Eden's Eyes

by Sean Costello

  The doctor had had her in the hospital for two days now, had performed every test known to man, even a few inappropriate ones, hoping against hope. . . but he'd come up with nothing. The kidney was healthy, healthier than the child, he'd noted regretfully.

  And much as he hated to suggest it, there was only one venue left open to them.

  "You can take Shirley home today," Forget said, remembering sadly the last time he had spoken these words to Mary Bleeker, and how joyfully they'd been received. "But I'm going to have her seen by a psychiatrist later this week—"

  Mary flinched as if stung.

  "I'm not suggesting that there's anything seriously wrong with your daughter's mind," he threw in quickly, understanding how to some the stigma of psychiatry was on a par with leprosy . "I'm only saying that all of the organic possibilities have been carefully ruled out. There's nothing physically wrong with Shirley's kidney, or her bladder, or any other part of her waterworks. Now, we have to exclude the psychological possibilities."

  Mary glanced again at her sick, despondent, tortured little child. "Like what?" she asked in fear and frustration.

  But the doctor couldn't think of a thing.

  Chapter 19

  The following week, which began with the surprise party on the fourteenth and ended with the Transplant Meeting on the twenty-first, ran a rapid downslide from bad to worse. Parts of it were great—the party Cass organized at Albert's was a riot, refurbishing the farmhouse was fun, and being able to see was marvelous beyond description.

  But in some dark way, learning how the donor had died had slipped Karen into a deep, brooding stream of thought from which she only rarely fully emerged. She was bright when the situation demanded it—on Saturday, when Cass finally managed to drag her over to her dad's, she appeared genuinely pleased to find half the local country folk assembled there, each of them bearing small, congratulatory gifts. But the instant the focus shifted from Karen, she immediately became gloomy again, staring into space as if mourning a lost lover. When they were alone, Cass approached her repeatedly, trying gently to draw her out. But Karen only shrugged, claiming she was "just thinking." Cass didn't buy it. The excitement of vision, the bright, girlish glee Cass had seen in her during those first few days, had all but vanished.

  As the week progressed, Karen came up with more and more excuses to go off by herself. When she wasn't out walking in the woods, she spent a lot of time alone in her workroom, ostensibly working on her book. . . but Cass knew she was just sitting up there.

  Karen was aware of Cass's efforts to reach her, and appreciated her concern. But there were things going on in the pit of her mind that she could not bear talking about. They were simply too awful.

  When the images came she was usually asleep—as she had been four nights ago, when she first dreamt of that ghastly cadaver in its moldering crypt—but sleep was not a necessary condition. Sometimes she just drowsed and there he would be, nakedly decaying on her eyelids, gaping back at her with cavernous blindness. If she jerked awake instantly and stayed that way, she counted herself lucky because if she didn't, if she slipped into the clutches of sleep. . .

  Karen cut her thoughts short.

  Blinking, she looked dazedly around her, as if suddenly ejected from some distant netherworld.

  She was lying in bed. It was 11:45 p.m., Monday, May 16th, a breezy, starlit night. Cass was downstairs, snoozing on the couch, and Karen was up here, losing her mind. In a few short days she had grown terrified of sleep, the one place of darkness that had always been a refuge to her.

  She stood and crossed to the window. As she drew back the curtains, she noticed the twinkle of an upstairs lamp at the Dolan place, and a shape darting swiftly across it, hunkering low before freezing into an inanimate mound at the base of the window. She watched it a moment, startled, then assumed she'd imagined the movement and shifted her attention to the yard.

  The wind seethed in the trees down there, rousting out hostile shadows, causing branches to claw carnivorously at the air. Some of those shadows, allowed access through the uncurtained window, writhed on the walls around her, encircling her in a ghostly, sacrificial dance, touching her with unfelt fingers, as if testing her plumpness—

  "Knock it off," Karen mumbled. She swept the curtains shut, stilling the frenzied cavortings, and shuffled back to her bed. She fluffed her pillow, lay curled on her side, snugged the comforter around her. . . and slept.

