A Tear in the Veil

by Patrick Loveland

  How can Siobhán see anyway? Who is she really?

  His phone rings in his pocket and he jolts in his seat. He takes it out and checks the caller ID.

  ISIDORA

  Felix presses accept and says, “Hello?”

  “Hello, Felitchka.”

  “How are you guys? It’s been a bit,” Felix says, trying to even out his voice from his anxiety due to the coupon messages and his confusion over the last few interactions he had with Isidora and Walter.

  “We are fine. I’m calling to see how you are.”

  “Great,” Felix says, a little too loud and fast.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. The medicine works great and I feel fine.” I KNOW YOU SEE THEM TOO

  She’s quiet for a moment then says, “I’m glad you feel better. We just–” A call waiting tone cuts into Isidora’s sentence, “–could come up some time soon.”

  “Sorry, I missed part of that.” DO YOU REMEMBER

  “We were hoping that you could–” Call waiting again, “–something we have been meaning to speak with you about.”

  Felix looks at the caller ID on his phone. 650 area code. The only person he knows in that code anymore is in Colma.

  What now?

  “I’m sorry, Tyotechka. Can– May I call you back?”

  “Um… Of course. Call when you can.” The call waiting tone lands in a pause on Isidora’s side. Then, “I love you, Felix.” That strange vocal tone from last time. Almost like she’s afraid it’s the last time we’ll talk.

  “I love you too.”

  “Do svidanya, kiska. Call soon, though.”

  Call waiting tone.

  Felix says, “Uvidimsya.” We’ll speak again, Isidora. Don’t worry. He doesn’t hear her hang up but flashes over anyway.

  “Hello–”

  Wahrheit interrupts, “Felix. I need you down here.”

  “Sure. What’s–”

  “I’ll tell you what. Just not until I can see your face. Then there’s some shit you need to explain to me.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Come now.” As Wahrheit hangs up, Felix hears ‘Sujit’ say something in the background in… Thai maybe? Then responses from other voices he doesn’t recognize.

  Felix hangs up and sets his phone down. He reads the coupon messages again.

  I KNOW YOU SEE THEM TOO

  DO YOU REMEMBER

  I KNOW YOU SEE THEM TOO

  DO YOU REMEMBER

  I KNOW YOU SEE THEM TOO

  DO YOU REMEMBER

  He sighs sharply and rubs his eyes before picking up the coupons, leaning in the chair, and roughly stuffing them in his back pocket. He’s up and almost to the hallway before it occurs to him to bring the HDV-426, then he retrieves it and heads down the hallway, grabbing his jacket and heading out the door.

  20

  Felix watches late afternoon San Francisco rush by out through the BART car window.

  He looks around the car to take his mind off of Siobhán and her messages. There are a few people with growths he’s familiar with but one woman down a few benches on the right has a type he’s not.

  They’re like glowing, translucent flowers that cover half of her face and all of her mouth. They run down her neck and down into her blouse. Tiny, lambent creatures flutter through the air around them and disappear into them like bees on regular flowers.

  He tries to act casual as he slowly takes the HDV-426 out of its bag, sets it on the bench seat next to his thigh, and aims it at her. He opens the flip-out screen to adjust the zoom and framing then rests his hand on the camera loosely and looks out the window to complete the illusion that he’s not filming her. He’s thankful for the little cover piece Rudy put on the shooting indicator light.

  The dark discolorations in the sky are clearer but only slightly. He watches them drift through sky, the different shapes and sizes rotating as they seem to revolve around multiple unknown central points, rarely interrupting each other’s paths. Some even seem to pass through each other and some disappear into the city and land all around while others appear out of the bay water and east bay further down what has to be a semi-circular path of revolution with a central point somehow deep under the surface. Some paths are much larger and the groupings of discolored shapes stretch high into the sky and toward the horizon.

  Do I even want to know what those are?

