John Keats 02 Paper Moon

by Dennis Liggio

  "Hello," I said while walking up to her. "We were interested in getting a meeting with one -"

  "I called this morning," said Charlie from behind me. "Charles Ramirez. We have an appointment. I hope we're not too late."

  The woman turned her attention to her computer and clicked her mouse. I turned to Charlie.

  "You didn't tell me we had an appointment," I said.

  He shrugged. "I didn't want to rush you. You had already gotten up late. We were gonna get here when we got here. Rushing for no reason would have just risked an accident."

  "When was the appointment for?"

  He checked his phone. "About twenty-five minutes ago."

  I ran my hand through my hair and spared a glance at where the receptionist was using the computer. "Now I feel like a dick."

  "That's because you are," said Charlie with a grin.

  "I see your appointment... Officer Ramirez," said the woman. "I'll let them know you're here. Please take a seat."

  "Officer, huh?" I said as we sat down on the couches. "Are we on official police business?"

  "Nope," he said. "And I am not here as an officer of the peace. But if it just came out what I am employed as, who am I to control how they react to it?" He shrugged with a smile.

  "I guess if it makes this go smoother, I won't object," I said, still not relaxed despite the comfy couch. "Wait, I still wouldn't object, even if you were just impersonating an officer to help."

  "Which I assume you have never done," he said dryly.

  "Absolutely not. Scout's honor," I said, making the hand gesture which I believed was related to the Boy Scouts.

  Charlie sighed and shook his head. "Best I not know anyway."

  "Officer Ramirez?"

  The door to the rest of the hospital had just opened. Standing there were three people. First was a woman of about forty. Reddish brown hair, cut to her shoulders, stylish yet professional. Strong cheeks, sharp nose, blue eyes. She wore a gray suit that was mostly concealed with a white doctor's coat. A badge hung from the coat with her picture, but the font was too small to pick out her name. Behind her was a man in blue scrubs. Broad shoulders, black curly hair, dark skin, forearms that would have made Popeye envious. His expression was neutral, neither hostile nor welcoming. I figured him for a nurse or orderly. Third was another woman, also wearing blue scrubs. She didn't tower over everyone as the man, but she was still probably close to six feet. She was thin, her brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. I could tell that she was probably strong as well, if her arms weren't just for show. She had a faint ghost of a smile on her lips. It had been the well-dressed woman who had called for Charlie.

  "Yes," said Charlie. standing up. I followed. "And this is my friend John." He put out his hand, which the woman shook reluctantly. She did not offer her hand to me.

  "Hello. I am Doctor Bennington. I see that you requested a visit with one of our patients, is that correct?"

  "Yes, Jennifer Daw," said Charlie.

  Bennington pursed her lips. "Is there some sort of police inquiry involving Ms. Daw?"

  "No," said Charlie, "nothing yet." He finished almost with a conspiratorial tone.

  "Yet?" said Bennington. "Jennifer rarely has visitors, and I'm not altogether sure a visit is really the best for her. So if there isn't an official inquiry..."

  "Let's just say this isn't an official visit. We are just two regular citizens who want to ask one of your patients questions. We just need to confirm a few details and be on our way. I'm sure we'll not turn up anything of note which would require an active investigation, more paperwork, and detectives in your facility."

  The subtext hung in the air for a while. Let us see Jennifer, or this may become something official and be a pain in your ass. Of course we couldn't back up that, but it sounded bad for a doctor or administrator who just wanted us gone.

  The doctor blinked a few times. "Yes, well. We can arrange a few minutes of Jennifer's time for you." She turned to the female orderly. "Laurie, please have Ms. Daw delivered to... Observation Room 2."

  I cringed inwardly at hearing "Observation Room", but made no reaction. If she had said Observation Room 6, I would have bolted for the car.

  Laurie nodded and disappeared hastily through the door. Bennington then turned to us. "Gentlemen, if you would follow me."

