Atmosphere

by Michael Laimo

  Judas shoved aside a river of papers camouflaging an old metal desk and sat down on it, moccasined feet dangling.

  Frank reached into his jacket pocket, removed the receipt he took from Harold's apartment and handed it to Hector. Hector unfolded it and showed it to Judas. "Do you remember this particular purchase."

  Judas took the receipt, looked at it. Frank could see the veins at his temples throbbing, the one below the snake tattoo nearly sending it into motion. "What seems to be the problem?" Although Judas' appearance was more than unpleasant, his bearing seemed mannerly and cooperative.

  "We're investigating a murder that took place a few blocks from here. One of the victims had this receipt in his pocket. We're hoping you might be able to tell us something about the person who might have purchased these clothes."

  Judas ran a hand through his moustache. "This is dated two weeks ago. I see a lot of people come and go. I'd be lyin' if I had to pinpoint one particular guy, you know?"

  "Who's J.P.?" Frank pointed to a small space on the receipt where the letters were written. "Is that the salesperson?"

  "Jack. He's off today."

  Frank opened the clasp envelope, removed the police sketch of Harold Gross and handed it to Judas. "He look familiar?"

  Judas' eyebrows searched the heavens, lines of intense thought carving deep definition into his forehead. "Yeah, he does." He kept his eyes pinned to the portrait of the bald sunglassed man. "He your murder suspect?"

  "Could very well be," Hector said.

  Judas hopped from the desk, walked around and took a seat in the chair set behind it. He opened a drawer and removed a remote control apparatus. "I have a security system set up that takes video snapshots of the store from the rear, at the left of the checkout desk. I had it installed two years ago after the store was held up. I stay open till midnight every day, and figured it was the least thing I could do, afford really, that might prevent this type of thing from happening again. The camera's visible from almost anywhere in the store, and I think it does a good job at deterring shoplifters."

  Frank nodded. "We saw it."

  "Look." Judas pointed the remote towards a black and white surveillance monitor perched on a small cart at the side of his desk. The dust sheathing it was thick enough to write his name in. Frank and Hector edged around the side of the desk and saw a grainy video-cap of nearly three-quarters of the floor space in the shop. In the foreground, several customers stood frozen in time; in the background, Frank and Hector were caught walking through the entrance. Judas pressed a button on the remote and a second shot flickered into view showing the two cops having a conversation alongside a rounder of leather jackets, a few nearby customers eying them suspiciously.

  "It's rigged to run three seconds of video every time the front door is opened, this way I get at least something of everyone that comes into the store. With all the traffic I get, I'm guaranteed to catch a few precious moments of all my customers."

  "How come you run it only when the door is opened?" Frank asked. "Wouldn't it make more sense to keep it going at all times?"

  Judas reached down beneath his desk and pulled out a cardboard box. Opening it, he revealed a dozen or more videotapes, each labeled with a month and year. "If I kept it running at all times, I'd use up two tapes a day. I couldn't afford that, and really, I'd have no place to store them all. This way, I change 'em once a month."

  Frank felt a twinge of excitement. He looked at Hector who was looking at his watch. Good 'ol Hect, Frank thought. No doubt he was sorting the same thoughts through his head: that this surveillance system of Judas' could possibly prove Frank's theory. Finding Harold Gross on the tape would be one thing, albeit an unimportant factor at this time (the conclusion had already been made that Harold Gross was indeed at this store).

  But, what if another one of...them had been here, making a purchase?

  Frank let his eyes roam the cramped office. A poster on the wall caught his eye:

  Village Clothing! Techno-Wear For Every Mind-Bending Occasion!

  The detective personality inside couldn't help but think of all the CD's in Patrick Racine's room.

  "Frank?"

  Frank shook away the momentary lapse of lucidity. "Yes, Hect."

  "What do you think?"

  "Judas, would you mind if we took a quick look through your videos from the last two months?"

  "Sure. The tape that's in now has the last three weeks on it. Judging by the date on the receipt, your boy will be on it towards the beginning." Judas aimed the remote down and Frank noticed two VCR's stacked on top of one another on the floor below the cart. One was rewinding the tape currently in.

