Shadowplays

by W. D. Gagliani

  I grabbed a box of rations from the galley and hefted it out the door. The fire glowed now, even from outside. I went back in to find gloves and a new face mask and to get Frank. But it was too late for him; he was on fire.

  I felt liquid in my eyes.

  “Frank!” I shouted one last time, and then the place was ablaze and I had no choice but to get out. I grabbed the box and felt it slip out of my clumsy grip, then managed to cradle it in my arms and stumbled a few shaky steps toward the dome, following the line of recent footprints. My way was lit by the flames behind me, which were now licking through the roof and into the cold polar air. I watched for a moment, enthralled, then followed those quickly fading footprints to where they led. To the dome. Maybe later I’d head for the Scott Icewall.

  In a week or so, if the weather held, the relief plane would come. Meantime, the dome would be shelter enough. Fifty yards was indeed the right distance. I wanted to thank the Major, but he was gone. And the girls were gone. And Frank. I already missed Frank. He was a buddy. Even if he did complain too much about those lights I never saw.

  I left him there, in the Jamesway hut. With the wind.

  * * *

  LEAD ME INTO TEMPTATION

  Published in SHADOWPLAYS and WICKED KARNIVAL; Honorable Mention in

  the Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror (14th edition)

  A Minor

  She fades a little when I touch her when I dream.

  Not so most people can tell, but they notice that she’s a little pale. Just a bit more pale than the last time they saw her. You can see it in their eyes, though they’re too polite to tell her. They look at me and tilt their heads slightly, her artist friends, implying that I should take better care of her.

  So I avoid dreaming.

  I stare at the photographs - at her photographs - of me and others and see the images shiver as I fill in the parts no longer there, coloring bland, flat backgrounds with the lush strokes of memory. The colors are only temporary, and the brush-strokes, too, disappear and leave behind sepia-toned emptiness. I stare at the photographs and scratch the palm of my hand roughly, feeling the hard points of dried blood.

  E Minor

  “Good night,” she said, stepping out of the car. And she meant it not as a parting greeting, but as an assessment - a verdict rendered on hours and minutes joined together briefly to form a shared experience.

  I laughed softly to myself. “Yeah.” The car door clicked gently. I resisted the urge to say something sarcastic.

  Watching her cross the rain-polished street to her front lawn, I felt a shiver. I shook it off and saw her unlock the door, then turn to wave. I waved back, and she went inside. Moments later a light flicked on in the house. The kitchen, then the living room. Then they both went off and I knew that she was pacing, a massive glass of milk clutched in her right hand and a chocolate chip cookie sheltered in the left. So badly I wanted to share in that ritual, the same ritual that made her pale complexion blush ever so slightly whenever I found the audacity to mention it in front of her friends.

  Instead, I was alone.

  I shook again, the trembling starting near my lower back and working its way up to my neck and skull. This time it was violent. Brutal.

  “God,” I thought. “Not again.” Or thought I thought. The words might have slipped from my lips, but I couldn’t be sure. I put the car in gear and drove away slowly, letting the low rumble of the engine coax me almost to sleep. A shudder wracked my insides and I wished for the hundredth time that Milwaukee offered more convenient cliffs. The steering wheel was a snake in my hands, and the itch to swerve overpowering.

  It was raining into the car and the cold droplets stung my face. But I didn’t roll up the window.

  No traffic snarled the streets; they reminded me vaguely of a deserted movie set, where filming has been canceled because of the rain. A Miami Vice rerun, where the wet streets reflect dim lights and slow-motion Italian chrome heading for some film noir rip-off scene.

  Mostly, the wet streets just reminded me of cold loneliness and pure self-hatred.

  It was night, and I was going home.

  My drinks that evening hadn’t really calmed - liquor rarely achieves its mythical medicinal status for me - but I did feel a pleasant glow surrounding my head. The windshield wipers shucked and shecked in front of my eyes, beating a steady rhythm and lulling me to sleep. I could feel my eyes glaze and the lids closing like window shades on rusty tracks, and a faint hum worked its way into my head from one side to the other before settling into a steady needle behind my left ear.

