Crude Sunlight 1

by Phil Tucker

  The blue screen vanished, replaced by something that had obviously been shot on a handheld camcorder. It was dark, nighttime, outside some massive building that loomed vaguely in the near distance before the camera. The sound of nervous breathing filled the apartment with a hoarse roar, and Thomas jackknifed forward to lower the volume as Henry spoke, "C'mon, hurry up!"

  Chapter 2

  Henry. He was holding the camera. The voice had come as if from behind Thomas' shoulder, and before he could help it he was on the edge of the couch. Several people dressed in black were leaning a massive ladder against a tall wire fence. Someone muttered something, and another laughed. The chain link fence sagged under the ladder's weight, and then somebody was going up, scaling it like a monkey. Henry turned the camera quickly, showing some trees looming up in the darkness, the lights of the city all around, tall buildings, all of it blurred in this quick check before he focused once more on the ladder.

  The first guy had reached the top, swung his legs over, and was now dropping down, grabbing handholds of the diamonds in the wire mesh, the fence chattering and clinking till he dropped from halfway to the grass below. The second figure was already at the top and the third was at the base of the ladder, looking up.

  "Okay, here we go," whispered Henry, and stepped up to the ladder. The angle swung up, and suddenly Thomas was looking up at the third person's ass as they climbed up quietly.

  "Nice ass," said Henry, eliciting an amused chuckle from above. Julia, he thought. Then Henry was going up, mounting each rung quickly. The screen whipped around violently as he reached the top and dropped the camera to the waiting hands of someone below. It was caught, steadying, fumbled around and then aimed at Henry as he dropped down onto the grass.

  Henry's face, right there, staring out of the TV screen at Thomas. He looked excited, eyes wide, a black hood falling back off his head, exposing his tousled mop of black hair. He reached up, pulled the hood down and then grabbed the camera. The point of view swung around, and then they were running, ladder abandoned. The massive building loomed high above them, looking like a fort, a castle, something improbably old and European. The terse, quick breathing of people running. Someone made a joke, people laughed, were hushed. Finally they reached the building's base, lined up against the wall, and the camera panned up and across.

  It truly was huge. Made of brick, thick-walled with tall, narrow windows that were choked full of broken glass behind the wire mesh that covered them. Two huge towers rose into the night like the horns of a gazelle, their points capped with verdigrised copper, gleaming eerily in the moonlight.

  "C'mon, it's around here somewhere," somebody said, quiet and authoritative. The group moved along the base of the building, walking quietly in single file for about a minute till they rounded a corner and stopped before a huge crack in the wall. It was as if someone had pulled a seam apart, had burst open the bricks so that it gaped, empty and dark like a wound in the side of the building.

  The camera focused on the interior but it was too dark within to make anything out. Quiet whisperings, and then everybody drew flashlights. One by one they slipped inside and one of the guys whispered a warning about pigeon shit, something about gas. Henry went last, and then the flashlights were switched on, their broad bright discs swarming across the walls, ceiling, floor. The room was large, empty, the wallpaper bulging with fist sized cysts, the pattern long faded and leached of color by washes of filthy water that had stained it to brown. Crown moldings topped off the walls, giving the place an air of regal desolation.

  There were more excited whispers, and then one of them turned to the camera, holding the light beneath her chin, illuminating her face from below as if she were around a campfire and about to tell a ghost story.

  Julia, thought Thomas again, definitely. Her face was brilliantly lit, the base of her chin, the underside of her nose, the under swellings of her cheeks, her brow and forehead glowing an incandescent whitepink. The rest dimmed to darkness, but her lips were pulled back in an ironic smile, and Thomas saw that she wasn't beautiful, not exactly, but instead incredibly striking, her hair cut short almost like a boy's, her features sharp and betraying a certain harshness. She smiled and then turned back to the darkness.

  They moved through the room, shoes crackling on the detritus strewn across the floor, and out into a large hallway. It had the look of a hospital, the corridor wide and box shaped, long and lined with doors. An old hospital, from the looks of it, with the moldings around the doors artfully done in dark wood. It looked damned spooky, Thomas decided, sitting back and shaking his head. There was no way that he'd ever go in there.