  Through the flickering crypt she moved stiffly, as if enfeebled by her fear. But in some dark way the sight of the door enlivened her, and now she strode toward it, arms outstretched, half-glimpsed fingers reaching for the latch. In her bed she flailed against the web of sleep, terrified of beholding that face. . . but the strands of exhaustion, deceptive in their silkiness, held her like a spider's prey.

  She swung the door open.

  Like the crown prince of oblivion he sat naked in his chair, eyeholes aswirl with eddies of blackness. His spread legs revealed his withered manhood, and his pouting chest wound, slithered with life. She approached him slowly, in an ecstasy of revulsion, her gaze never leaving the dark bullet holes in which her eyes had once gleamed. Barely seen in the troughs of her vision, her hands spread the front of her nightgown, revealing her mounded flesh.

  Then she was on him, straddling his dead lap, pressing the cold putrescence of his face to her heaving bosom—

  Karen awoke at 2:35, dripping with sweat, gasping from the torture her mind had inflicted. In the dark of her bedroom she remained awake, waiting for dawn. When the new day came, she dragged herself in to the shower, certain she could no longer go on.

  But the cold darts of water and the sweet promise of a fresh day of sight worked a revivifying sort of magic on Karen. Slouched in the shower, she could almost feel a pair of smooth muscular hands pumping her adrenals, spurting the jet fuel of excitement into her veins. In daylight, with the world revealing itself in its boundless splendor, she could almost forget the fatigue, the hideous dreams.

  Perhaps her greatest joy during this period was roaming outside, snapping off Polaroids whenever the fancy took her.

  In that swirly gray developing medium hid the secrets of sight, and Karen paused over each of them, watching with a bushman's awe as the magic happened. She hoarded these snaps—which covered everything from out-of-focus bugs to sprawling panoramas to Cass and her father to dashed attempts at capturing the moon—like a kid collecting baseball cards. She began mounting her favorites in an album. The big shaggy willow in back of the old cheese factory, the winding green avenue of the Carp River; the rusted-out Buick in the south field, the same one her parents had driven to Niagara Falls for their honeymoon; the rugged, thoughtful face of her dad; the smiling face of her friend.

  Though Cass spent most of her time at Karen's, she took off every now and again to visit with relatives—"I got more cousins than Hallmark's got cards"—and on these occasions, Karen invariably made for the woods.

  Today, Tuesday, was one such occasion.

  Someone, or something, was following her.

  Karen's hands tightened around the Polaroid, slung by its strap around her neck, but she did not break stride. Though dusk was still hours away, the light in this dense, patch of bush was thin, mottled with shadow. She recalled her panic of a few nights ago, when the cow stumbled out of the bush and frightened her. . .

  But this was different. Whatever it was behind her—and she knew there was something there, every nerve ending throbbed with the certainty—it moved stealthily, stopping when she did, watching without being seen.

  Suddenly she remembered her dream, the one in which her mother had been trying to warn her against the flailing thing in the bush.

  Her legs liquefied.

  Behind her a branch snapped, then another, pistol shots in the placid woodlot, and now she did turn, whirling with fearful anticipation. As she spun her finger tightened reflexively against the shutter release and a flashburst chromed the trees, printing fireballs onto
her sensitive retinas. The camera's ejecting whir gave way to footfalls rapidly receding.

  Then silence once more.

  Heart drumming, Karen snatched up the print and watched it develop. Maybe it had been some kind of animal, a curious deer or raccoon, and the flash had frightened it off. And maybe the camera had captured its image. . .

  But the print showed nothing but trees, their shadows made crisp by the flash glare.

  Cass took one look at her later that afternoon, and ushered her up to her bedroom.

  "Jesus, girl," she scolded, taking the camera and setting it on the night table next to the bed. "You look like hell. When's the last time you had a decent night's sleep?"

