by Jeff Siamon
Not again! he thought. But he opened his eyes rather than pretend nothing unusual was happening to him. Best to find out the worst. Only the worst wasn’t a bright, desert sky. Or the sad face of his dream girl. Or even the blue-eyed maiden.
“Connie?”
It was Vicky face that filled his vision. And it was a relief.
“What happened?” he asked.
“You fell when we got inside.”
“Fell.” He closed his eyes. Tried to concentrate to see if there was anything in his memory other than unlocking his door. But it was blank. “Yeah. I guess so.”
“My goodness, what’s happening to you, Connie? This is all getting too frightening for me to take in.” Compassion was at odds with how fearful she had become.
“Yeah. Good question. Here. Help me up.”
That was easier said than doable. Connie’s legs were stiff and every time he moved his injured leg, the pain he felt tried to convince him to just lie still. “I must have lost a lot of blood. I’m pretty weak.” The thought came out as speech after he and Vicky had managed to get him to stand.
Both glanced down at the stain of red on his pants leg. “God, are you bleeding? You are bleeding!”
“I got to take a look at this. Help me into the bathroom.”
She put an arm around him and together they slide-stepped to the door of the bathroom.
In the bathroom, he eased himself down on the toilet seat. “In the drawers under the bed, you’ll find some socks and underwear. And I think a pair of pants. Or I might have hung them up. There’s a closet just on the side of the bathroom door. You can get a shirt in there and the pants. If I hung them up.”
She heard what he said but all she could think about was the stain on his pant leg. At its darkened, crusty color.
“Vicky, please. I’d do it, but I think I’m at the end of my ─ I think the word is tether ─ only I’m not sure what a tether is. Vicky!”
“Yes. Sorry. I guess I’m a little freaked out about all this.”
“Yeah. You and me both.”
“I’m not good around bloody things.”
“Well, you don’t have to do anything. Just get me some clean clothes. Okay?”
She was staring at the sink rather than look at him. “Sure.”
When she left, he stood up by leaning on the sink counter. What he saw in the mirror didn’t give him confidence. “You look like shit.” He pulled down his pants expecting to see an open wound. But it was hidden by some material tied around his leg with the same cloth that bound his cast. (And that was something else he had to deal with.) He touched it. It was spongy. Red in parts where it hadn’t been stained by the blood. Moss? he wondered.
With a shake of his head, he undid the strips of cloth. Then slowly pulled at the makeshift bandage. That produced another “Shit!” Only louder. The covering was reluctant to leave his skin.
“Vicky!” he shouted. “Get me a cloth from one of the drawers near the sink. The bottom drawer.”
“I’m still looking for an undershirt.” She was on her knees, having pulled out one of the under-bed drawers. “Did you say you wanted an undershirt?”
“Vicky, forget about clothes for now. Just get me a clean cloth.”
She was flustered. But she heard the urgency in his voice and bolted upright. Then she stood up so quickly and nearly fell backwards. As she had told him, when it came to the gory details of life, her reaction was to panic and leave those details to someone else. Only since there was just the two of them, there wasn’t anyone else but Connie.
She found a cloth. “Will a dish cloth do?”
“Oh Christ,” he groaned to himself. “Just bring me one. No, make that a couple.”
She did. Purposely avoiding any glances at his leg when she came into the bathroom. Or his nakedness. For he had nothing on under his pants. She handed him the cloths.
“Thanks.” He could see how pale she looked. “That’s good. You can retire now. I’ll deal with this.”
“Are you sure?” She turned her back to him.
“Yeah. Just don’t leave. I still need your help.”
“Oh. Sure. Okay.”
She walked to the middle of the apartment and stood. Unsure what to do next. Whether to sit or remain standing. She’d gladly help him, she told herself, as long as it didn’t include any gory details. “What happened? Back at the hospital?” She had to ask even though she didn’t want to know.
