Nightingale Songs

by Strantzas, Simon

  "Help me!" Fisher screamed. "You've got to get me out!"

  If something was said in response, he couldn't hear it. There was only the sound of glass and wood continuing to break behind him, and then the horrible droning became something far worse, something like the screeching of machinery. He was afraid to turn and instead banged his numbed fists harder against the window, but the figures did not pause. Fisher pressed his face against the glass and saw through the haze two pale thuggish faces scowling at him as they had so many months previous, though they had traded their suits for coveralls, and were adding small shadows to the growing pile in front of the window. Just like bricks to a wall.

  Fisher screamed, afraid to turn and face what was coming for him. It sounded of storms and mistakes and regret. Yet in the window he could see a reflection, a reflection of the swarm that advanced upon him. Fisher could not speak. The noises the cloud made -- the sight of those insect-like things swarming as though one -- were nothing compared to what he saw within the darkness that enveloped him. There was a series of flashes like sparks in the roaring surf. They lit his face as he stared into the dark swirling void and saw something else moving towards him. There was a sound, like hoof beats, pounding in his ears, and then there was nothing. No noise of any kind. Just an image waiting to develop.

  UNREASONABLE DOUBT

  "You have to help me, Reggie. You're the only one I have left whom I can trust."

  Alistair Burden had barged through my office door and again into my life after having been back in New Hamburg for less than a week. I didn't know he was coming at the time, let alone that he'd arrived, so his sudden appearance in my examining room while I was with Mr. Rutherford was startling to say the least. Part of me felt hurt he'd not called to let me know, after five years, that he was on his way, but considering the troubles he'd had in Hamilton, I suppose the last thing he would have wanted was to announce his arrival anywhere. I could feel the stigma he carried settling like a cloak around him.

  "You'll need to give me a few moments to finish up here. Why don't you take a seat in the waiting room?"

  He looked back from the door at Mrs. Rutherford, waiting for her husband, and at the Ostin twins and their mother, all of who, along with my nurse Polly, were staring back at him wide-eyed. He swallowed, his Adam's apple travelling the length of his neck, and it fell deathly quiet in my office.

  "If you don't mind," he said after some contemplation. "I'd rather wait somewhere more . . . private."

  I looked at Mr. Rutherford who scowled and shook his head. I understood Alistair's concerns immediately.

  "Polly?" I called. "Will you show Mr. Burden to my office?"

  She arrived in the doorway smiling, but her artifice peeked through. Alistair thanked us both, but I could see the reaction of each of my patients was a defeat that shrank him further.

  I was with him about fifteen minutes later. He sat on the leather couch I had facing my desk, but was hunched over on the edge of the seat, hands between his jittering knees. Polly was in the corner of my eye, doing idle work as she attempted to eavesdrop on what Alistair and I were about to discuss. I shut the door behind me to exclude her, and fancied I heard a heavy sigh from her end of the corridor. I smiled despite myself, but the moment was fleeting. When I sat down in the chair behind my desk, the smile had long since disappeared.

  "It's good to see you again, Alistair. How have you --" I stammered, not knowing how to finish such a foolish question. I cursed myself, but my friend did not seem to notice my gaffe.

  "I'm truthfully at my wit's end," he said, and ran his fingers through his thick wavy hair. Clumps of it stood straight up, as though horrified to be near him. "I'm sorry for barging in on you. It's just that I don't know where else to turn."

  "It's all right," I said, and looked at him over the edge of my desk. He seemed much smaller than I remembered him. Frailer. He looked up at me. "Perhaps," I continued, "you should tell me what the trouble is."

  He shook his head. "I was wrong to come here. No one can help me," he said. "It's too late to stop them."

  "Stop whom?"

  He said nothing, and instead studied the diplomas on my wall, hung there to reassure my patients of my credentials. He turned around and looked straight at me for the first time, and I pulled away slightly. His eyes -- his eyes had sunken into his face, and the skin was jaundiced and tight as though he'd been through things he could not explain.