  Some of this must have been felt by Henry and his companions, for they quieted and began to file down the corridor, the sound of their feet loud in the echoing silence. There were a few old leather and wood wheelchairs abandoned in the hallway, large clunky devices that must have been at least fifty years old. They paused before them and whispered comments to each other, snapped off a few photographs. They paused before each door, flashing their lights inside, seeing little more than broken glass, random pieces of furniture knocked down and destroyed, the walls covered by mostly obscene or drug-related suggestions in spray painted letters.

  The end of the corridor opened into a shoebox-shaped hall with a staircase on one end and a large arched entrance leading out into a dark room beyond. They paused, discussed options and as one turned toward the steps. They stopped at the head of the stairs and flashed their lights down into the depths, examining the dim corridor visible far below.

  "Eric, what do you think?" asked Henry.

  A young man with curly hair the color of beaten bronze turned to look at the camera. "We go down. That's where the steam tunnels are; they lead out under the other wings."

  "Well, all right then. Saddle up, guys." Eric nodded and turned to stare down the stairwell. He seemed about to say something further when a loud shuddering sound echoed up from below, like a heavy object being jerked across the floor, something ponderous like a wardrobe or desk. They froze, looked at each other.

  "What the hell was that?" Julia, tense, but not frightened.

  "A bear?" The third guy, face as-yet unseen. The camera suddenly yawned, whipped around, and the guy let out a yelp of protest as Henry did something to him, the others laughing uneasily, tension broken. The camera swung up to show Eric moving slowly down the stairs, straining to see what might be moving below.

  "Hold on guys," said Henry. "I'm going to put in a new tape." Eric looked up, face serious, pensive, and then the film crackled and cut to the blue screen of the video channel.

  Thomas blinked and rose to his feet. His heart was beating strongly and without thinking he raised the remote and pressed Rewind. For a second nothing, and then, as if in protest, the whirring sound of the tape rewinding, picking up speed. Thomas waited for five seconds and then pressed Play. A clunk from the VCR, and the image kicked back in. They emerged once more into the shoebox-shaped hall, panned around, focused on the steps. Dialogue, and then as they prepared to go down, that sound.

  Thomas paused the tape, causing the image to freeze, two bands of white crinkly chaos appearing across the screen, frozen in overlay. He rewound, pressed play, listened to it again. What was that? Had there been somebody else down there? Henry must have made it back out if the tape were here in the VCR. What had they found below? Had they made it into the other wings? Thomas suddenly wished Michelle were there with him, wondered what she would have made of the tape. Standing, Thomas rounded the low table and crouched before the VCR. There were a number of blank tapes in a shoebox to one side of the TV, each of them numbered in red pen. Ejecting the tape, Thomas saw that it was number 7. A quick rummage of the tapes in the box showed that there was no number 8.

  Rising to his feet, Thomas walked into the bedroom and looked down at the photographs. Rustling through them, he picked up the one taken in the tunnel and flipped it over. Steam tunnels under State Hospital. He turned it again and s
tared at the figure in the distance that was running away into the darkness. Was that Eric? Julia? Somebody else they had found down there? He set the photograph aside, and sat on the edge of the bed, pushing photographs back as they began to slide down the indentation his weight had made in the mattress, and picked one up at random.

  A view of a mist-wreathed garden through a broken window. A quick flip showed that it wasn't the Hospital. A second: an ornate staircase curving around a hallway, filled with weeds and plants that had grown up the steps and the floor of the hall to the height of a man's chest. Checked, Thomas stared. An interior garden? Then he saw the broken windows. No, a ruin. Another: A dark hallway, a wheelchair sitting by itself against a background of splotchy, scabrous wallpaper. Thomas flipped it: Nov. 17, 2:52am, Ground floor of State Hospital.

  Frowning, Thomas compared the times of that and the tunnel shot. The photograph of the figure fleeing had been taken nearly fifty minutes after. It had taken the crew about five minutes after the wheelchairs to reach the stairwell and go down. That meant they were in the tunnels or wherever they led for over an hour. Thomas made a face and sat back. An hour down there. He shook his head slowly in amazement.