  "When was Adam a boy scout?" Karen replied with a humorless chuckle. She leaned back and let Cass pull off her runners.

  "Well, I'm no shrink," Cass went on, concern exaggerating the laugh lines that etched the corners of her eyes, "but if you won't talk to me about whatever's eating you, then I think you should talk to your doctor."

  "No," Karen said firmly. "No doctors."

  Cass drew the shades against the westering sun, then returned to the bed and plopped down on its edge.

  "I know you don't wanna wind up back in hospital, she said with compassion. "I can understand that. But you can't go on like this. You've got to level with your doctor. Whatever it is, she’ll know what to do."

  Karen closed her eyes. It was true, she couldn't go on like this. A response took shape in her mind, but she was asleep before it reached her lips.

  Her mother called out to her from the ragtop Buick as it rolled slowly away, its showy whitewalls pluming up dust. A gust snatched the bride's hat and it soared into the sky, up and up like an exotic white bird. Then her pretty face blanched, she pointed. . .

  And as Karen spun to face the forest, her fingertip tightened on the shutter release. For the space of a heartbeat she glimpsed movement in the explosion of light—

  Then she awoke, twin white supernovas dying on her retinas. She shrieked an instant later when beside her on the night table the Polaroid whined into life, the sound it made as it ejected a print like that of some outreaching mechanical claw.

  Karen snapped on the light and plucked up the print, watching without breathing as the image slowly developed. . .

  Trees, ghost trees with something naked and hideous caught for a split second in sprinter's midstride—

  Then the bedroom solidified within the green-and clay-streaked magic of the developing medium, its left third obscured by her own out-of-focus shoulder, caught as she sat up in bed not a half minute before.

  Exhausted, afraid for her sanity, Karen lay back in her bed.

  And slept.

  And pressed her lips to the donor's.

  On Wednesday morning Karen was sitting by the phone when it rang, close enough to just reach out and nab it. Cass, who had been gathering breakfast dishes, paused on her way to the sink, expecting Karen to respond—but Karen just sat there, staring vacantly into the blue.

  Cass let it ring twice more before setting down the dishes, wiping her hands on a dish towel, and picking up the receiver. She glanced at Karen as she answered. Karen hadn't budged.

  "Hello? Uh-huh. One moment please."

  She poked Karen's shoulder.

  Karen felt the poke but it was far away, part of another reality.

  The poke came again. Karen looked up.

  "It's Dr. Smith's office," Cass was saying, one hand covering the mouthpiece. "They want to know if you're coming in for your appointment this afternoon. You never told man—"

  Karen flapped a hand. "Tell them no,"' she whispered "Tell them I'm sick, tell them I'm dead. Tell them anything."

  Karen could imagine the questions.

  Have there been any disturbing incidents? the doctor would say, as she had during Karen's last visit.

  Well, Heather, she heard herself answering, not unless you consider dreams of straddling an eyeless corpse disturbing. Not unless you feel that an almost constant preoccupation with a decomposing dead man is disturbing.

  "I'm sorry," Cass said into the phone, looking annoyed at the lie. "Karen is not feeling well this morning. No, nothing serious. Just a flu bug, I think. Okay. I will. Thanks." She hung up and glowered at Karen. "What's with you?"

  "Nothing," Karen replied flatly. "Just—"

  "Thinking," Cass put in, and threw up her hands.

  "Directory assistance," a bored voice said. "For what place?"

  "Sudbury," Karen said into the phone. "A Mr. Bertrand Crowell."

  "Do you have an address?"

  "Four-forty-four Copper Street," Karen said, recalling the address from the donor's obituary.

  "One moment please."

  In the hissing quiet, Karen's mind ran a headlong race with her heart. The idea of calling the donor's parents had struck her this afternoon, in a flash both brilliant and darkly foreboding. In its brilliance, the notion had cast light on the root of her preoccupation: she wanted to thank someone. The most wondrous gift she could imagine had been anonymously bestowed on her, and there was no one to thank. It didn't seem right. She had thanked the doctors, but all they had provided was their skills. She had thanked God. . . but it wasn't enough. She wanted to get closer.

