Shudder

by Harry F. Kane

  She still looked far too highly strung to be able to sleep well, or to eat heartily. Anton thought of the forests and meadows around the small hotel. “We’ll leave our bags here, Mister Guerrero, if that’s all right, and we’ll take a walk around the hotel first. To breathe some fresh air, work up an appetite.”

  “Of course, Mister Martorino, in how much time should the lunch be ready? I have a new cook, Maria, her cooking is fantastic,” announced Mister Guerrero and failed to kiss the tips of his fingers, thereby shattering a number of clichés; instead he used the fingers to enumerate, “for today we have the bean soup, the pork with cabbage and a lovely liver pie.”

  “We’ll be back in an hour, or an hour and a half. We’ll have the soup and the pork,” Anton said. “Any chance of a fruit salad?”

  “Of course,” assured him the owner, darting pleasing glances both at the albino and at his black daughter. “The classical Ortega fruit salad, with the whole lot—the pineapples, the mango, the oranges...”

  “Splendid, splendid. Two salads as well then,” Anton said and took out his phone to check the time.

  Guerrero looked at the huge clock above the reception desk, “It is now almost one o’clock Mister Martorino, I will tell Maria to prepare your salad at two o’clock, it will wait for you, and the moment you start eating it, she will put on the soup and the pork.”

  “Thank you, Mister Guerrero,” Anton flashed one last smile and turned towards Natalie. “Take the thick pullover from your bag and let’s go.”

  * * * *

  As they walked slowly through the forest, the fringes of the wide path littered with pine needles, twigs, and the occasional pinecone, Anton looked at his daughter and pondered.

  Not only did she look dangerously thin. She also looked haggard, drawn, as if her whole life energy was draining away from some hole in her being.

  “How are you sleeping lately, Natalie?” he asked finally, immediately patting himself for some cigarettes to help him go through with the conversation.

  “Bad,” Natalie said with a rueful smirk.

  “Explain.”

  She met his eyes for a second, evaluating whether to really tell him, “I feel figures in my home, Dad, in my room.”

  “Hmm,” Anton frowned. “What sort of figures?”

  “Huge bad figures.” She almost screamed and stopped. She stood with her back to Anton, her shoulders heaving.

  She was crying.

  Anton hugged her from behind. “Shh, shh. It’s okay, Natalie. It’s okay,” he muttered and blew warm air into her scalp. This had calmed her down since she was a kid.

  “That’s just hypnagogia, my child,” he said in reassuring, confident tone. “Nothing to get excited about.”

  “What? What did you call this?” Her shoulders tensed at the hope of explanation.

  “Hypnagogia.” Anton cleared his throat. “I suppose you lie paralyzed in your bed, when the figures appear.”

  “Yes, yes I do,” she turned to him.

  He let go, took a step back and finally lit a cigarette, “That’s a mechanism of the body, Natalie. When we sleep, we dream. So that we don’t hurt ourselves—like trying to really run when we are running in our dreams—the body remains in dream paralysis. Sometimes, the brain wakes up in a way, but the body is still paralyzed.”

  “The figures were not a dream,” she insisted softly.

  “These are early imprints,” Anton said with authority, “nothing more.”

  He took a drag from his cigarette and let the smoke out of his nostrils. He flicked the cigarette’s rear with a thumb and flakes of gray ash broke off, floating away to his right, to land somewhere among the needle leaves.

  “Many people have hypnagogic episodes. The figures you see are just residual images from the past. Like doctors looking at you when you have just been born or were sick as a baby. Many people hallucinate in later life being examined or operated upon by immensely powerful entities.”

  “They don’t operate on me, Daddy. They...” Natalie’s voice trailed away and she sobbed again.

  Anton understood. He thought frantically how to word something soothing.

  “Up to four in ten women tend to have hypnagogic episodes, in which they lie paralyzed in their beds and someone or something is having sex with them. Why do you think all this paranormal romance crud is such a hit? In the past people thought these were evil spirits, the succubus and the incubus, who come to drain the sleeper.”