  More photographs, his impatience causing him to flick quickly through them. A stairwell viewed from above that looked like the curve of a nautilus shell. A factory shot from the distance. A control panel covered in dust and filth. An abandoned pair of boots in a locker. A wall covered in graffiti depicting a rotting head. An empty room in which a chandelier had crashed to the floor. A side shot of Julia, arms crossed, head to one side, gazing seriously at the camera.

  Thomas dropped the other photographs and examined it. She was wearing a white oxford shirt under a gray sweater, the sleeves pulled up her forearms. He turned it around, and saw Sept. 29, 3.42pm, Julia Morrow.

  Julia Morrow. Reaching into his pocket, he drew out his cell phone and dialed 411.

  The phone rang twice, and then he quickly navigated the options to reach the operator. A bored woman's voice, rich with cadences and the sound of gum being chewed asked him which listing he desired.

  "Julia Morrow, Buffalo, New York."

  "Thank you," said the operator, clearly not meaning it. Thomas listened to the sound of keys being typed, and then the woman came back, "All right, connecting you."

  Thomas started--connecting him? He stood up, took a step, froze, holding the photograph, staring down into her unequivocal gaze. The phone rang, and rang, and then--

  "Hello?"

  "Hi--Julia? Julia Morrow?"

  "Yeah? Who is this?"

  "Hi. This is Thomas Verkraft. Henry's older brother."

  She hung up. Thomas took the phone away from his head and stared at it. He looked at her photograph, and then dropped both it and the phone on the bed. Well.

  Scratching his head, he walked out and into the kitchen, took a glass from the sink and filled it with tap water. Lifting the glass, he saw that it was filled with dried crud, stained with what looked like strawberry jam, thick and clotted. Frowning, he set it aside, and pulled out a mug that was stained with dry tea, which he easily cleaned and then filled.

  Moving back to the couch, he sat down and tried to think, to focus, but his thoughts kept coming back to Julia. She had to know something. Otherwise, why hang up on him so promptly?

  His cell phone rang. Thomas set the mug aside and strode back into the bedroom, where he snatched it up and answered.

  "Hello?"

  "So--" her voice was strangely guarded and tentative at the same time. "You're the brother."

  Thomas let out a sigh and nodded, "Yes. His older brother. I'm in town taking care of his belongings."

  "What do you want?" She sounded half resigned, as if she were asking a rhetorical question.

  "I've got some questions."

  "I'm sure you do."

  "I'd like some answers."

  "Are you trying to sound like an FBI agent, or do you just naturally pull it off?"

  "I..." Thomas had no idea how to reply. "I'm about as far from the FBI as you can get," he said, "I'm an emerging market manager for a hedge fund." There was silence on the other end. "Look, can we meet? I'd like to talk to you."

  There was a long pause on the other end of the line, and he tried to picture her, her lips pursed, her brows furrowed as she weighed factors he couldn't imagine. "Fine. The Campus Center coffee house, eleven o'clock."

  "All right, great. Listen, I really--"

  She hung up. Nonplussed, Thomas stared at the phone again, and then slipped it into his pocket. Well then. It was a start. Fatigue washed over him, and he looked at all the photographs with a suddenly melancholy indifference. What game had Henry been playing? The tapes, the pictures, the disappearance--what had he gotten himself into? Thomas felt worn out. He'd deal with it tomorrow. He'd meet with Julia and then call the movers. But right now all he wanted to do was to get out of this apartment, this building, and go to his hotel room and sleep. Turning off the lights one by one, he paused by the front door and looked over his brother's stuff. Then, with a deep breath, he opened the door and stepped back out into the dog stench.

  Chapter 3

  Thomas awoke, sunlight filtering in through the curtains. He lay in bed, enjoying the warmth beneath the comforter, a sharp contrast to the chill he had slipped into the previous night, after showering.