  "How much do you know about what happened to me in Hamilton?"

  I struggled for a diplomatic answer, but no decent one was forthcoming.

  "I know you were campaigning for mayor there, and were doing quite well until . . . there was some unpleasantness. . . ."

  Alistair laughed, and the deep sound was not as I remembered it. It had become hollow, mirthless, over his years away, and I could no more hear my old friend in it than I could see the happiness that once lay behind his crazed, tired eyes.

  "You always did have a way of putting things, Reggie. Unpleasantness, indeed. I know what you've read -- what everybody has read -- in the newspapers or heard on the radio, but let me assure you from my own mouth: I had nothing to do with the deaths of Melinda and Arkin Rand. Nothing. Everyone wishes I did, though. There is little the people of Hamilton want more than to catch a cuckolded politician who got his revenge. But I promise you, I am innocent of the blame."

  I cleared my throat, but was interrupted by the sound of the Ostin twins outside as they bickered about who would be last on my examination table. The noise was inexplicably loud, as though they knew I could hear them and wanted to draw me out before I was too deep into Alistair's story. Their ploy worked, in a way, as I saw from my clock I had already kept them overlong.

  I stood and opened my drawer. "Here, take some of this," I said, and handed him the bottle of scotch and tumbler I kept for emergencies. "I'll be done within the hour, and we can then go to lunch and catch up on everything that has happened to you."

  He looked up at me with eyes both dark and circled and instead of taking the bottle took my hand at the wrist. "You do believe me, don't you? I wouldn't lie to you, Reggie. You know that."

  "Of course I do," I said. "Of course."

  "Thank you," he said, and as he took my hand I could see his eyes had dampened. For a moment, images of what had happened to his wife and her lover flashed through my mind, and I wanted to recoil from his touch. I tried to keep my face from betraying me however. As I took my leave, he retreated to the couch and held his head in his hands, shaking as though he could not bear both its weight and the weight of his past.

  After I was done with the twins and their mother, I told Polly that I was stepping out to lunch and she should inform any patients that I would return shortly. She smiled and nodded but her eyes did not stray far from Alistair and his disheveled appearance. I could see the fear and curiosity welling within her, and I knew that she was desperate for us to leave so she might pick up the telephone. "Um . . . Perhaps, you should keep Mr. Burden's visit to yourself for the time being."

  "Yes, Doctor Reilly," she said, but I knew at once she had not really understood me.

  "I'm serious, Polly. Not a word."

  "There's really no point," said Alistair. "I’m sure the news was already all over town the moment I stepped in here."

  "Nevertheless, I'd prefer we consider this a case of patient confidentiality for the time being."

  Polly nodded again, this time defeated. I was fairly certain I'd be able to count on her discretion . . . at least, for the remainder of the afternoon.

  I took Alistair across the street to The Elk's Horn where I knew it would be quiet at that time of day. Nevertheless, those few souls in the pub stared when they saw who was with me, and though I tried to ignore it I could hear whispers passed between them as we walked by. Never before had hearing my name spoken been so unpleasant.

  "Reggie, are you all right?"

  "Hm? Yes, of course. Why wouldn't I be?"

  He looked ove
r my shoulder at the people we had passed, and then shook his head. I urged him to take a seat.

  "I would like to try and help you," I said. "But to do so I'm going to need to know everything. If you're innocent--"

  "I am innocent.”

  "And I believe you if you say it's true, but--"

  "I admit Melinda and I had been having problems even before my run for mayor began, but I was completely unaware of them until after her death."

  "But the papers--"

  "The papers got it wrong, as usual. They wanted only to play up the liaisons between her and Rand -- who was one of the senior lawyers at her firm -- and how this had been happening practically in plain sight for over a year."

  "And yet you knew nothing?"