  The hum increased in volume and intensity, and I felt myself spinning. The curved snake in my hands stiffened, and there was only the hum, boring into my head.

  “No!” I shouted, and hit the thumbtack mounted face-up on the dashboard with my open palm. The pain was sharp and severe, and the blood welled up quickly in the tiny wound.

  The humming stopped immediately, and my eyes cleared a bit. A quick look in the greenish light of the dash told me I was dripping blood rapidly. A dozen other tiny wounds stared back at me defiantly with their miniature brown scab-eyes. I turned back to the windshield, disgusted.

  B Minor

  In my dream I stood before a gallery wall on which hung a long series of photographs set in thick, gold-edged frames. There was no sound in the gallery, and light cascaded onto each portrait as if from a hidden fixture. Shadows darkened the edges of my sight, and my own shadow seemed to fall on the images as I scanned them with burning eyes. They were not Jackie’s prize-winning photographs, though they showed her love of conspicuous minimalism. I was not surprised to see the images move like video broadcast on gaudy, French Provincial televisions. People engaged in some simple aspect of life - walking in front of Hassam’s Grocery, sitting on the crooked green bench at Red Arrow Park, and riding a banana-seat Schwinn up and down the hilly trails behind the park. Older kids, riding the bus to Kampman High School, talking about last week’s Six Million Dollar Man episode. Sitting in a history class, watching the school’s only black faculty member struggle to contain his temper and control an unruly group of spoiled, smug white kids. These were photographs that might have illustrated the book of my life, peopled by those I had known. Lab partners and college roommates and colleagues and students and friends and lovers and family members. All tied together by one thin string, one strand of strangling wire, forming a noose. Handshakes, hugs, kisses, caresses, intimacy. Even as I watched in my dream, these people in the images that were photographs and weren’t, all gradually faded to shadows and my own image grew brighter.

  Ever brighter, like an aura.

  My curse. Doesn’t everyone have a curse?

  F# Minor

  It was still raining, and I was still the only one on the road. Thank God for that.

  I flipped on the radio, which was a mistake. The music seemed to massage every brain cell and put it gently to sleep, and I could feel the glow beginning to return. I punched the program button and went from tinkling New Age to Rock and Roll Oldies - Chuck Berry pounded his way into my skull. But the glow was forcing its way back. I punched plastic and a heavy metal ballad, reminding me that I was “Unforgiven,” stroked the glow further into my head and then my open palm smacked the thumbtack and the metal spike slid into tender skin and ripped flesh anew, and the wetness made my grip sticky on the wheel.

  I forced myself to reach out again and stabbed at the button. Metallica was silenced, and the quiet was more enjoyable than anything I have ever experienced, or so I convinced myself as the pain in my palm settled into an annoying throb.

  Then I was putting the key into the lock, the rest of the drive a blur, and nothing mattered anymore. But that wasn’t completely true.

  The condo’s lights blazed into my eyes as I opened the door. Better, so I could not succumb to the delights of darkness and the many enveloping fingers that touch and tease and tempt and try to corrupt me to dream.

  The bright fluorescents made me bl
ink and I went in. Closed the door. A tiny point set in the doorjamb caught my eye, the dried stain around it darkening the light woodwork.

  The television sound was muted to a drone. I looked vacantly at the big square picture for a while. A newscaster was speaking words I would never hear, or care to, as superimposed drawings jabbed his left shoulder. I watched him open and close his mouth at a rapid pace, then finally turned away from the set and stripped off my clothes, throwing them in a pile on the cocktail table. Change and belt buckle clattered on the scarred wood, near the metal point set into the table’s edge and its surrounding circular stain. I stepped toward the studio set-up, which occupies a large portion of my living room.

  Naked, I hunched before the Mac and felt it come alive under my fingers. I flicked power switches and brought faders up on my old-fashioned console. Then I was maneuvering through menus and watching slick Performer windows gaping open, like glimpses into someone’s soul. I traveled back and forth from cursor and data buttons on the Proteus, one slim module in a rack of many, setting up the sounds that I heard in my head that night.