  But now it was luxuriously warm, so soft he felt as if he were floating. The lack of an alarm clock was delightful, as was the sunshine across his face. Years of climbing numbly from his bed at four in the morning, Michelle yet asleep and coffee the only aphrodisiac that could awake him to the day's pleasures, had made such mornings a rarity. To be appreciated. Enjoyed. He stretched, rolled onto his side and arched his back, groaning and grimacing with pleasure. He relaxed and turned back to look up at the ceiling, and then suddenly, terribly, missed Michelle.

  It was a near physical ache, acute and numbing in its power. She should be lying next to him, her black hair a web of interwoven darkness against the pale of the pillow. Her eyes half closed, her smile present in the deepening laugh lines around her mouth, betraying her amusement at his overdone stretch, awaiting his smile in response, for him to take her hand and ask how she had slept.

  He looked at the empty pillow. Michelle. Was she lying in her childhood bed, gazing at the ceiling, feeling, thinking the same things? That feeling of helplessness washed over him again, provoked by an image of her face from that night, battered, one eye nearly closed from the swelling. How she had been unable to cry when he held her. Could he just call her and tell her he loved her, sweep aside all the arguments and misunderstandings and inability to connect in one clear clarion call of love, as pure as the sunlight, as beautiful as her eyes and her lips? In the morning light it seemed possible, simple, and he almost reached for the telephone right there and then.

  But no. It wasn't so simple. Not after she had left with such finality for her parent's home yesterday evening, a departure following on the heels of yet another argument, one that had prompted his own drive to Buffalo in order to avoid their empty apartment. She'd been going to her parent's home a lot since he'd taken the promotion last summer, but the amount had nearly doubled since the incident. Heading out there "to think," to recover. To ride her father's old motorbike up and down the back roads, wearing those ridiculous aviator goggles she loved. Running with Mags in the morning along the tidal wrack, the dog too old now to really keep up. Sitting on the porch with a mug of tea and a book as the sun set, enjoying the stillness. The solitude. A quiet certainty suffused him: things weren't going to last much longer. Change was coming, an end. He could practically hear the ice that had built up between them groaning and cracking under the strain. Back in college she had always said she wanted to do pro bono work. Since the incident, her desire to do so had caught fire once more. Maybe now she was finally going to make the jump.

  He frowned, and the image of Michelle faded from the far side of the bed. Nothing was simple a
nymore. He sat up with a groan, rubbed his face, and decided to shower again before reviewing last night's stocks and heading out.

  The Campus Center wasn't hard to find. The early morning sun had been beaten back by a battalion of sullen clouds that had drifted in from the west as if summoned by his dour desire. They hung oppressively low in the sky, the color of dishwater. The air felt close and the snow that lay everywhere failed to gleam or glitter. Driving up toward the University, Thomas had seen a massive building rearing up like a fist of brick from behind a screen of trees: the building from Henry's video. He had slowed down, looked at the twin stocky towers, at the verdigrised caps, old and stern and baleful. A chill had washed over him, and he'd accelerated faster than he had strictly needed to.

  Ten minutes later he had entered the large and modern looking Campus Center, a light butter yellow on the outside and looking like a minimalist mall within. Three floors, accessible by elevator and hosting innumerable meeting rooms, auditoriums and the like. Young men and women walked to and fro, holding books, shouldering back packs, talking animatedly or simply striding forward through the open spaces, heads bowed, intent on their destinations. Thomas felt old. He pressed on.

  The coffee shop was located on the ground floor with a small fan of tables and chairs spread before it. Most of the tables were empty, and Thomas quickly spotted Julia sitting by herself, chewing gum and reading a magazine set on the table before her. She was slouched to one side, base of her palm was pressed against her left temple, skewing the side of her face so that her left eye and cheek were pulled up. But it was her, unmistakably her, wearing a thin black sweater under a bright red and puffy sleeveless vest, something that looked to Thomas like a fashionable life jacket.

  He walked over and stopped before her table. It took her a moment to register his presence, and then, using her palm as a pivot, she swiveled her head up to look at him. Her eyes were hard and stared at him with unabashed appraisal that discomfited him. In the harsh light of the campus center he saw that her hair held red highlights within its auburn depths.