The Shadow's Touch

by Scott VanKirk

  The nurse he had chewed on had been willing to forgive and forget (from a distance), as long as my dad received the “care he needed.” We were stuck. At least it wasn’t a prison or even high security, but the knowledge that my dad was rotting in a loony bin at the mercy of Dr. Anderson (a.k.a., Dr. Mengele’s protégé) weighed heavily on me.

  Even though Herr Doktor may have saved my life when he pulled Jen’s father, Dr. Washington, off me, I still didn’t like or trust him. He had nefarious plans, or my name wasn’t Finn.

  As we made the drive out to the place, my ruminations were interrupted from within.

  This is totally bogus, dude.

  What?

  It’s most odious, ya know?

  Watched a little Bill and Ted again last night, did we?

  Oh no, Dude, I watched both their Excellent Adventure and their Bogus Journey. And our journey today is totally non-bodacious. Having to visit the loony bin every day for the rest of our lives? Totally egregious.

  Do you have to talk like that, Spring?

  Hey, I’m practicing my English so we can, like, communicate, ya know?

  Well, stop it, I groused. You’re freaking me out.

  I’m freaking you out? Dude, you should take a look through your brain. Like, oh my Gawd!

  I was spared further surreal discussion, because we pulled into the parking lot of the Shady Oaks Continuing Care Facility. It was different than I had pictured. I had expected something more like a sterile prison hospital than a good-sized manor house with several quaint cottages, well-kept lawns, fountains, and flowerbeds. I didn’t see any dazed and confused people wandering around in hospital gowns, either. The people we did see out and about looked normal. It was comforting.

  Oh, yuck. This place is totally non-triumphant. People actually live like this? asked Spring.

  What’s wrong with it? I thought somewhat defensively.

  Like it’s so totally… barren, ya know? This isn’t a place for life. Life is wild and untamed. Life is… like, messy, ya know?

  I tried to ignore the accent. I reached down to where she lived in my brain and tried on her perception. Everything became dull, chained, and sterile. Absent was the glorious messiness of life. Also absent were all the nooks and hiding places used by insects, frogs, and rabbits. It was… controlled and sterile, unlike the wild that Spring loved.

  I drew back into my own perception and brought her different aesthetic back with me. It was somewhat disconcerting, like visiting someplace from your childhood—different, but the same.

  We followed the sidewalk, meandering through the manicured lawn to the manor house. We entered through a large, carved wooden door and found ourselves in a short entryway leading to a sitting room. It contained comfortable chairs and an even larger communal area opened up behind it. A few staff in white uniforms were going about their business, but the other handful of people we saw in the common room sat in recliners and read the paper, played games, or held quiet conversations. Some had on robes, others wore street clothes. It was a pleasant place. It made you want to sit back and relax. There were no howling, screaming, crying, or begging people to create a creepy audio backdrop, and nobody was chained down. It could have been a country club.

  A pleasant, middle-aged nurse, who looked nothing at all like the scary-Nazi-nurse-woman who should run a loony bin, greeted us. Her perm and her friendly demeanor reminded me more of someone’s mother.

  “I’ll go and get the doctor,” she said with a warm simper and then added reassuringly, “He’s expecting you.”

  I leaned over to my mom and murmured, “Wow, this place is nice.”

  She looked around more skeptically than I had, but allowed, “It’s not too bad.”

  The non-psycho nurse came back, and invited us to follow her back to the doctor’s office. Lacking alternatives, we fell in behind her. The entire facility was lavish. The elaborate wainscoting and trim and the nine-foot ceilings created an open and affluent feeling. Calming color palettes decorated the rooms as we traveled down the thickly carpeted hall, all light, and pleasant.

  We soon came to a large open doorway. It led into an office that was an inflated clone of Dr. Anderson’s personal space at the hospital.

  We walked in to where Dr. Anderson stood in front of a patient—one of the ones dressed in a fluffy white robe. The doctor’s hands were on the man’s shoulders. I couldn’t see the patient’s expression, but the doctor had on his most sincere face while he spoke to the man.