  Bennington lead us through the doorway. We followed and the still unnamed male orderly followed behind us, his neutrally imposing presence looming at the tail end of our group. Inside, the hospital was still well-maintained and boring. This was a long corridor past a nurse's station, doors and side corridors branching out. The halls were white and beige, spacious and well lit.

  "I'll warn you," said Dr. Bennington as she walked us through the hall, "that Jennifer is not one of our most communicative patients. While she is far from the catatonia she had when she was first admitted, she often still does not respond to conversation. And when she does, it is not always intelligible."

  "Understood," said Charlie. "We'll be happy with whatever we can learn from her."

  "She had another visitor relatively recently, a boy named Nick, right?" I asked.

  Had my eyes not been on her, I would not have noticed Bennington's brief tension, her shoulders raising. "Is that what this is about? The other visitor?"

  Charlie simply shrugged and half shook his head, as if relaying that he couldn't say.

  "He claimed to be family and they spoke for some time," said Bennington. "Calmly. But then she got emotional and we ended the meeting and ejected him. Later we found out that he was not a relative but in fact was a neighbor from before her... trauma."

  "Which is why you are uncomfortable now that we showed up and asked to meet her," I suggested.

  "Which is why if there's any agitation in your meeting with Jennifer, I will be terminating it immediately," she said, opening a door and ushering us inside.

  We were only maybe a minute or two from the front of the hospital. I was glad we hadn't gotten too far inside and I had memorized every turn if I needed to flee in panic. The room she had brought us to was a sparse room painted a calming light blue. There was a simple table with four chairs. Charlie and I sat down on one side of the table.

  "Jennifer will be here soon," said Bennington. She pointed to a camera in one corner of the ceiling. "We will be watching, so if you get Jennifer excited, we will end the session immediately."

  "Understood," said Charlie.

  The doctor nodded grimly, looking at us sitting at the table. Then she turned on her heel and left. The tall orderly followed, the door closing behind them.

  "That went well," I said, tapping my finger on the table.

  "Nervous?" he said.

  "I just don't like being here. Hospitals -"

  "Hospitals make you nervous, got it."

  "It's not that, it's -"

  I was interrupted, the door opening. Laurie came into the room with another male orderly, shepherding a patient, who they sat down before us. Laurie paused a moment, making sure the patient was staying put, then nodded. "We have someone outside the door," said Laurie. "If there's a problem, let us know." Then she and the new orderly left.

  I took my time examining the patient before me. Dressed in pajamas and a bathrobe, she seemed ill at ease. Her shoulders were sharp and tense, her arms hanging down, her neck hunched forward. Her head was bowed and her long brown hair stretched down to the table, all but obscuring her face.

  She hadn't reacted to us at all since entering the room. After a moment, Charlie and I shared a glance.

  "Jennifer?" said Charlie. "Jennifer Daw?"

  This got a reaction. The head moved from bowed to staring at us. This was enough for the hair to part and for us to see a face. She looked haggard. Her features were drawn, her eyes dark. I put her in her forties, maybe even fifties, but I didn't know if that was due to actual age, stress, or lack of self care - this was someone who probably hadn't cared about their appearance nor had the tools to do so in at least a de
cade and a half. Her hair was frayed with split ends, her face had lines, and her lips were cracked. Her greenish eyes were intelligent but also... off, somehow. Like when you walk by a house and can tell they're using a blue light in a lamp instead of white or yellow.

  She still did not answer.

  "Ms. Daw, my name is Charlie and this is John, we were wondering if you could answer some questions."

  She stared at Charlie for a long moment, then began looking around the room, her gaze trailing up to the ceiling.

  "Jennifer, we need to speak to you," I said. "You may be the only one who has answers for us. We know Nick came to see you."

  Her gaze came to fall on me and her eyes narrowed. But a moment later it was back to exploring the room.

  Charlie tried again. "Please, Ms. Daw, we mean you no harm, we just want to talk."

  Still she ignored us. I decided to try being blunt, maybe putting her off balance.

  "Hornswaggle," I said simply.