“Later.” He took deep breaths in between holding his breath as he applied a water-soaked cloth to the bandage on his leg. He kept wetting the area until the puddle on the floor was blood-stained. Then he tugged at the bandage and pulled it off with a loud “shit!”
“Connie, are you all right?”
Her head appeared in the doorway just as he was rinsing off the blood-soaked cloth. He saw her reflection in the mirror. Saw her, too, suddenly disappear from view. Then heard a thump. He glanced back at her prone body. “Oh shit.” The wound was bleeding so he couldn’t stop to help her even if he had the strength to do so. Which he wasn’t sure he had. “Vicky, are you all right? Vicky?”
She groaned. “Are you all right?” When she lifted up her head, she could see his bare bottom.
“Yeah.” The wound looked healthy enough. No puss. And he was amazed to see what seemed like stitches on both sides of the opening. He continued wringing out the cloth and applying it to the wound. When he looked into the mirror, she appeared again. He pressed a dry cloth on the wound and grimaced. Then sat back down on the toilet seat.
Vicky turned her head away, as much from any chance encounters with the gore as the sight of his nakedness.
He tried to smile away how awful and weak he felt. “Not a pretty sight. Are you sure you’re okay?”
She looked at herself in the mirror rather than at him. “Is it bleeding?”
“A little.”
She nodded to her mirror self.
“What’s the old joke?” he said. “A bear’s chasing you. You know the joke?”
She did but didn’t see anything funny about what was happening.
“Do you run up a tree or into a nearby church? Is that how it goes?” He waited for her to say something. “You run into the church, right?” She nodded. “What? With a bear behind?” He tried to laugh but coughed instead. “Shit. If it’s any consolation, I feel lightheaded too.”
“Sorry about that. I told you. I’m not very good around gory things.”
“You don’t have to apologize. I faint. You faint. We’re a match made in heaven.” He looked at his hand applying pressure to the wound. Tried to ignore how much his leg throbbed. “Only I hope heaven’s a long way off.”
Each waited out a long bout of silence.
“Connie … What happened to you. How did you get that cut? What I saw. How can that be real?”
“Yeah. Good question.”
“You don’t have to explain if you don’t want to you. I don’t know if I really want to know. It all seems …”
“Yeah.” He laughed. “Like if you didn’t know maybe all this would just be a bad dream.”
That’s how she felt.
“Well, I wish I could say it has all been just a bad dream. That’s certainly what I thought when you thought I was going crazy.”
“Oh, I didn’t …”
“That’s okay. I don’t blame you. It looked that way. It’s complicated and confusing. What I know. What I think I know.”
He was staring at her now. She could tell. She resisted returning the look.
“What did you see exactly? When I fell backwards. You didn’t push me, right?”
She shook her head. What did she see? She tried to conjure up the image of him suddenly jerking backwards. But all she could materialize was that shiver of fear again. As if the feeling was telling her to say nothing and that would make everything okay.
“Did I just fall back suddenly or what?”
Another shiver of fear but she nodded through it.
“And then what happened? What did you see?”
She shrugged. “You just … changed.”
Now it was his turn to shake his head. His turn to feel a shadow of fear. “What would you say if I told you that there was something out there? Some force or other capturing people. Sucking them in, into some kind of black void.” Both thought about that possibility. “Crazy, right. Like I’m describing the plot of a horror movie.”
Both thought about that for another moment.
“Why didn’t this … Why didn’t it capture you?” What she really meant to say was that this ─ whatever it was ─ had captured him. And now him wasn’t really Conrad Brinkley.
“I’m not sure. It has tried. I’m sure of that. Every time I have one of those headaches. All those episodes when I felt like I was being sucked in.”
Curiosity now overcame her fear. “Does that have to do with those dreams you’ve had. Those episodes?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know how they fit in. I didn’t hear about that.”
“What?”