  He finished whatever he was saying and nudged the man toward the door behind us.

  The patient gawked at us. For the first time that day, I saw someone who appeared as if he might belong here. His face was haggard, rough, and fearful, and his shoulders hunched in submission.

  Spring shouted Finn run away!

  Still Life With Shadows

  Finn, run away! Spring’s mental cry rang through my brain.

  Huh?

  Her panic centered on the gaunt young man staring at me from behind the doctor. He didn’t look particularly dangerous, and Dr. Anderson’s plush deluxe office seemed an odd place for panic.

  Don’t just look at him, you dork, Look at him!

  I brought up my second sight. Daniel, the man in the fluffy white robe, became clothed in a nightmare. Specifically, my nightmare.

  The sight of the restless black goo upon his red aura injected the nightmare’s cold desire directly into my brain. It shredded the mental safety-ducky that had been keeping me afloat in the shit-storm of weird that my life had become. My poor ducky turned tits up, split for ducky heaven, and left me choking and defenseless against the flood of long submerged memories—memories of terrors that chased me through my dreams so many years ago.

  ***

  I’m running through the murky hallways of the school, chased by a formless beast. I can feel its hunger surge behind me while its tendrils reach for me. The hall lights flicker and strive to pierce the darkness, but fail to provide anything but jumping shadows. The baleful red eyes of exit signs, which never lead to a door, pass overhead and paint the endless rows of locker doors with bloody gloom. I have to find the light. Only the light can stop the horror behind me. I have to get to the science lab. There, I’ll find the light to rescue me from the darkness.

  I’m lost! Desperation pushes me down random side halls. My breath comes in gasps and my heart pounds in time with the slap of my shoes. My lungs and legs are on fire, but I can’t stop. I come around another corner, and the door is in front of me. I’m saved!

  With a last desperate burst of speed, I get to the door, but it’s locked. I pound and scream, “Let me in! Let me in!” But it’s too late. Icy cold tendrils of the Dark Thing reach into me, begin to devour me—

  ***

  “Daniel?” Dr. Anderson’s attempt to get the young man’s attention wrenched me free from the memory.

  I focused on Daniel, who had already covered half the distance between us. His eyes were wide with wonder and need, and he held his left hand toward me like a supplicant leper approaching Jesus.

  The mass of the black thing bulged towards me, reaching out with questing tentacles. Just as in my dream, I could feel its need to fill its own emptiness—with me. The cold surge of fear prodded me into a bold and strategic move: I stepped back and put my mother between the crazy man and myself. I glanced at the doorway to check for obstacles before I ran through it screaming.

  Unfortunately, Tom the orderly filled the door with his massive bulk.

  Trapped, I backed away as Daniel stepped around my mother. He paid as much attention to her as Scrooge would a beggar lying in the street.

  My mom, disturbed by Daniel’s wide-eyed crazy act, stepped away from him as well. I mimicked her and almost fell backwards when my legs hit the chair behind me.

  Before our low-speed chase could continue, Dr. Anderson rushed up behind him, grabbed his shoulders, and steered him to the door and Tom’s welcoming arms.

  The doc kept his voice cal
m and soothing. “It’s okay, Daniel. It’s okay.” Anderson glanced at me, but didn’t seem to notice the black pseudopods oozing from the darkness that licked and probed at Anderson’s skin. It was inconceivable that the doctor couldn’t feel their malignant presence and could stop Daniel with just two hands on the young man’s shoulders. Surely, such a terrible thing wasn’t so easily controlled.

  Tom entered the room and grabbed Daniel, followed by another orderly I didn’t recognize. They turned him toward the door and guided him out with little effort. The whole time, Daniel craned his neck to keep sight of me. It was as if a rubber band connected his eyes to my face. Meanwhile, the shadow covering him strained around the orderlies toward me. The darkness of those tendrils emphasized the guards’ own pure auras, one ocean blue, the other a delicate lavender. Neither man showed the slightest awareness of the nastiness which crawled over them. Daniel himself didn’t seem aware of being ushered from the room. His eyes tracked me until he lost sight of me.