  "I suppose it sounds implausible when put that way, but it didn't seem so strange at the time. I knew she was unhappy, but I'd attributed that to the long hours I was working to make my political career a reality. I couldn't see that those same hours and that same work was distracting me from the truth. Until the two of them were found dead in Rand's apartment, I thought my marriage was intact.

  "The police wasted no time in bringing me in and making me their prime suspect. There was nothing concrete linking me to their deaths, of course -- nothing they could produce that even suggested I knew about the affair -- but I'd conveniently been alone and out of touch with everyone on my campaign team that evening in an attempt to get at least one full night's rest. I'd been having trouble sleeping for weeks, and at the time I'd attributed it to the stress of my campaign, but in hindsight, I'm not so sure."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I can't properly explain it. I had a feeling in my stomach, like a moment of prescience, and everything felt . . . not wrong, but shifted. As though things -- the world, everything -- were not as they were. Does that make any sense? No, I can see it doesn't. Regardless, I felt off, and I wanted to get back to normal. My campaign depended upon it.

  "So, I took a few sleeping pills and set my alarm and wished Melinda a good night. She seemed a little anxious, in retrospect, to see me turn in, but I thought little of it. When I awoke, she was gone, and the police were knocking at my door."

  As he said this, I heard a knocking sound from somewhere in the pub and turned around, yet there was nobody close by. At least, not close enough to have heard what Alistair was saying.

  "You know the rest, I imagine. There was an investigation. There was no trial, but there was public outrage, especially in the media. When the coroner finally concluded it was Rand who killed Melinda in a murder-suicide, I had already been tried and convicted in the press -- a mayoral candidate who commits murder is front-page news, his absolution is not. Even though my name was technically cleared, you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who believes I am truly innocent. Everyone just assumes I used my influence to get away with murdering them both and wants nothing to do with me. Needless to say, I lost the election.

  "I moved out of the city fairly quickly once I realized it had turned against me. I wanted to go away and hide for a little while, let the furor over what had happened die down. There was enough money to last me a while, and once Melinda's will was settled I was due a little more. There was no reason why I shouldn't have been able to vanish.

  "But I suppose I'd underestimated just how pervasive the media is, and just how poor a portrait had been painted of me. There was nowhere I could go where I wasn’t recognized and condemned on sight. I couldn't even walk down the street without throngs of people stopping in their tracks. There was a suffocating air of whispers around me at all times. I don’t think I need to tell you that it started playing tricks on my mind. At least, I think they were tricks."

  He took a drink then from the glass that had been sitting in front of him, untouched until that moment. With trembling fingers, he put a thin cigarette to his lips and lit it. The smoke rose in wavy tendrils that curved back towards him, reaching like ill-defined fingers. For a moment I thought I could hear the whispering about which he had spoke, but the silhouettes of the pub's patrons had not moved, only multiplied, from where they sat and watched us. Alistair cleared his throat, and I detected a slight warble as though it were his fear he was trying to swallow. "Go on," I said as comfortingly as I could.

  He stammered, as though unsure of how to continue.

  "This is difficult for me to tell you, Reggie, because it won't really make much sense. I've known you too long to think it will. And yet, you're all I have now that Melinda is gone. It's amazing how a life spent with such narrow focus and aim can be derailed so quickly, and how few friends one has once the chips are actually down. No one came out and admitted it, but I heard my campaign team quit as soon as Melinda's death was discovered. They didn't even wait to find out if I was considered a suspect or not. Everyone deserted me except those I had paid to stay and defend my innocence, and I was never certain they believed in me either, even when the truth was revealed. And those men, those lawyers, were people I'd dined with and had over to the house. They were supposed to be my friends, and they fell victim to the rumors, as did everyone else. It's one of the reasons I came back here; I knew you wouldn’t abandon me as they had. I knew I could count on you to listen, even when what I had to say sounded implausible. And I knew that, if I were wrong, if I were losing my sanity, you'd know what to do to help me.