  “What are they, Daddy?” the frail, black girl asked. Her frail black fists clenched, trembling.

  “As I said—residual images.” He arched his eyebrows and lifted a hand in order to convey that he was merely speculating, “You know, maybe something which happened in your past.”

  He hated lying, but she just wasn’t ready to know the full truth yet. “Maybe you were drunk or drugged on some party and a bunch of guys took advantage of that, and you don’t consciously remember it. The ghost images of that event are now showing up.”

  “What? You think so?” Natalie looked like she was authentically trying to accept this rational explanation. The wind brought again the aroma of new snow. Trees creaked. The comforting drone of a woodpecker at work drifted out of somewhere.

  Half an hour later they had returned to the ‘Ortega’, and were having lunch. Anton smiled as he saw Natalie eat first almost all of her fruit salad and then almost a whole bowl of soup.

  Chapter Forty

  It was four o’clock. Unlike the gray ceiling above the city, the sky here had patches of blue in it. The sun shone through these patches, but it was a wintery sun—light without much warmth.

  The air was very bracing. The smell of moist earth and pine worked its slow work, gently easing the tautness of Natalie’s nerves.

  They walked in silence, until her father spotted a meadow washed in the slanted light of the cold afternoon sun. “Here, let’s sit on the grass,” Anton said and pulled a thin blanket out of his backpack.

  He unrolled it, and sat down, leaning his elbows on his knees. Natalie placed herself gingerly on the blanket as well. They both reached into their pockets and took out cigarettes. Anton was quicker with the lighter, he lit his daughter’s cigarette, and then his own.

  The branches of the trees moved slowly, from time to time a muffled creak or a woody groan was heard. A crow crowed somewhere. Another one answered it.

  Anton rummaged in his knapsack again, and took out a small lump of aluminum foil. He unwrapped it. Inside was a small plastic bag containing a smaller dark green lump. Anton opened the little bag and proffered the lump to Natalie, “Here, daughter of mine—eat this.”

  Natalie looked at Anton’s hand, “What is it?”

  “Kwechu. It’s from South America. I’ve had it in my freezer for a few years. It’s still good.”

  “What is it?” Her eyes were shiny but still brooding. “Why should I eat it?”

  “It’s a vine, which the Aifaya medicine men take to speak to the spirits.”

  Natalie gave a sudden laugh, “Dad, the last thing I need now is to speak to the spirits.”

  “Natalie—” Anton grappled for the correct words, “Natalie, there comes a time in everybody’s life, when they are with their back to the wall. I mean, in an existential sense: when suddenly the world seems all wrong, when you yourself seem all wrong, when the only hope remaining seems to be that someday this will all turn out to be a bad dream.

  “Only two things are possible in such a situation. One—you give up, and go to a doctor for a brain fix. You could go to a heroin dealer or become a drunk. The other thing you can do is to meet yourself directly. This Kwechu is a means of meeting yourself directly.”

  Natalie looked at the small organic knot in her hand. Anton continued needling her, “If we sleep and eat and breathe fresh air here
for two days, this will be enough to avert your total breakdown, dear daughter, but when we return to the city, chances are you will quickly lapse back into the state in which you are now. You have to strike at the core.”

  He wet his lips. “Relax, I’m here with you and I know what I’m doing.”

  Suddenly, as if trying to catch herself off-guard, Natalie shoved the Kwechu into her mouth and started chewing.

  That was that then, Anton thought, the clock is now ticking. ”Now,” he said briskly, all business, “you should’ve fasted for a day before ingesting it, but you have already been fasting for God knows how long, so the soup we just had shouldn’t really be a problem.”

  “What will I feel? And when?” Natalie asked, frowning as she tried to discern any change in her inner sensation.

  “You’ll begin opening up in about five minutes. The climax will be in about an hour. By eight o’clock we’ll be back in our hotel.”