“Yeah. If what I’ve just said sounds crazy, you’re going to think this is nth degree crazy. I’ve somehow tapped into this thing’s brain. Or thoughts. I’m not sure which. I can hear it thinking without putting the thoughts into words. When it’s trying to invade my thoughts. It’s strange. It’s not so much that I actually hear something. It’s just that suddenly I have these thoughts in my head. And I know they’re aren’t mine.”
“I don’t understand.” She glanced at his wounded leg. At his hand pressing on the area with a cloth. At the nakedness between his legs. Then at herself in the mirror.
“I don’t understand either. They’re like whispers, what I hear. And I have this overwhelming feeling that they’re not meant for me to hear. So I think I was right about my premonition. There is something out there to be afraid of. This thing is somehow snatching human bodies. Absorbing them in some way. For whatever reason, I don’t know.”
Another shiver of fear made her leave the bathroom.
“Crazy, right?” he called to her. “But there’s Nabeel and Hal and Suzuki and the person in the car that struck me. And god knows how many others. Vanished, all of them. And that’s not the half of it. Those suicides. I think they happen when people try to resist being taken. Because that’s how I felt. Like I’d rather die than be taken.”
The fear that she was feeling now nearly stopped her breathing.
“Vicky. You still there?”
He could barely hear her “yes.”
“What am I supposed to do with this … knowledge? That’s what’s been pestering me. I can’t exactly go on national television, can I? And if I go to the police, they’re going to lock me up, right? Any suggestions?”
Her shivers of fear didn’t keep her from asking the obvious question. Didn’t keep her from returning to the bathroom. “Is this going to happen to me? Am I going to … disappear? Or … try to kill myself?”
“I don’t know.”
There was nothing golden about the silence that followed. Vicky would have like to have walked away from the apartment and pretended she had never met Connie again. He would have like to have walked away, too. To pretend he wasn’t Connie.
“Do you want those clothes now?” she asked.
“Yeah.” Both looked at what nakedness of his they could see. “Good thing this isn’t our first date.” That made her smile. “But first, I want you to go to the super’s office. There’s a first aid kit there. At least I’m pretty sure I saw one there. Make up some story about me cutting myself. I need to put a proper bandage on this thing and then get over to a walk-in clinic and get someone to look at it and do something about my damn cast. But first I gotta get this thing to stop bleeding. His office is on the main floor beside the elevators. If he’s not there, try his apartment. It’s one-O-one.” When she didn’t answer even though she was staring at him, he added: “Vicky? Okay?”
“Sure,” she told him. Then smiled. “I’m sorry about being such a wimp.”
“You’re not a wimp. I was the first one to faint. And I’m not a wimp. More than you realize,” he said to himself. “Like I said, we’re a match made in heaven.”
She gave him another smile and walked towards the entrance door.
“Oh, and Vicky,” he called to her. “Better take the key. It’s on the table by the computer. I don’t think I can get up with this leg bleeding like it is and let you in.”
She saw the key and grabbed it. Then left the apartment.
Waiting at the elevator, she went over all the moments she and Connie had had together. The arguments. The accusations. The uncertainties. Nothing like she had imagined would happen when they would meet for the first time since he had been her sister’s sometimes boyfriend.
35
“It looks like rain,” he said to Vicky. They were coming out of the walk-in clinic. It was just something to say, but she didn’t return his small talk.
She had barely spoken a dozen words since she had given him the first-aid kit. Went with him to his bank to get a new bank card. Waited over an hour in the clinic for him to be seen. And now on the sidewalk looking for a cab.
It was beginning to rain. A few drops hit his head and he stepped back under the shelter of the clinic’s door overhang. Vicky remained on the sidewalk.
“You’re going to get wet.”
“Yes. I am.” She joined him. “What now?” The question was more to herself than to Connie. She just couldn’t get his sudden transformation out of her head. And that memory had given her two choices. To believe that everything Connie had told her was true. Something that was beyond all logic. Or think she had fallen into some kind of folie-a-deux. Both options frightened her.