  The BART train enters the mouth of a tunnel and Felix repeatedly studies the route map and safety posters so he can continue to act casual while filming the flower lady.

  Felix steps out of the BART car onto the platform and makes his way to the escalator and up to street level. As he sends his transit card through the turnstile and the thick pizza slice barriers open, he looks at the BART attendant in her booth. She seems familiar but with just a quick glance, he’s unsure why.

  A small, blue hatchback picks up the flower face lady at the station curb. The sun is almost down as he exits the station and follows the route he took with Rudy. He does his best to ignore the vague, dark things gliding through the sky all around above because they give him an uneasy feeling. As he cruises down A, he thinks about Siobhán and her secret messages. She went from flirty guilty pleasure to a source of real anxiety and confusion in the blink of an eye. Maybe I should just avoid her. There are other fish stores around.

  I can’t help being super curious what her damage is, though…

  Felix crosses Hillside at the four-way stop and cuts down Linden to Hoffman. The streetlights are coming on at the T intersections with Hoffman at each block on his left and the mercury-vapor glow is picking up the mist in the crisp air.

  As he walks on the long strip of dirt and dying grass between the cars and cemetery fence, he looks over into the cemetery to his right, curious what Rudy was so bothered by… wait… what was tha–

  Oh shit!

  Keep walking– Maybe they didn’t see you.

  Shit-shit-shit…

  He locks his gaze forward, stealing quick glances over without turning his head.

  The cemetery is inhabited by dozens of faintly glowing, eerie figures. They are translucent and hard to see until they move because they distort the air around them and become clearer in sporadic glimpses. Their actual shape is vaguely humanoid but some are tall and gaunt while others are more hunched and all of them have some amount of physical abnormality. One crawls, pulling itself along with one long arm and hobbling with the elbow of its other crooked, warped arm and its mangled, useless legs. One is trying to drink from a puddle of rainwater from earlier in the day but doesn’t seem to be succeeding. It lets out a long, tortured moan. When he can see them more clearly, he can see that their orifices ooze a thick, dark liquid and their black eyes glint, reflecting the streetlights. The ooze glistens in the light too, seeping from their mouths, noses, ears, and half-filled eyes.

  He sees one pull itself up out of the ground near a grave marker. Felix repeats Wahrheit’s little jab about trying to force everything into a conceptual hole he’s comfortable with to himself, hoping it will keep him from attaching words like Wraiths! or Ghouls! to them… but it’s too late for that.

  Most of them just roam aimlessly around the between the graves. There’s one up in a palm tree between two rows of graves. It’s among the fronds and appears to be watching over the cemetery eastward toward Wahrheit’s trailer estate.

  A few seem to have noticed Felix and they move silently, keeping pace with his advance along the fence line. They move like they’re walking but the ones that aren’t as warped and twisted sort of glide along the ground as they make the motion. Their eyes never leave him and rarely blink. Or maybe he’s just not seeing it because they’re only visible in quick bursts of horrifying clarity.

  He can’t take the proximity anymore and crosses the street then continues up the sidewalk.

  He only looks over once more and when he does, he locks eyes with one of the wandering spirit ghoul things that’s crouched by the fence and hanging its
long arms over it. His blood goes all ice water. The shiny black eyes aren’t actually opaque and there’s a crimson hue in their depths. He can only just see them because the only movements it makes are its head moving to follow him. The look in those deep, crimson-black eyes is one of longing and profound patience and Felix can’t stand it so he looks away.

  Felix is relieved to reach the condos at the northern edge of the cemetery. A quick glance confirms that the ghoul things have stopped at the fenced boundary and are just watching him leave.

  The border-guard on duty watches Felix enter the trailer estate through his tinted aviator stunners but doesn’t say anything so Felix starts down the main street toward Wahrheit’s house.

  He cruises down the long sidewalk for about twenty-five or thirty mobile homes, telling himself to remember the memory fogger thing.