  Anton studied his daughter. Every human being on the planet could trace his or her lineage to a tribe that used things of this sort to communicate with the gods, the spirits, the ancestors. While some people were removed from this time by countless generations, Natalie herself was at most one great-grandmother away from the village witch doctor.

  He hoped this would help her in some way.

  He saw Natalie take a slow deep breath.

  “I, I feel kind of funny, Dad,” she said distantly. “My body is getting very light.”

  “Just relax, look, and listen.”

  “To what?”

  “To everything around you. Look,” Anton suddenly pointed to a near pine tree with a bush at its base. “Look at that pine. Listen to it. It has a lot to say.”

  Natalie felt she was slowly losing her grip on her own thoughts and perceptions. Rather, as if her own psyche slowly dissolved. It was not an unpleasant sensation. The general pressure was easing off.

  She blinked and tried to focus on the pine to which her father pointed. There was nothing special about it. A pine like a pine. Its upper part was outlined against the sky.

  The autumn sky.

  The winter sky.

  One of its branches caught her attention. It was moving slowly. Then she saw another branch move. Suddenly, as if a camera lens changed, it became obvious that the whole tree was alive and always had been.

  The branches were all in simultaneous movement, in a gentle communal dance, each following a different rhythm.

  As if the tree breathed.

  It was glorious sight.

  Natalie turned to Anton, to share with him this phenomenon, but caught sight of a stone. It was a massive rock, which had sunk into the grass, and there were patches of pale bluish moss on it. It radiated a soft and ancient presence.

  “Even the rock is alive,” whispered Natalie.

  Anton smiled and nodded. Natalie didn’t let her gaze linger on her Dad, because there existed now a perplexing quality to his forehead.

  She tried to keep her mind off that.

  The trees moaned. Natalie pricked her ears. The trees were not just making noise. They were communicating. Not exactly talking. Perhaps it could be called soft singing.

  She stood up, feeling delicately atmospheric, as if the Earth’s gravity had diminished by half, while her flesh had turned to lightweight crystal.

  The wind caressed her whole body from head to toe and she took off her jacket. The touch of the wind was invigorating and somehow evoked colors.

  She noticed a thin tree, perhaps half-uprooted by a storm, which was leaning on the trunk of a thicker tree.

  They were not just standing immobile.

  Nothing was now.

  The thinner tree was slowly, almost imperceptibly, rubbing itself against the thicker tree, which was also slowly swaying and moaning. With the tiniest of efforts, Natalie picked out the sound of their barks rubbing against each other unhurriedly.

  A deep nameless emotion forced her to her knees. Tears swelled up and run down her cheeks. She could not tell whether these were tears of joy or of sorrow.

  Perhaps both.

  Things were getting so difficult to differentiate now.

  Anton walked over to her. It was time for the unpleasant but necessary bad trip, “Natalie, dearest, I have to tell you something.”

  Natalie’s enhanced sensitivity told her that something very bad was coming. Every muscle in her Daddy’s face was betraying him.

  “No, Daddy, don’t tell me, not now.”

  “I’m sorry, pumpkin, the time is now. Please listen to me.” He positioned himself in front of Natalie and held her chin with two fingers, to maintain eye contact. “You know I have adopted you.”

  She blinked in acknowledgment and her shoulders jerked once.

  “But you don’t know how I found you.”

  Something stirred deep inside Natalie. A sticky mushy fear which had always lived somewhere down below. A frightening worm that lay hidden below the rocks that were the foundation on which her personality was built.

  “After surviving the school shooting with Dave, I quit my teaching job and became a freelance journalist. I also got myself a gun. A revolver.”

  Anton paused, swallowed, and studied Natalie’s face for a few seconds. She was looking at him intently, following his every word with every level of her being. Small twitches in her eyelids and at the corners of her mouth hinted at the intense processes being put into motion inside her.