  The tape clicked to a stop, and Judas began flipping through a multitude of grainy, blurry frames.

  A few minutes of silence passed showing a multitude of youthful customers coming and going from the store. Finally Hector abruptly pointed to the screen. "There! Stop!"

  Judas stopped the tape and Frank saw him at once. A man, completely bald, wearing sunglasses.

  But it wasn't Harold Gross. Someone else had come into Village Clothing recently, someone shorter, stouter. Someone that looked eerily similar to Harold Gross.

  Judas pressed a button on the remote. The next frame showed the bald customer perusing a rack of clothing. The third showed him at the checkout counter making a substantial purchase. When he advanced to the next frame, the bald customer was gone.

  "That sure looks like your boy," Judas offered.

  Frank rubbed his chin in thought, the drone of the music from out front pounding on the walls. He felt a slight stirring of a headache, inducing the onset of fatigue, and he suddenly hoped he wouldn't be here much longer. "Judas, would you mind going through this tape with us? I'd like to see how many guys fitting a similar description had come in over the last two weeks."

  "No problem, officer." He smiled in jest, nodding. Clearly he was enjoying this little adventure.

  So they went through the tape, stopping a total of seven times in order to get a closer glimpse of bald men, some with sunglasses, all of whom made purchases. The third one they saw had been Harold Gross.

  A half-hour later, when they finally returned to the frames Frank and Hector appeared in, Frank asked Judas to put in a tape from last month, then pulled Hector aside. "Well, what do you think?"

  "Weird—but so are a lot of the kids that come in here. We'd find a hundred of 'em wearing green hair and eyebrow rings."

  "Yeah, but this is different, I just...well I just know, Hect. C'mon, I haven't been wrong yet, have I?"

  Hector closed his eyes and rubbed them, the dark semi-circles underneath arising like cold shadows. "No, you haven't. Believe me, at this point I'm pretty amazed that there seems to be a bunch of bald guys wearing sunglasses running around committing crimes, more so that they actually seem to be coming to this store to buy black clothing, just as you said. But why this place?"

  Frank leaned away from Hector. "Judas? Do you play that techno music here all day long?"

  Judas nodded. "You bet. Most of the time, anyway. Kids love it."

  "I have another theory regarding that. At least now I do."

  Hector put his hands up, palms facing Frank in a defensive posture. "Whoa Ballaro, one thing at a time. You still haven't told me how your Bobby Lindsay fits in with all this."

  "Gentlemen?"

  Frank and Hector faced Judas. He was pointing to a frame of a bald male customer wearing sunglasses standing right below the scope of the camera's eye, staring straight into the lens.

  Bobby Lindsay.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Shivering wildly, wracked with pain and nearly frozen in fear, Jaimie stumbled up the steps of the Sixth Street station, her sneakerless feet scraping against the concrete steps, glass and pebbles tearing holes through her socks, cutting her soles. At the top step she stubbed her toe and cried out. A number of folks passing by took brief notice of the dirty-socked, straggled-haired girl, but shuffled on their way, disi
nterested in lending any support—which was all well and fine with Jaimie. She simply wanted to get to the safety of her home as quickly as possible, into the warm caring embrace of her father, where she would be safe.

  She found it amazing how the people of New York just ignored those in apparent distress. After staggering on the train in the Bronx, her soles wet and bloodied, trailing tacky footprints on the aisle floor, she pulled herself into a seat and closed her eyes, trying gravely to block out the heavy stares of the twenty some-odd riders scattered throughout the length of the train. In the darkness of her shuttered eyes, she heard gentle footsteps approach and then the voice of a male stranger questioned her, asked if she were all right, but she kept her eyes sealed in answer, fearful that the voice might belong to a mysterious bald man with sunglasses, or even the bloodied disemboweled cadaver from the subway platform, and she simply replied, "I'm fine" in a curt yet civilized manner, keeping her hands to her face, running them through her sweaty, matted hair, all the while trying to control her shakes.