  But the shadow of doubt was vast. She'd been battling beneath it all day, battled there even now, as she waited for that bored voice to recite the number. She could hang up this instant and put an end to it. . . but that would leave her where she was, unable to shake herself free of this imagined indebtedness. And the crazy part was, she knew that her debt wasn't real. The donor's parents had no idea who she was, nor, she felt certain, did they care to. They had received their thanks from the doctors who had taken their son's organs. For them, it was time to go on, to forget.

  So what in hell was she doing?

  The voice droned off the number. Karen committed it to memory. Before her disbelieving eyes, her finger dialed it. It rang once. . .

  And she cradled the receiver with a slam.

  Then picked it up again, and dialed. By the fourth ring, she had changed her mind twice that many times.

  Her finger diddled the hook—

  "Hello?"

  The voice was a woman's. Flat, suspicious, unwelcoming.

  (Hang up!)

  "I. . . I'm sorry, my name is Karen, Karen Lockhart? and. . . is this Mrs. Crowell?"

  "Yes." A hiss of cold steam. "This is she."

  "I'm calling about. . . your son—"

  "What?" Very suspicious now.

  (Stop this!)

  "I just wanted to offer my condolences," Karen blurted, her voice suddenly shrill. "It was a brave thing your son did, a very unselfish thing. I realize that you still must be grieving his death, but—"

  "Are you sure you've got the right number?" the voice interrupted, still flat, still arctic. "It's true, my son was very ill. Some even thought he had died. But he didn't die. My son is alive and well, Miss, Lockhart. He's not feeling himself just yet, but he will. He's already up and around. . ."

  "I'm sorry," Karen said, her palms slippery with sweat. "You're right. I must have misdialed. I—"

  She was talking to the dial tone.

  Why had she lied? Even if her son had not been Karen's donor—which Karen did not believe—he was dead, it was in the newspaper.

  Was it denial? Had the shock of her son's death shattered her mind? Karen had heard of that happening. The Sawyers over in Fitzroy had lost their only child in a motorcycle accident. Marty Sawyer, who had just finished law school, had gone out with a few of his classmates on a celebratory pub crawl and had never come back. Milly Sawyer, his mother, had gone around for weeks afterward, talking about her son as though he were still alive, quoting from nonexistent letters from Kingston, where Marty had been slated to apprentice. She hung herself from a crossbeam in the attic three months after the funeral.

  Maybe that was it, God help the poor woman.

  Karen's innocent trespass left he
r feeling ill, confused, more unsettled than she had been before. And yet, percolating down through her own perplexity was a sense that perhaps she'd come up against something that couldn't be changed, a reality no one could alter. Maybe she really would have to let it go.

  The real question was, would it let her go?

  Thursday started out fine. Karen had slept soundly—there had been no dreams—and the morning was summery and bright. Barely awake, she donned her sunglasses and stumbled outside to sample the air. She had surreptitiously replaced the goggles Burkowitz had given her with a pair of stylish Vuarnets, complete with ropy danglers and suede carrying case. The lenses dyed the world a sort of glowing amber, but they cut the glare well enough.

  As she scanned the yard, her previous freightload of heady excitement returned with a palpable thud—the day verily gleamed with possibility—and she dashed back inside, got the coffee perking and a picnic lunch started, got her body showered and her teeth flossed and brushed; and finally, after an hour of carefully generated noisemaking, got Cass out of bed. It was a lot like raising the dead.

  Cass stumped into the kitchen like a hung-over sailor.

  "Whadafucktiisid?"

  "What?" Karen asked cheerily. She was pouring coffee.

  Cass raked a hand through her tangled, Watusi-style hairdo. Sniffed. Squinted at the clock—then showed the whites of her eyes in shock.