  As if I had dropped something loudly on the table, the word had a strong effect. Jennifer's attention locked on me, her eyes narrowing, then widening, her face paling. Something seemed to pass through her eyes, and it was as if that blue house light had just turned to white.

  "What do you know about Hornswaggle?" came her worried voice. "Did Nick tell you?"

  "Nick is dead," said Charlie glumly.

  She turned to look at Charlie. "Stupid fool. He should have run like I told him."

  "He tried," I said. "But it still caught up with him... it was... that demon."

  "You can call him by name," she said. "He won't come just because you call him. But he'll still burn in your mind."

  "So you do know about him," said Charlie. "We've been kind of lost on what to do."

  "Easy," she said. Her left hand mimicked the gesture of a gun. She put it to her forehead and pulled the trigger.

  "We're looking for a solution other than that," I said sourly. "I know you had tried that one."

  "Tried and failed. Don't trust pills. I wish I hadn't," she said with distaste, looking around at the walls of the room. Her left hand was shaking.

  "But why?" said Charlie.

  "He was in my head, he was in both our heads. I couldn't stop myself from drawing him. And my husband... my poor husband... he wasn't even an artist, but he began doodling on his compositions... It was the only way to stop it. I thought we were the only ones. Destroy all the images and kill ourselves. Cut off his access. But the fire didn't take like I wanted and I didn't die. I wish I had died..." She trailed off, looking at the desk. "It didn't matter. Even if I had, Nick had been exposed."

  "Exposed? Like a virus?" I said.

  "Might as well be," she said.

  "But you were exposed, why aren't you drawing pictures and stuff of him?" I said.

  She smiled weakly. "The one blessing of the pills. I lived, but something is damaged up here," she said, waving at her forehead with the pinky and index finger of her left hand. "I can't draw, I can't create, I can't visualize, I can barely imagine. I don't even know what he looks like anymore. I don't remember what he called himself back then, but Nick called him Hornswaggle."

  "Great, so we have to give ourselves brain damage to stop this," I said.

  "You have to destroy all pictures of him first and then give everyone who has seen him brain damage," she said helpfully. She wiggled the fingers of her left hand in the air. "It's hard to get the genie back into the bottle."

  "What is he?" said Charlie. "What does he want?"

  "He's old," she said, clearly straining to remember, her eyes blinking, her left hand's fingers fluttering. "A god? The Devil? I don't know for sure. When he talks, he lies - he boasts! He whispers, and he wants. But he's old, very old. We found him - by accident! - and he was all but dead before then. Would have been dead, if not for us. Bad us!"

  "What do you mean? How did you find him?" I said.

  "My husband - my poor beloved husband! - he was a music man - a composer! He loved old jazz songs and he loved antiques - a combination that finally killed him!" I noticed as her words grew more frantic, so did her finger movements. "He found it, in an old estate sale. Just an old music box, nothing you'd notice, nothing gold, nothing gilded. Open it up and the tinny music would play its song."

  "What song?" said Charlie.

  "It's Only a Paper Moon," she said with a mocking laugh. "Very appropriate. I almost think that the song might have actually been written about him. Ironic, but not really. This was his cage, for who knows how many years."

  "A cage?" I said.

  "So, what we later realized, we've never heard of or seen him, right? The same way you haven't heard of him until now, even though I saw him. His image wasn't out there - not out in the world. Trapped, you see. But there, in that music box..." She shuddered, as if an icy draft had just rushed through the room. "Down at the bottom of the music box, there was a scrap of paper. Nobody had seen it before! Not the last owner. My husband only saw it because... because he tried to tune the music box! If only he hadn't been a composer! If only he had been tone deaf! But under that, there was paper with a crude drawing... and he knew I was an artist, so..." She paused, her head hung, her vision downcast, but the fingers of her left hand still working furiously. "I wish I had never looked. Never."

  A cold chill ran through me, goose bumps spreading across my skin. My mind suddenly went to the torn piece I saw with the concept art next to the puppet in the Creature Room. "I think I may have seen that scrap..."