  At that point, I heard him cry out from the hallway, “No! Please, don’t make me leave. Let me go back! Please… please, he’s so warm!”

  I shuddered. Over my life, I’d grown used to being called a lot of things. I was shortish and thickish with brownish blond hair, and my nicknames ran towards things like “chubby,” “fat-boy,” and “nerd.” These names, while unflattering, were at least understandable. Recently, people routinely tossed things like “warm,” “glowing,” or “my sun” at me, but when I looked in the mirror, it was still just me looking back. Someone or something was obviously playing a practical joke on me.

  The sounds of a scuffle in the hallway competed with Daniel’s pleas. I prepared to dive behind the doctor’s desk if Daniel got away. The man’s frantic cries grew fainter, until the thunk-clack of a distant door chopped them off.

  Except when Erik Parmely and his gang had nearly beaten me to death earlier this summer, I had never been so shaken—not even after my original night terrors. When you wake up from a dream, even when you are ten years old, you can tell yourself that it was all a dream, and what happened there wasn’t real. It’s different when you know there will be no waking up to save you.

  Recruited

  I wanted to bolt out of the comfortably furnished office as soon as Daniel’s pleas were cut off, but Dr. Anderson stepped back, closed the door to the hallway, and blocked my exit. He turned around, and once again, his blue eyes bored right through my soul. That didn’t help the fear sitting in my stomach or the weakness in my legs. I edged behind my mother again.

  Anderson’s smooth and clinical inquiry caught me off-guard. “Finn? What just happened?”

  “Honey, you’re shivering!”

  I realized that was true. I was shaking in my shoes.

  Mom closed the distance between us and put a hand on my cheek. “Finn, are you okay?”

  I gave my head a quick shake and studied my sneakers.

  “Why don’t you come sit down over here?” Dr. Anderson said.

  “Mom, I need to leave!”

  Her hand guided my chin and my gaze up to meet her own troubled brown eyes. “Finn, honey, what’s wrong?”

  I couldn’t articulate my fear, and my head continued to waggle side to side on its own.

  “I just need to leave,” I whispered.

  “But, Finn, we can’t leave yet. You have to see your father. You know he’ll be hurt if you don’t spend some time with him today.” Her narrowed eyes conveyed the added urgency of my dad’s condition.

  “Mom, you don’t understand…” I paused, not daring to say more in front of Dr. Anderson.

  The doctor stalked a few steps toward me. “Finn, what did you see when you looked at Daniel?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, hoping he was asking about the man’s fuzzy white robe.

  Spring tried to help. Duh! What do you think he meant?”

  “You saw something. Something that distressed you. I’d like you to tell me what it was.”

  I turned to my mom in mute appeal.

  She glanced between me and the doctor and said, “It’s okay, Finn. We don’t have to stay.”

  With an unprecedented crack in his normal, calm control, Anderson stamped his foot and raised his voice. “No! You can’t leave without telling me!”

  My mother’s inner lioness sprang to alert. She growled, twitched her metaphorical tail, and pounced. “Dr. Anderson, if my son needs to leave here, then he will leave. You may be able to lock up my husband, but you can’t do that to my son.” She advanced on him. “Now, get out of our way.”

  Braver than I, he stood his ground against my mom. He held his hands up to stop her, and shouted, “No, you can’t—!”

  His wide eyes showed how much he had startled himself. He pulled his arms back in surrender, took a deep breath, and dropped them to his side. As he reapplied his protective covering, his face smoothed over. He addressed me with an over-the-top calmness, as if I were a rabid dog or a crazy man with a gun.

  “Please, Finn. Of course, you can leave anytime you like, Finn. I would not try to keep you here against your will, nor did I mean to imply that. But, please, Finn, would you just stay and talk with me for a moment? Just for a moment? It’s of utmost importance, Finn, not just to me, but to the many people here I’m trying to help.”