  Cellos, low and rumbling. Timpani, like thunderclaps. Pipe organ, ethereal, almost crystalline.

  My left hand stabbed the keys of the digital piano, and I laid a track on the sequencer. Organ, sparse chords. I would fill in more of the space later. Right then notes fell from my fingers and became MIDI note-on and note-off data, following my nuances perfectly into the computer’s memory, black horizontal bars showing my progress through the melody that occupied my head and both scarred hands.

  Switch to track two; play back track one and add a new layer. Cellos, for depth. Keep it dark. Left hand only.

  Next track. Percussion, like a heartbeat. Steady, filling in the spaces between the existing notes. Weaving between the crystal and the rumble, building. Crescendo. Orgasm. Afterglow.

  A few keystrokes and the tiny monitors were playing all of it back to me. Sixteen bars of hellish self-revelation. Sixteen bars of the darkness that lay inside me, coiled, waiting to snag an innocent victim in my dreams. In my nightmares.

  I chose not to Save at the prompt, and the software folded in upon itself. Mocking.

  I laughed. My music was too dark even for my next Incubus release.

  For years I had put the darkness in my soul down on tape for myself - what else could one do when everyone who meant anything to him eventually disappeared forever? But a local indie label had shown interest in my dark musings, and had produced three compact discs of what I called my Progressive Gothic Symphonic Sonic Sculptures - which stores creatively stocked under New Age. Jackie was the photographer who had done the covers, and our relationship had grown quickly despite my fears that one day she would begin to disappear. I had fooled myself into thinking that I could avoid dreaming about her, protecting her from the fate so many others had suffered. The only way I kept my contacts at the label from disappearing was by playing the recluse, and conducting business only by phone - not much chance of dreaming about their voices. But Jackie, well, I wanted to see her. And as a cover artist, she was forced to consult with me in person.

  Loving her came easily enough - keeping her alive was another matter.

  Now my soul was so tortured that the next Incubus release would make funeral marches seem like happy ditties by comparison. And the music that had poured forth tonight was too dark even for me.

  The irony. I giggled silently as the television droned on in absolute silence.

  Sleep bid me enter, bid me return to its arms.

  “Lead me into temptation,” I said. It was a quote from a song from long ago.

  And I knew that my body would follow. I felt the relaxation beginning in my thighs and run up my torso, down my arms. It was a dream, building inside. I wouldn’t know what it was until afterwards, when it was too late. I shook my head in defiance.

  No.

  The computer screen mocked me with its empty leer and cold appraisal.

  No!

  My flesh parted violently on the upward-pointed thumbtack, and I groaned with the waking pain.

  I pushed away from the rack synthesizers, lowered myself onto the vinyl seat of the chrome rowing machine in the far corner of the room, and began to stroke. The sweat trickled off my skin as soon as I started the rhythmic movements. It oozed from every pore and ran freely down my slick body, dripping and spotting the light carpet underneath.

  I rowed until my arms and legs ached, the muscles taut and stiff with fatigue. And then I rowed some more, my breathing reduced to a ragged discord of gasps. I stroked until - my gasps clutching vainly at elusive air - I nearly collapsed out of the seat, which was slippery with sweat from my buttocks. I lay on the floor, spent, and let my heartbeat slow, giving my pulse a chance to catch up and stop hammering at my brain between beats.

  This wasn’t enough. I still couldn’t sleep without dreaming. Total exhaustion was the key, but I was far from that desirable state. The hum was starting again, that same humming that always indicated a dream formulating somewhere in the recess of my brain. I cursed the ceiling.

  Then I reached over and smacked my palm onto the thumbtack spear on the cocktail table, twice in rapid succession, stifling the scream with a whimper and a groan.

  Tears of pain wet my cheeks.