  "Really?" said Charlie.

  "It should be destroyed, it should be burnt... But if it wasn't..." She trailed off, her expression bleaker than we had seen so far. "Then I failed even more than I thought."

  "What did it look like?" said Charlie. "The drawing on the piece of paper." He directed the question at Jennifer, but I wanted to know if her answer matched what I saw.

  "Hornswaggle? I guess? Remember? Gone!" she said, gesturing to her head again. "I can't see him anymore. But I saw him then. And he got in my head. All I could do for weeks was to draw him, to paint him! I had only one inspiration, and it was him. It was great for a while - a new inspiration that even my husband was enthusiastic about. But then things started changing... too many coincidences, too many strange things.

  "I started being offered money for my paintings, to produce concept art for advertising. I had never done commercial art and hated it. I refused. Then I was contacted by a firm that wanted my paintings as concept art for a movie. I refused that too. But the offers kept coming in. Even people who had never seen my paintings of him wanted to pay me huge amounts of money to license him. Something was wrong."

  "Were you just afraid of success?" I suggested.

  She shook her head vigorously. "We found discrepancies in our memories. My formerly idealist husband was suddenly fighting with me about money, saying how we could be so rich and go on vacations. These things had never meant anything to him! And then one day, I noticed him in my studio. Listening, talking. And he did not see me, so I got closer. That's when I saw the painting talking. Telling my husband lies!"

  She paused to collect her thoughts, but neither Charlie nor I had anything to interject. Like with Nick, it seemed crazy, and yet the things we had already seen...

  "I tried to find out more about him and the music box, but I found nothing," continued Jennifer. "Why would there be? Any record of his existence would be to his benefit! And while this was happening, the fights with my husband got worse. And I spied on him, noticing a few other times where he'd stand in a daze as a painting would talk to him. Then one day, I saw the beast. I had gone out to get groceries, but I parked a block away and doubled back. I crept into the bushes and spied in the window. This time there was not a talking painting. Instead, a huge... a huge..." She grunted in frustration. "A huge something was there! In front of my husband! That is when I knew... I don't know how, but I knew. He moved through images. I think I always knew, I just... I just... he had whispered me that when h
e thought he could use me, but I had forgotten, the knowledge laying deep in me. I knew that's how we were infected, and that's how it had to end..."

  We said nothing and she finally continued. "I bought myself a gun. Little me with a gun! It's ludicrous, but how else? My husband was bigger than me... he was... he was... I shot him. He never saw me, I did it when his back was turned. Then I ripped up all - all the images! All of Hornswaggle," she said with great distaste. "I poured gasoline all over the house and then lit one room. It would burn, it would all burn. I just... I was a coward. I couldn't wait to make sure it was done, I didn't want to feel the pain of fire. So I took the pills... as many as I could take. Then I lay down... and I failed."

  "The firefighters found you," I said, remembering the article I read and suggesting what was next.

  "So I heard, but I don't remember," she said. "I was in a bed, then a courtroom, then here. The world whizzing by me, time barely noticed. I found myself locked inside my own cage, but I knew I had killed him. I had killed him. At the cost of my life and of my..." her face twisted in great pain, her eyes wet. "Memory. I killed my husband. That is my great crime which I will never atone for. It's my pain. But with the other... damage," she said, her left hand twirling near her head, "there were things lost. I..." She took a long breath and let it out in a halting exhale. "I can't remember my husband's name. I've been told it many times, but it never registers. It never sticks. That's my punishment. To have completely destroyed the man I loved, body and memory. I can't even remember the name of the man I loved, the man who I ended." Tears now fell, her left hand's fingers moving rapidly. She began looking at the walls again.

  "I'm so sorry," said Charlie.

  "I don't need your goddamn pity!" she said, suddenly hostile and fierce.

  "Slow down," said Charlie gently.

  The fingers on her left hand were wiggling rapidly, but her voice was calm but sad. She did not meet out gaze. "I've told you what I know. Let me recede back into my hell, back to numbness."