“Well, it’s too late to go back to work. What time do you have?”
She looked at her watch. “It’s after five.”
“Maybe you should phone for a cab. It’s Northwest taxi around here. You can look it up. They have an app, too. I’ll pay. I can drop you off at your place.”
He noticed her curt nod. Watched her as she took out her phone and searched for the taxi number. Vicky’s reluctance was in every twitch of her body. Every sidelong glance she gave him as she talked to the taxi company dispatcher. She had become remote. Hiding behind a wall of her own emotions. And that gave him a pang of loneliness. Like now it was he versus the world. Versus Vicky, too.
“They said ten to twenty minutes.”
“Good.” He gave her an encouraging smile but she turned away from him before it was set. “Do you want to wait inside?”
She didn’t want to wait inside. She didn’t want to do anything but go back to the way things were. “No.”
“Are you cold?”
“No.”
Another beat of silence between them. Altogether too many beats of silence, he was saddened to think. Added to that another pang of loneliness. And the new cast and a few more stitches on his leg the doctor had given him didn’t make these pangs go away.
****
The taxi came in less than ten minutes. Neither had spoken since Vicky’s “No.” And except for her telling the driver her address, nothing else was said by either of them. Connie could feel her tension. It had begun to possess him, too. Was she right? Was she going to disappear, too? Or take a leap to her death?
“Shit!” he murmured to himself for all the things he couldn’t control. The curse roused Vicky from her stupor. The look she gave him prompted him to ask: “Do you want to stay at my place?” Because it was in his thoughts, he guessed what she was thinking. “Would that make you feel safer?”
“No,” she said. A definite no. “This is happening to you. Not to me.” That’s what she wanted to believe.
“Right.” So that’s how she was going to take all this, he realized. Pretend it had nothing to do with her. What he needed was an ally. Someone to encourage him to figure out what to do next. But he guessed it wasn’t going to be her.
For the r
est of the trip, she stared out the car’s window, trying to subdue all the fearful thoughts she had. He stared at the back of the cabbie’s head. Trying not to think at all.
She did manage a smile when she got out of the taxi at her parents’ house. But a smile was all she was prepared to give him. There was no smile on his face as he watched her walk up the drive to the door of her basement apartment. It had been a long day, he thought. Bad start. Bad finish. And it wasn’t over yet. Still. Vicky or no Vicky, what was happening ─ at least to him ─ was too real to walk away from.
“Take me to Riley Boulevard,” he told the driver. “To the subway stop.”
“Sure thing, man.”
That was the stop where he had seen the dream girl. If she had gotten on the subway in the morning, maybe she’d get off the stop at the end of the day. It was a possibility. At least this was something concrete he could do besides waiting for the next invasion. Why had she recognized him? he wondered. Did she have dreams of him calling for help? And what ─ if anything ─ did she have to do about his unexpected leaps into some kind of virtual past existence?
Those questions pressed down on his thoughts on the ride to the subway. As did his memory of the whispers. Had they revealed anything about his dreams? They hadn’t seemed to. He closed his eyes as he tried to conjure up those whispered moments. But when he did, he found himself staring out the car’s window instead, unable to form a thought or even read the store signs as the car sped by. Then this emptiness filled up with stabs of pain. Suddenly. Migraine pain. Only this time, he knew what it was. It was this thing. It was another invasion. Fear was trying to muscle in on his sensibilities. To stifle any thoughts in his head about these whispers. He somehow knew that. But now he was prepared for the invasion. Ready to enter into combat. As he had done before. He concentrated. He pictured a dark veil spread out in his head. He made it grow darker. Then collapsed it like a tarp cinched around a load. Smothering it. This invasion. Choking the force out of it.
By the time he reached the subway entrance, the headache was gone. And, too, any remnants of fear that this thing had tried to press upon him. Yet it was slight victory. And once again, he wondered just what the hell he was going to do about what he knew was happening to others?