Sandman

by Sean Costello

  But this time it was a trade-off. The doctor told her she faced a choice: certain blindness from her cataracts or the knife. And even that wasn’t so bad; they’d cut her open before.

  But the truly frightening part was that he wanted to freeze her instead of putting her to sleep. How did you freeze an eye? The doctor said it was because of her age. A general anesthetic might kill her, he said.

  I’ll be awake, Anna thought for the hundredth time, lying alone in the hallway on a stretcher that was breaking her back. I’ll be awake. Will I see the knife? See it cutting my eye?

  “Mrs. Rukutis.”

  Anna jumped. Through the unshifting haze of cataracts she saw her surgeon. He looked different in his mask, cloth cap and surgical greens. Older somehow, more infirm.

  “Yes, Doctor,” Anna said.

  “I’m going to freeze your eye now,” he said. “As I explained.” He swabbed the loose skin below her right eye. “You’ll feel a mosquito bite...”

  Mosquito bite, my Polish fanny, Anna thought as the needle pierced the tender skin below her eye. She’d been shot in the leg during the war and even a bullet hadn’t stung as much as this. She grabbed the side rails and held on tight. It hurt, but she was no cry baby.

  McWhirter guided the needle along the narrow soft-tissue corridor between the bulb of Anna’s eye and the bony floor of the socket. When he reached the correct depth, in this case about an inch and a half, he began to inject the anesthetic solution.

  McWhirter had done thousands of retrobulbar blocks, painlessly and without a single complication. That was why he was shocked when his patient let out a shriek, batted the syringe out of his hand—snapping the needle off at the hilt and leaving it embedded in the eye socket—and sat bolt upright on the stretcher. The rheumatoid hooks that were the old woman’s hands came up to her eye and clawed at it...

  And before she slithered over the low side rail and ran screaming through the corridor, McWhirter caught a glimpse of that eye. It appeared to be cooking, like an egg on a skillet. He’d actually seen the fluid boiling behind the white membrane of the globe.

  Dumfounded, McWhirter picked the syringe up off the floor—and then he understood. A droplet of clear liquid dribbled from the lumen of the syringe and struck the pad of his index finger. Instantly the tissue began to smoke and a searing pain jolted up his arm. When the smell of cooked flesh reached his nostrils, he sagged to the floor in dead faint.

  Anna Rukutis made it as far as the recovery room doors, an L-shaped run of about thirty yards. By then the acid solution had eaten its way through the thin bone of her eye socket and found her brain. Despite the ministrations of a mystified team of doctors and nurses, Anna convulsed for almost five minutes while her brains leaked out through the corroded fire hole that was her eye. The acid ate ravenously, consuming her gray matter, her knowledge, her memories, her hopes. And finally, her fears, quelling them forever.

  * * *

  Peter Chartrand left his office at five-thirty that evening, escorted by Detective Fransen. Before they’d made it halfway across the lobby they were swarmed by reporters. Fransen took the initiative, shielding Chartrand both with his bulk and his evident PR skills. The detective linked arms with Chartrand and without breaking stride mouthed the usual half truths and platitudes, deflecting the most pointed questions with promises of a full disclosure at a soon-to-be-announced press conference. Then they were outside, making for the parking lot at a slow jog, a few reporters still straggling along behind.

  “Get some sleep tonight,” Fransen said as Chartrand climbed into his car. The administrator looked shell shocked. “You’re gonna need it.”

  “Thanks, Detective. Let’s hope we can get to the bottom of this quickly.”

  As Chartrand pulled away Fransen nodded cheerfully and whispered, “Don’t count on it, Pete.” He lit up, then strolled across the lot to his car.

  16

  JENNY’S CAB PULLED INTO THE laneway at home at twenty after three that afternoon. Kim was glad to see her and had a hundred burning questions, but Jenny apologized and went straight up to bed. She slept fitfully until nine o’clock that night. When she awoke her bladder was full and her legs felt like rubber bands, but she made the long trek to the bathroom downstairs. There was no way she could sit on that upstairs toilet, not now, maybe not ever again. Kim met her at the foot of the stairs and helped her along.

