanton, but it doesn’t take a genius to know that the police had a real problem on their hands. Given the wealthy victim and the neighborhood where the crime occurred, the pressure to solve the case quickly was going to be incredible. When you throw in the fact that the killer probably wasn’t human—a reasonable assumption considering how easily he’d slipped in and out of the Connolly residence—things really looked bad.

  There was no way Stanton was going to solve this one easily.

  And he probably wasn’t going to solve it at all without my help.

  I pulled out my phone and hit the 3 key. I had a homicide cop on speed dial. I didn’t even want to think about what that said about my social life.

  He answered with his usual laconic, “What?”

  From the noise in the background I could tell he was still at the crime scene. “M.E. get there yet?” I asked.

  “Just finished up. They’re getting ready to take out the body.”

  “When’s the autopsy?”

  He snorted. “You kidding me? With all the pressure on this one, they’ll probably start in the ambulance.”

  Cop humor. There’s nothing darker. “I want to see what I can do with the writing on the walls. Can you get me photos?”

  There was a moment of silence and then he said, “Okay.” Stanton didn’t ask what the hell a blind guy would want with crime scene photos, and he gained some points in my book for not asking. Probably thought I was going to have someone describe them to me or something. If only it were that simple …

  Stanton did have a question though. “Think you can translate them?”

  “Gonna give it a shot. Once upon a time, I was good at that kind of thing.”

  “Yeah. Once upon a time.”

  “Fuck you, too, Detective.”

  I spent a few minutes explaining how I needed the photos to be taken and he dutifully grunted in all the right places, letting me know that he was taking notes. Stanton was a decent detective, perhaps even better than most. If he was going to do something, he’d do it right the first time and save himself a lot of grief. When I was finished with my explanation, I paused for a second, debating, and then decided to say it anyway. “Don’t worry. We’ll get him.”

  Stanton laughed. “I don’t remember thinking otherwise, asshole,” he said, and hung up.

  Serves me right for trying to be friendly.

  I turned back to my drink and reminded myself not to do that again.

  10

  NOW

  From a booth in the back corner, Denise Clearwater watched as Hunt hung up the phone and went back to nursing his drink. For about the tenth time that night, she asked herself the question that had been haunting her for days.

  What in Gaia’s name did this man have to do with her?

  She’d come tonight hoping to find an answer.

  Hunt had first intruded on her life three weeks before. She was in the midst of erecting a set of wards inside a client’s home when she’d seen his face reflected in a nearby mirror. His appearance had startled her so badly she’d botched the warding, sending her magick snarling wildly away from her, something that hadn’t happened to her since the early days of her training. It had taken her several long minutes to regain control. By the time she’d turned to look, it was as if he’d never been there at all.

  She saw him again a few days later, watching her from the other side of a crowded subway platform. Curious, she cut through the crowd and approached him, intending to ask just what the hell he thought he was doing following her, only to discover that he’d vanished. The spot where he’d been standing was occupied by a middle-aged businessman reading a newspaper. Denise had glanced sharply around, looking for Hunt. The stairs off the platform were behind her and she knew there was no way he could have gotten past without being seen.

  It was at that point that she’d realized that he hadn’t ever been there at all, that the visions were just that, visions, and were for her alone. Similar events had happened a few other times in her life, when the universe at large, or maybe even Gaia herself, decided she needed a little push in the right direction. As a hedge witch, Denise was able to use the power inherent in nature to bend reality to her will. Usually it wasn’t anything drastic, just a nudge here or there, when she thought the situation demanded it, though she had the power to do so much more if the need arose.

  The trouble with visions was that they were always so damned cryptic, full of hidden meanings and messages that took time and effort to sort out, and this one was no different. She’d always done her best to interpret what she was being shown and to use that information as well as she could. She hadn’t always been successful, but she’d given it the old college try. So far, she was having no luck.

  As the days passed, Hunt’s unexpected appearances became more frequent, until it had gotten to the point where she would see him whenever she used her scrying mirror, the most common tool of her trade. She’d be looking for someone else and there he would be, on the edge of the image, staring off into the distance as if searching for something.

  After seeing him a few times, she did her homework. His face was familiar, and it didn’t take her long to remember why. The case had made national headlines for a while and local ones longer still. She knew about the daughter who had gone missing from his home years before and now she understood just who it was he was searching for in her visions.

  She asked Dmitri if he remembered the case and was surprised to learn that Hunt came into Murphy’s a couple of times a week for a late-night drink. She decided it was time for the two of them to meet and tonight she’d come down early so she wouldn’t miss him.

  He wasn’t what she’d expected. In her visions he appeared as he had shortly after his daughter had disappeared: a good-looking, welldressed guy who was obviously on his way up. Apparently the mighty had fallen, and fallen hard, for the Hunt who walked into Murphy’s that night would never be mistaken for that other man. His blindness was surprisi
ng, yes, but perhaps more interesting was the change in the way he presented himself to the world. Gone were the finely tailored clothes and the carefully groomed hair. In their place were a loose-fitting Henley jersey, a well-worn pair of jeans, and disheveled hair. His face was thinner and he clearly needed a shave, but where he had appeared stiff and stuffy before, now he simply looked comfortable.

  Tattoos peeked out beneath the pushed-up sleeves of his jersey and where it hung loose about his neck. Denise couldn’t see them clearly from where she sat, but she knew the old Hunt never would have let anything so hip be permanently etched onto his skin.

  Denise knew just from looking at him that there were deeper changes than those that met the eye, too. Despite his outward appearance, or perhaps because of it, he gave off an air of strength, of inner confidence, that you saw only rarely and then usually in the faces of those who’d survived a major disaster. A flood, a hurricane, something like that. He looked like someone who’d been through the heart of the fire and come out changed, but intact, on the other side. He also looked older than the thirty-two that she knew him to be.

  Losing a child will do that to you, she thought.

  She wondered what happened to cause him to lose his sight and made a mental note to ask Dmitri about it later when she had the chance. For now, though, it was time to do what she had come to do.

  She slid out of the booth, grabbed her backpack with one hand, and, slinging it over her shoulder, started threading her way through the crowd toward where Hunt was seated at the bar. Her athletic figure and long, dark hair caught the attention of several of the male patrons she passed on the way, but after one of the more overzealous of them received a swift knee to the crotch for grabbing her arm, the others left her alone.