  Anton continued, “One evening, I was walking home through a shitty neighborhood, and I heard funny noises from an alley in that run-down housing complex. Male voices which sounded like they were doing something very bad, and the crying of a baby.”

  He stopped and tore his gaze away from her face.

  More tears were swelling up in Natalie’s eyes.

  “You know,” he swallowed again, and gave a small cough. “You know, there is a nasty superstition which originated in sub-Saharan Africa. It goes, that if you have AIDS and have sex with a virgin, you will be cured.”

  “No,” mouthed Natalie.

  Anton blinked back a tear of his own, “This means, that the infected men tend to gang rape any child they can find, in the hope of curing themselves. Any child. Even their own child. Even a baby.”

  Natalie closed her eyes, her face contorted and then froze in a grimace not dissimilar to the mask of a samurai warrior. Slowly she sank to the ground and curled up. Anton caressed her hair and continued his overdue account.

  “So I took out my gun, feeling all noble, and stepped into the alley. A bunch of black men with their pants down were passing each other a screaming baby.”

  Natalie let out a short sharp scream and writhed in abrupt jerks.

  “I...I shot once into the air. Then I pointed my gun at them and took you away. Then I shot them as they stood there. All of them.”

  “Noooaaa, Daddy nooo...” Natalie croaked. She gurgled as though she were a drowning child.

  Anton knew she didn’t mean him. She meant her real Daddy. The one he had shot. The one who clawed at the torn remains of posters on the side of the graffiti-covered dumpster; the one whose back arched, left leg twitching; the one who sobbed with fear and self-pity as life left him through the bullet holes.

  Anton kissed the crown of Natalie’s head and rubbed her back, to work up the circulation of the blood and fool the skin into sending safety messages to the brain. His voice swayed with the rhythm of his actions.

  “So, the cops arrived, I was taken away, you were taken away, but in the end the courts accepted that I had shot them in self defense. I think everyone was glad they were put down. I applied to be your foster Dad and my application was approved. Mercifully, you hadn’t been infected.”

  Anton stopped speaking. He continued massaging Natalie in silence, trying
to focus all the love that he felt for this fragile black girl, in the hope that like a plant she would feed on his positive emotion and convert it into life.

  * * * *

  By eight o’clock in the evening they really were back in the hotel.

  Natalie was subdued, but did not project despair and fear anymore. She looked weak but calm. Her eyes were alive, sparkling like the eyes of a healthy child.

  Anton looked at her tenderly as she polished off the fruit salad. He knew that every piece of mango was an overwhelming explosion for her amplified taste buds.

  He lit up a cigarette and remembered that he shouldn’t have. Mister Guerrero materialized with an ashtray in hand and winked at Anton. A good old-fashioned man, Guerrero.

  Natalie looked at Anton. “Dad,” she said, “where did you get this...Kwechu?

  Anton let out an impeccably crafted smoke ring, which floated ever expanding towards the ceiling, then tore itself apart.

  “After I got nailed as a junkie and you were taken away, I had to go through rehab. Then I had to stay clean for two years. At the end of these two years, I was at the end of my tether.

  “Nothing made sense. The urge to commit suicide, which as you know I have had since I was a kid, started scoring some victories against my mental defenses. I was getting careless. Cutting myself with knives when I prepared food. Getting involved in traffic accidents. Getting involved in senseless fights.”

  Natalie listened to him with radiant attention. He looked down and moistened his lips. “Then I decided to go back to my home place, to check out the roots.”

  “What, back to the Amazon jungle?”

  “Yes,” Anton looked up a sheepish smile. “I talked old Deus into it was well. We flew there and didn’t find our tribes, naturally, but we did meet a traveling magician. A traveling sorcerer.”

  “A medicine man?”

  “Exactly. He gave us this stuff.”

  Anton’s deathly white albino features shined in the empty mess hall. So it seemed to Natalie, as she listened to her slightly embarrassed father.