  C# Minor

  The picture stands out from the others in the collection. It shows my mother and father standing with me near the ice dunes on the shore of Lake Michigan one winter, long ago. Someone in a parked car had taken the shot for us, smiling at our adventurousness. It was cold and windy, and huge grey masses of clouds obscured the winter sun. He’d smiled, too, because we wanted Rolf, our Black Labrador, in the picture. There he stands, looking away from us, a dog-shaped stain on a background of white and grey. His tail points at my father, who stands bundled in an old-fashioned cloth winter coat and ersatz pilot’s hat with the flaps hanging down over his ears. My mother hugs herself in a fashionless, dumpy parka. Her hair is bound up in a scarf, and you can see she’s cold and would rather be home, warm in her kitchen. I’m wearing an olive drab snorkel parka, the kind with orange lining and fake fur around the hood. I’m not wearing the hood because I’m at the age when you need to safeguard your image, so my cheeks are speckled red and white. I seem detached, staring off in the distance. This picture reminds me of a period, a certain time.

  I blink and feel the tears squeeze from between my lids. For now I can see again that I am the only one in the picture. Only light spots mark their places on the film, a grey mass near us marks the faithful Rolf, last to go because of some obscure biological difference between his kind and mine.

  I don’t really know what my kind is, but I have suspicions. Who has ever heard of a dream vampire? Why am I not light-sensitive? Why don’t I crave blood? At least the cursed creatures in the movies all know what to expect. They know what to do. I learn daily, but it’s always too late. Too damn late.

  And now I weep as I look at this altered picture that no longer reflects life as it was, only life as it is. Strangely, this is one portrait that does not adorn the wall of my dream gallery.

  G# Minor

  “It can’t be more than insomnia,” Jackie had said over her Comfort old-fashioned. “Just take some sleeping pills, like Sominex or Tylenol PM or something, and you’ll be all right.” Her glossy pink lips formed a straight line, as if to emphasize her disapproval. Her tongue snaked out to dab at the corner of her mouth. Whether she disapproved of insomnia or Tylenol or Sominex, I couldn’t tell. Her stubbornness might have been endearing, if only … well, I considered it part of her artist’s psychological make-up. Nonetheless, I could only love her.

  “I’ve tried.” I said. “But it’s not that I can’t sleep - my problem is that I can’t handle what happens whenever I do.” I shook my head. It was useless. I knew what it sounded like, and how I sounded saying the words.

  “Everybody dreams, Paul.” She sipped her drink, implying the simple solution I was just too self-abso
rbed to see.

  Everybody dreams …

  “These aren’t ordinary dreams, dammit!” I gulped down half of my wilting rum and tonic. “They’re - nightmares, nightmares that you just can’t imagine. They aren’t the typical scary nightmares. They affect people, everyone around me.” I sobbed as the thought lanced my brain. “They affect you, Jackie, even though you don’t know it. They do.”

  I covered my face with my scarred hands. I thought of how pale she’d looked when we met earlier. The light brick walls, source of Milwaukee’s “Cream City” label, were darker than her complexion. Her features were becoming translucent - occasionally I thought I could see through the edges of her silhouette, when she made a sudden motion and the blur made her outline disappear. If not for the bright lipstick, I knew that her lips would have been transparent. I knew it was happening, and I couldn’t reverse it.

  My explanation for why I’d avoided her for weeks was failing, and fast.

  I understood that she was struggling to believe. Wanting to, for my sake … Our sake? I saw the concern in her eyes and felt heartsick, because I was hurting her and the only way to stop would be to - what? Forget her? I’d tried hypnosis, once, and awakened alone, as if the intensity of my state had sped up the process and erased the hypnotist from both our lives a hundred times faster than if I’d merely met him socially. After all, it was unlikely he would ever have appeared in any of my dreams - that is, until he opened up the door and placed himself there, unprotected.

  Right now, Jackie’s acceptance meant more to me than even a cure. Well, almost more. Under the table’s lip, I scratched the scabs on my palm. I felt wetness.

  “You don’t understand what I’m trying to say. My dreams directly affect people. My friends, parents. Everyone.”

  She glanced at me uneasily. “You don’t have any friends, you always tell me. And I thought your parents were dead.”

  I gulped bitter, icy water and booze. “Yes.”