  While Jenny peed, Kim fixed soup for them both. Jenny had a few dutiful mouthfuls, then dragged herself back up to bed. Before lying down she dry-swallowed a sleeping pill.

  Feeling deserted, Kim sat with a bowl of popcorn and watched a documentary on substance abuse and teen suicide in America. In this segment they were featuring a drug called Ecstasy and the news people were going into American schools, talking to the kids, trying to find out what was the deadly attraction. Kim watched with only mild interest until a plump, pimple-faced girl came on camera and admitted she’d been drinking and doing drugs since the fifth grade. She was fourteen now, just like Kim.

  “Why?” the interviewer said. “Why does a healthy young lady from a good home commit slow suicide with drugs?”

  The girl grinned. “Better living through chemistry, man.” Behind her one of her slinking friends snickered.

  “Let’s be truthful,” the interviewer said. “America wants to know.”

  “Simple,” the girl said, mugging some more for her friends. Then her face grew solemn, almost cold. “I do it so I don’t have to feel.”

  * * *

  Jack came in around midnight and Kim jumped off the couch to greet him. “Dad, I’ve been so worried—”

  Jack paused in the living room archway, staring at her with dead eyes. “I’m not your father,” he said. “How could you ever think that I was?” He stood there a moment longer, seemed about to say something more, then walked down the hallway to the basement door.

  Kim’s legs wobbled and she almost fell.

  I’m not your father...

  Hadn’t she known it? Hadn’t that cold suspicion insinuated itself into her dreams? Why hadn’t her mother told her? Why?

  Heart pounding, Kim ran upstairs to her mother’s bedroom and shook her shoulders. “Mom. Mom, wake up.” But Jenny didn’t stir.

  notyourfathernotyourfathernotyourfather

  Tears gushing from her eyes, Kim spun away from the bed and started opening dresser drawers, yanking them out to the stops and rooting through them. Finding nothing, she turned to the walk-in closet. And there, high on a top shelf and cocooned in her mother’s winter sweaters, she found a small gray strongbox. She took it down and tried to open it, but it was locked. When she shook it there was a papery flutter inside.

  With a last glance at her mother, Kim took the box downstairs. She grabbed a hammer and a screwdriver from the toolbox under the kitchen sink and returned to her room, locking the door behind her.

  * * *

  Jack stood at his target range with a Sig Sauer P226 and emptied the magazine into a paper silhouette. He had five extra mags, all fully loaded, arrayed on the table in front of him. When one magazine was empty he quick-released it combat style and slammed a fresh one home. It took him less than two minutes to blast seventy-five rounds into the kill zone.

  He loaded his Desert Eagle next, an eight-shot .50 caliber semi auto, the most powerful handgun in his extensive collection. He had four extra clips for this one and he grouped them on the table in readiness. The gun bucked like a mechanical bull.

  * * *

  The flat thumps of discharging bullets failed to register in Kim’s brain. She knelt on her bedroom floor with the tip of the screwdriver wedged into the seam of the strongbox and struck it repeatedly with the hammer. She missed more often than she connected, the hammer skinning her knuckles, but she continued to swing without pause, her braces flashing in a hell-bent snarl. After several futile attempts, she flung the screwdriver aside and took the hammer to the box itself, flattening it under a rage that had been building since her fou
rth birthday, the first Jack had forgotten.

  “Come on, you bastard. Open. Open.”

  And then it did.

  Breathing hard, Kim pried back the ruined lid and removed the documents one by one. What she was after, what she had known she would find here, lay hidden at the bottom like a dirty secret, under a stack of old passports and birth certificates, mortgage papers and wills, letters and meaningless mementos.

  Adoption papers.

  * * *

  By two AM the shooting had ceased. The house was silent and dark, like a pocket of deep space. Kim stood before the liquor cabinet in the dining room. In her mind’s eye the plump girl in the documentary stared into the camera with living-dead eyes.

  I do it so I don’t have to feel.

  She selected a bottle at random—Remy Martin, VSOP—and took it up to her room. Sobbing, she climbed onto her bed and drank until the pain backed away, at first hating the hot, pungent taste, then, gradually, savoring it. She lost consciousness about an hour later.