  His weird reaction and repeated use of my name made my curiosity twinge, but it was the plea to help his patients that hit the hardest. I kept thinking I might have ended up strapped to a wall in this place as well, if my father hadn’t been able to help me with my night terrors. Of course, the fact that Anderson had recently saved my life had to count for something, too.

  My mother stopped and assessed my nervous and uncertain gaze.

  “Doctor Anderson, what’s going on here? What do you want from my son?”

  Anderson clasped his hands together in front of his face as if he were about to pray. He took another calming breath. “Nothing. I just need a moment alone with him, nothing else. I just want to talk to him.”

  I panicked again at the thought of her leaving me alone with the doctor and his probing gaze. I’m sure my mother could see it in the way I looked at her.

  “Doctor, I’m not leaving my son alone with you. If you have anything to say to him, you can say it to me as well.”

  I blew out my breath in relief and watched the doctor’s internal struggle rise to the surface again. It was disturbing. I’d never seen him be anything other than calm and in control. But, somehow, his turmoil made him seem more human and a trifle less threatening.

  “Okay, just as long as… Please, will the two of you just sit and talk with me for a moment?”

  My mom raised her eyebrows at me. She wanted me to say, “Yes.”

  I didn’t want to, but I nodded anyway. “Okay.”

  The relief on Dr. Anderson’s face was immediate. He smoothed down his wrinkle-free shirt and pants, and then gestured to the couch, which was part of a circle of plush chairs.

  “Please, make yourselves comfortable. Can I get you something to drink?”

  My mom shook her head, but I never turned down an offer of free pop. “Can I have a Dr. Pepper?” Right then, I could have used something stronger, but you take what you can get when you’re eighteen.

  Dr. Anderson leaned over his desk and pressed a button. “Janice, please bring us two Dr. Peppers, a pitcher of water, and three glasses of ice.”

  We sat through a short, tense silence while the drinks were delivered. After we had them in hand, Anderson jumped right in.

  “Finn, Daniel, whom you just met, is one of our patients. His condition has been particularly difficult to treat. He’s one of a class of patients that we see here who does not respond to conventional treatments. His condition, as well as that of his peers, is destructive, resists medication, and prevents him from leading a normal life.”

  “Doctor,” interjected my mother, “I’m not sure it’s appropriate for you to talk with us about this.”

  The p
sychiatrist nodded his acquiescence. “I understand Mrs. Morgenstern. I just needed to explain my reaction, and set the stage for the gravity of this situation. I need your son to take this seriously.”

  I gulped, and my mind raced. I had no idea what he might ask me to do, but the idea of being around that oozing darkness terrified me.

  My mother said warily, “What do you need from my son?”

  “Finn, please tell me what you saw when you looked at Daniel.”

  “Nothing, he just freaked me out.”

  His laser gaze awoke and bored through my skull. I tried to ignore the burning smell and stand my ground.

  “Did you see the darkness riding him?”

  No fair, ripping the ground right out from under me. My grip tightened on the glass in my hand. Despite my visceral reaction to Daniel’s black rider, I tried to convince myself that it was just my imagination. At that point in my life I really, really didn’t want any more strangeness—a forlorn hope. My ducky was well and truly gone.

  “Did you see it, too?” I asked hesitantly.

  “Not clearly, like you obviously do, Finn, and I have to be close to him to detect it. I can sense it as a heaviness around him, just as I can sense a lightness around you.”

  I glanced at my mom, whose brow wrinkled with concern. “What did you see, Finn?”

  I took a Herculean swallow of my Dr. Pepper. “I saw a black, shadowy thing clinging to him. I recognized it from my nightmares.”

  He pounced like a miser on a rolling penny. “What nightmares?”

  “When I was younger, I started having night terrors, but they’re gone now.”

  “Your terrors were about what you saw on Daniel?”

  I bobbed my head. “Something like it, anyway.”

  “Do you still get these night terrors?”

  I finished off my drink. “No. My father showed me how to keep them away.”

  He pounced on that one too. “How?” His eagerness startled me.