  There’s a large white van with no side windows parked on the other side of the street which sticks out because the roof is covered with equipment, long antennae, and a little satellite dish, all blue-black with lines of stark orange symbols printed on them. Tiny blue and green lights blink on and off at the base of each rig.

  Would I see that without Wahrheit’s pills? Seems like crazy government or military equipment or something.

  He gets closer to the blank area his mind and eyes don’t want to acknowledge and his mind starts to drift and he just keeps walking.

  Why is that guard back there still wearing his dark sunglasses? Can he see? Not well, at least.

  Seems like it might rain.

  That would be nice.

  A glowing spiderfly flutters down toward the gaping maw of vagueness on his right then bobs up and down for a bit before flitting away.

  It must have smelled the patchouli…

  Stop.

  Wahrheit’s houses are right there.

  Felix stops and repeats that to himself until the two fence-connected mobiles are vaguely visible in front of him. He steps toward the house and pushes through the suggestion that he should turn around and forget, successfully touching down on the artificial lawn.

  He can see the non-existent old lady through the kitchen window, drinking a cup of tea and reading a tabloid in the dim light of an also non-existent low-wattage lamp in the ceiling.

  As Felix makes his way around to the porch, he notices something he isn’t sure how to interpret. One of the surveillance cameras on the corner of the house looks busted somehow. Weird.

  He steps onto the dark porch and reaches for the doorbell in the entryway doorframe but stops when he notices the cameras on the interior of the overhang and the one above the door are busted too. The lens on the camera above the door is shattered and electronic guts are hanging out through the hole like it exploded from the inside and there’s a smell like melted circuits. The smell is strong enough that whatever happened to the cameras must have been recent.

  Oh, I do not like that.

  Felix takes out his phone and checks the call history. Wahrheit’s number didn’t register probably due to some secret device he has and he’s not getting any signal this close to the house anyway.

  Perfect. Shit.

  He puts his phone back in his pocket and looks around the neighborhood, then pushes gently on the door, which swings inward a bit.

  Under his breath, Felix says, “Oh, come on.”

  As he takes a step down the porch to look in the dark living room windows, his feet crunch down onto broken glass. He crouches and examines the porch and yard. There’s shattered glass everywhere and there are a few spots that look like scorched wood and grass which glisten and have bits of fleshy pulp in them. That smell mixes with the burnt out electronics aroma and Felix cringes as he stands and backs toward the entryway door.

  He accidentally backs against the door and it opens further, revealing a fresh kill zone. The metal walls of the entryway are riddled with thousands of small dents, blood spray, and more of the fleshy scorch marks. The camera array above the far door is busted like the others and the metal door is dented and partially open. The floor of the entryway is completely covered with spent lead pellets and small, deformed bullets, most of them scorched and bloody. A repetitive, rhythmic sound can be heard through the partially open metal door but is hard to make out.

  Fuck this.

  Felix is off the porch and almost to the sidewalk when he sees the gate guard cruising down the street toward him in a golf cart. Felix stops dead. The guard is shining a flashlight around and keeps trying to point it toward Wahrheit’s houses but lets it drift away each time to linger on other houses. Each time he tries towards Felix, it flashes across his chest, face, or eyes. Felix just stays frozen in place, letting the fog barrier do its thing.

  The guard stops the cart near Wahrheit’s houses and looks around. Every time he looks toward the houses he gets a dreamy look on his face and looks away.

  Must have seen me come over here but can’t get through the fog in his head.

  Dammit. Just go away.

  Felix looks back at Wahrheit’s porch then down the street toward the entrance/exit.

  That’s the only way out from what I can see. This fucker’s not leaving. I do not want to try to explain what I’m doing here. I’m not the best liar so he’s gonna think I’m a burglar or something.

  He looks at the porch again then studies the rest of what he can see of the houses.

  Maybe whatever happened is over. Wahrheit might be in there smoking a bowl in the garden part waiting for me. And if not, maybe I’m far enough down that I’m past the cemetery and I can just hop his back fence and head back to the BART station.