  At some point during that long night she sat up in bed, the room whirling around her, and vomited into the hammock of sheets between her legs. She could feel another wave coming and managed to stagger down the hall to the bathroom. She lay on the tiles her mother had nearly bled to death upon, dimly realizing that Jack must have cleaned the place up, and rested her chin on the rim of the bowl, sweat beading on her face.

  * * *

  The bedroom door creaked. Jenny opened her eyes and saw Jack standing in the doorway. He lingered there a moment, facing her, then came in and began to undress. It was four AM.

  “Jack, where have you been?”

  “Burying our child.”

  In the dark Jenny began to cry. Her head felt a mile thick. She said, “I wanted that baby so much...”

  Jack climbed into bed and spooned her in his arms. “I know, sweetheart, me too. I guess it just wasn’t meant to be.”

  Jenny stiffened in his embrace, thinking, How dare you touch me... But then she relaxed, accepting his solace. So many terrible things had happened, so many things needed to be said, but she simply could not face any of it right now.

  She said, “Did you look in on Kim?”

  “Sleeping like a baby,” Jack said.

  “Good. Goodnight, Jack.”“’Night, Jen.”

  * * *

  An hour before dawn, Kim sat on the edge of the bathtub with an Exacto knife in her hand, running the blade in and out with her thumb. Behind her in the tub lay some of her best drawings, each of them shredded in turn, the torn pieces soaked in a blast from the shower head. She’d stuck her face into the spray, too, hoping to shake off the numbing effects of the alcohol, but it hadn’t helped. Hadn’t dislodged the notion that had been steadily taking shape in her mind.

  Cut yourself...

  Kim touched the stubby blade to her wrist and pressed with tentative force. Closing her eyes, she dragged the blade across her skin—and jerked it away with a stifled cry. She looked at her wrist, but she hadn’t even broken the skin.

  Clenching her teeth, she tried again. Again the knife danced away, but this time a thin red line of blood appeared. At the sight of it, faintness pulsed through her in steamy waves. The knife slipped from her grasp and Kim lowered her head between her knees, holding that position until the feeling passed.

  When she sat up she noticed a pair of her father’s dress pants on the back of the bathroom door. She rose unsteadily and removed them from their hook. She checked the pockets, but found only a few cents in change. Nothing of his. Then she noticed the black leather belt, the one he’d whipped her with, and slipped it out of its loops.

  Seeing her course clearly now, Kim snugged the belt around her neck, ran the tip through the buckle and tugged experimentally. The noose closed off her throat with only minimal pressure. She’d have to be careful.

  She looked up at the high shower head. It was going to be close. She’d have to stand on her tiptoes to reach...

  Kim gave the shower wall a thump, producing a low tympanic boom. Good. When she started pounding with her heels, the racket should be enough to bring him running. She’d only have to hang for a few seconds.

  He’ll see me now...

  She stepped up onto the wet tub edge in her bare feet, the effort making her head spin. Leaning forward, she grasped the shower arm with her left hand. With her right she wrapped the loose end of the belt around the base of the shower head. Taking up the slack, she formed a simple granny knot, then leaned forward a little more, letting the belt take some of her weight. The knot tightened with a leathery creak.

  Frightened, she glanced once last time at the Exacto knife on the floor.

  No. This is better. I can do this.

  She closed her eyes and imagined Jack bursting into the room. He would be the only one strong enough to lift her up. The only one strong enough to save her.

  Kim leaned on the shower arm and drove her heel into the tiled wall, producing a hollow boom. She did it five more times in rapid succession then paused, listening...

  But the house remained silent. Her parents’ bedroom door, ten feet down the hall, did not open.

  She hoofed the wall again, more powerfully this time, the belt tightening against the fierce strain of tendons in her neck.

  Come on come on come—

  There was a sudden dry crack and the shower arm popped an inch out of its bed of plaster, just enough to make Kim lose her balance and slip. Her feet went airborne and the belt took her full weight, tightening around her neck with suffocating force. Within seconds her head felt on the brink of exploding. She kicked her legs in flashfire panic, trying to reach the edge of the tub, trying to backpedal through space to safety. She clawed at the belt with both hands, but her weight drew the loop impossibly tight. She tried to scream but all that came out was a froggy croak.