  "Reggie," he said, not looking at me as he crushed out his cigarette. "I'm being haunted."

  I didn't believe I had heard him right, so I made him repeat what he'd said. Even then, I still had some doubt.

  "What do you mean? By the past?"

  "No. I mean it literally. I'm being haunted by spirits. Ghosts."

  "Of whom?"

  "Melinda and Rand. They're following me."

  I felt chilled by the oddity of those words spoken aloud, and looked around to ensure no one had overheard us. At least, that's what I told myself. I then lowered my voice and leaned closer to him.

  "How long have you thought this?"

  "Since just after I left Hamilton. It's clear you don't believe me -- which is fine, as I didn't believe it at first either. I'd see Melinda in the window of a store I was passing, or Rand standing on a corner watching me, and I'd think as you do -- that it was all in my mind. Maybe the trauma of all that had happened was catching up to me, and I was seeing people that resembled that murderous Arkin Rand or my dear Melinda. And yet, they continued to appear, at first sporadically, and then with alarming frequency. I see them so often now, I'm afraid to close my eyes for fear they'll be there when I awake."

  I thought for a moment before I said anything.

  "Do you see them now?"

  He looked over my shoulder at the empty pub.

  "No," he said. "Not at the moment."

  "Do they speak to you? Are they asking you to do anything . . . dangerous?"

  Again, he shook his head. "Nothing like that. They say nothing, but instead watch me as though they are waiting for something.

  "At first, I thought it was tied to my life in Hamilton, and that if I moved far enough away I would be able to forget them. But everywhere I went, my awful history followed me. I realized there was nowhere I could go that I wouldn't be confronted daily with suspicion. I was a pariah walking the streets -- the only eyes that met mine were those ghostly eyes of the two people I'd been accused of killing, but when they looked at me it was with a dead hunger. It's been horrible for the past few months, and I feel as though I'm slipping away and dying myself, except in this case it's the rest of the world performing the murder."

  I leaned back and ran my fingers along my chin. I wasn't sure what, exactly, to say. There was no way the dead were visiting him, yet he sounded nothing if not rational. I could see no signs of the mania I would expect from someone so far gone into his own paranoia that he imagined being haunted by the victims of a crime he didn't commit. It bore further examination, if nothing else, and a pub on my lunch hour was not the place for it.

  "Okay, Alistair. You've
sufficiently worried me about the state of your mind. Where are you staying now?"

  "I was staying at a house I'd rented on MacGregor Street. I had about two solid nights there without a visitation and without the neighbors catching on to who I was. I thought perhaps I'd finally outrun my problems, but yesterday I noticed the first of the neighbors walking past the house slowly, pointing and whispering, and that night Melinda and Rand had once more returned -- except they were now inside the house. I glimpsed them only briefly before I fled. I can never go back there."

  I nodded, and hesitated before I said the next words, though only in hindsight do I understand why.

  "You can stay with me for the time being. I have plenty of room. Do you recall where I live? I'll give you the key and you can wait for me there if you'd like to get out of the public eye."

  "If it's all the same to you, Reggie, I'd much rather stay in your office until you are done for the day. I don't want to be alone at the moment."

  "Certainly, but we should go back now. I've already kept Mr. Windershill waiting long enough for his two o'clock appointment.

  New Hamburg was a small town. So small that one could walk from one end to the other in under an hour, and few of its locals drove anywhere unless necessary. I was no different, yet I wished I had driven that day as soon as Alistair and I stepped onto the street. It was earlier than I had expected -- my last two appointments had canceled unexpectedly, leaving me with nothing to do but send Polly home early and get Alistair settled -- and the sky was still bright with the orange of the sun sinking on the horizon. In that cultured light I saw far more people dotting the streets than I would have expected at that time of day, and they had all stopped to watch Alistair and me emerge from my offices. I wanted to say something, but Alistair held out his hand to stop me. He assured me it was futile.