  Felix watches the guard’s face, hoping for a sign that he’ll leave any time soon but he’s not seeing one. He takes a deep breath then exhales and turns back toward Wahrheit’s porch.

  He half creeps as he crosses to it, knowing full well that if the guard was going to see him he would have, but he can’t help it. He hesitates at the porch.

  “Dig deep, you pussy,” Felix says to himself under his breath. As he steps up onto the porch, the light hits him again. He freezes and looks over like a caught possum but the light is already drifting away as the guard unwillingly aims it back down the row of houses.

  Felix pushes the entryway door open and tiptoes gingerly through into the long living room.

  The record player is stuck in a locked groove and continues to play the same part from a psychedelic rock song Felix hasn’t heard before.

  “–oaring… in a bright paisley sky…”

  The only light source inside is from the stacks of monitors near the far end of Wahrheit’s couch and on the coffee table. Most of the monitor feeds display glitchy static which bathes the room in eerie, low grey that constantly shifts and dances on the walls and furniture. A few still appear functional.

  “–oaring… in a bright paisley sky…”

  As Felix creeps in, he steps on shattered glass and shell casings. He takes out his phone and brings up a flashlight app, leaves it on low, and pans it around.

  There are casings everywhere, and not just from the fixed gun rigs which look to have been loaded with .50 pistol ammo. Well, other than the bug-in-amber equation weirdo bullets.

  The Bergmann is missing from its wall mounts, as are several of the other modified weapons on the far wall.

  “–oaring… in a bright paisley sky…”

  Felix crouches and feels some shell casings.

  Still warm.

  Some of the strange equipment has been damaged or completely destroyed. There’s a steady whir and hum from the equipment that is still on. The bubble sphere thing is shattered on the floor.

  He advances toward the couch and coffee table, hoping to see at least Wahrheit on one of the video feeds. His big bong was tipped over and broke into a few large pieces at the foot of the coffee table.

  There’s a prescription bottle of Wahrheit pills on its side on the carpet. Felix picks it up and shakes it gently. Full. He puts it in his back pocket.

 
Felix sees the tone arm on the record player reset in the groove as he passes the big component stereo against the near end of the couch. Probably better leave that on to cover my steps on all this glass and stuff.

  “–oaring… in a bright paisley sky…”

  The few video feeds still on display aren’t much relief. One maybe five-inch color screen and two probably seven-inch black and whites. Another, partially functioning monitor isn’t showing a visual feed but he can hear what must be the big turtles scuffling slowly through the gravel between the houses. The sound is loudest when the tone arm resets in its groove and the music stops momentarily.

  The small color monitor and one of the black and whites display different angles of the interior of the “garden” in the other house across the yard. There must be a busted light in the garden because there’s a really dark corner in the shots of it. The other black and white view is one of the POV shots from a spiderfly or swimmer more likely from the side-to-side movement of the shot. It’s swimming through Candlestick Park above a 49ers game.

  No Wahrheit in sight; no one on the screens at all.

  “–oaring… in a bright paisley sky…”

  Felix winces, regretting that he didn’t turn off the turntable as he was creeping by it. He shifts his weight to take a step back toward the stereo and steps on something softer than the glass and casings all around. He crouches and picks up a packed manila envelope. He turns it over and frowns when he sees what’s written on it in thick block letters in black permanent marker:

  OBRIST’S HEXE

  F’s girl/refugee?

  Felix flips it back over and unties the red thread then slides out the contents. He sets down the bundle of notepaper, drawings, prints of old paintings, photographs, and printouts of photographs on the coffee table and leafs through them.

  “–oaring… in a bright paisley sky…”

  There are post-it notes and older notes on the scanned photo printouts in different languages like they’ve been annotated by several people over a long time period. Russian, Polish?, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, and others he’s less sure of.