  I’m hanging. Oh God I’M HANGING.

  Her toes touched the edge of the tub, found purchase—and slipped off. The arch of her right foot found the cold water knob, pushed, and she was up, clutching the chrome shower arm, digging at the choking band of leather with the fingers of her free hand. She loosened it a fraction, took a great whooping breath—

  And the faucet knob spun, spilling her off, forcing a jet of cold water through the shower head. The spray was needle-sharp and it soaked Kim’s bucking body like a frigid cloudburst.

  Her thrashing heels hammered the wall. Lurid red dots capered in her vision and hot urine streamed down her legs, mixing with the icy water. For one wild moment she thought she was saved. The heel of her left foot came down on the spout and supported her weight...but the spout gave way and Kim slipped off.

  The belt tightened and the water rattled down. Blind with terror, Kim twisted and felt something snap in her neck, some small bone in her neck. She swiveled the other way and something else splintered.

  Daddy, why won’t you come?

  The shower arm jerked again, popping another half inch out of the wall, and the tips of Kim’s toes brushed the bottom of the tub...

  But it wasn’t enough. It was a lover’s teasing caress, a phantom’s evil kiss.

  The red dots, scintillating, growing dark, began to coalesce.

  please...

  Kim’s bowels let go. Her heels beat a manic tattoo, but the action was no longer voluntary. She had begun to convulse from asphyxiation.

  * * *

  Jenny shook Jack awake. “Jack, I think there’s someone in the house.”

  Jack came up on one elbow, instantly alert, listening to the muffled, spastic drumbeat that seemed to emanate from the very walls.

  “Jack, what is that?”

  He took a snub-nose .38 revolver out of the bedside table drawer and checked the load. Then, agile as a cat, he was off the bed and across the room, weapon aimed at the ceiling. He eased the door open and peered into the hallway.

  Jenny came up behind him. “Hurry. We’ve got to see if Kim’s all right.” The thudding impacts were trailing off, diminish
ing in frequency and force.

  Light and silent, Jack glided down the hallway to Kim’s room—and heard a single weak impact beyond the closed bathroom door behind him.

  Jenny peered into Kim’s darkened room and saw her empty bed.

  sleeping like a baby

  Jack flung the bathroom door open and froze, filling the gap with his body. Frantic, Jenny stood on tiptoes to look over his shoulder.

  “Oh-my-GOD.”

  Kim’s body hung twitching from the shower arm, plum-colored tongue protruding, face an engorged, leering monstrosity. A rope of bloody mucus dangled from her nose and her red eyes bulged shockingly. Cold water sizzled down on her head, which rested on her shoulder in a posture of repose. The flesh of her neck had all but swallowed the belt. Only the buckle still showed, winking eerily beneath her left ear. A single strangled syllable issued from her throat.

  “kk...kk...kk...”

  In that first, spun-out instant of disbelief, as Jenny stood rigid behind Jack, Kim’s hands came up from her sides and beckoned.

  “Jack,” Jenny said, squeezing past him into the bathroom, “she’s still alive.” She grabbed Kim around the thighs and tried to lift her up, but Kim was slippery and wet, too heavy. Jenny skidded on the puddled tiles, striking her knee painfully against the edge of the tub. She screamed at Jack, “Please, Jack, help me. She’s still alive.”

  Jack didn’t move.

  “For God’s sake, JACK.”

  Then Jenny saw the Exacto knife on the floor. Seizing it, she stepped into the tub and hacked at the taut leather band. The blade was sharp and in a single quick stroke she had it.

  Kim’s dead weight came down with brutal suddenness, the back of her head striking the broken faucet, blood staining the swirling water pink. Jenny crouched over her and dug at the belt, freeing it, pitching it aside.

  Then Jack was there, helping her lift Kim out of the tub, and a part of Jenny’s nature her mother had always told her would be her undoing spoke up on Jack’s behalf, trying to convince her that his cold inaction had been the simple paralysis of shock.