  The footsteps backed off, no additional questions asked, and she sat utterly alone, trembling, feeling the multitude of cold stares penetrating her as the train slowly shook its way back into the city. She felt an alarming warmth at her feet, the blood, seeping through her sneakers, through her socks, through her skin, perhaps into her very bloodstream, seemingly poisoning her with whatever horror it carried—the same one that had stricken the poor young man sitting amidst his decimated viscera on the subway platform.

  The first stop came and the doors opened up. Unable to withstand the inquisitive stares from the other passengers, or the bloody poison tainting her sneakers, she impulsively stood and darted from her seat out through the opened doors onto the elevated platform at the 78th Street Station in the Bronx. The doors quickly closed behind her and the train once again left her in solitude, elevated thirty feet in the cold nighttime air. Her concerns suddenly centered on ridding her body of the rotten sneakers, and she kicked them off onto the tracks. She then ran to the furthest end of the platform, waiting nearly twenty minutes until the next train into the city pulled in. She took a seat in the sparsely filled car—still gathering some wary looks—and pulled her knees to her chest, her chin on her knee-caps, her sneakerless feet at the edge of the seat. She stared out the window, watching the stops come and go for what seemed an eternity, all the way to the 6th Street Station in Manhattan where she hurried off, lightheaded, stumbling up the steps like a drunkard after an all night binge.

  Jaimie escaped into the moon-lit night, the cool air drying her sweat, sending bumpy chills from her scalp to her susceptible toes. Her head spun crazily, the night's horrifying events still so fresh in her mind, creating a surreal cloud of consciousness around her like a nightmare too difficult to shake away upon waking.

  She slowly and gently paced along the sidewalk, careful not to teeter from her dizziness, or step on anything that might injure her feet. People brushed by her, their floating bodies mere shadows of their true bodily existence, her mind unable to spell out their absolute reality. She felt like a ghost trapped in the lucid world, seemingly unable to distinguish the environment around her from those landscapes in her nightmares.

  Jaimie was in shock.

  She followed her instincts as they blindly led her through the downtown streets, past the diner where she ate burgers and fries with her friends from time to time, past the tavern where the bartender would set her up with a free beer every now and then, even though she wasn't old enough to drink. Past an alley where a police cruiser sat guarding the adjacent sidewalk, the entrance blocked off with yellow police line tape.

  She turned the corner of 4th Street and peered at the brick-faced apartment building across the street, about a quarter the way up the block.

  Home.

  Bobby Lindsay crawled maddeningly through the narrow tunnel, knees and fists caked with dirt and mud, bald head scraping along the roots escaping the low-lying passage. It smelled of shit and bugs and all things gone to rot down here, but the odors phased him in the least, as he possessed only one desire: to press on, to let nothing stop him from standing in front of the Giver once again.

  Although the tunnel held no light, he could still see quite well. This keen ability, which he greedily accepted, gave him the strength and desire to continue, and he followed the long winding tunnel to what he felt would be his ultimate destiny, his very purpose.

  He slowed for a brief moment to peered at the device around his ankle, the green light—once aglow—now gone, replaced by a blinking red light, warning him that he'd be pretty much fucked if one of those Outsiders got a hold of him. He knew quite well that it would be best not to let that happen again. The Giver forbade it.

  The air was cold down here, and he shivered, wearing only jeans and a sweatshirt (both black of course; the Giver wouldn't have it any other way). Without ample pockets, he had no choice but to keep a close grip on the Atmosphere, never once weakening his hold as he crawled along the passage. He continued at a feverish pace for a short while, then stopped, selfish desire suddenly consuming him.

  He wished to relish in the pulse of the Atmosphere.

  The glorious Atmosphere, the wonderful object with the smooth ebony skin, with the six perfectly proportioned tubular extremities. He handled it ever so carefully, as to not disgrace it by getting it too dirty. In his efforts not to tarnish its surface, another memory instantly returned, as if his thoughts had pressured a bubble filled with engrams to burst inside his mind and spill its contents. The Atmosphere, it had been dirty once before, he remembered. In the grasp of his sister Carrie. So clearly now he could remember standing at the threshold of his bathroom frozen with awe as the Atmosphere carried on with the filling process. He remembered finally retrieving it from Carrie's dead grasp, cleansing it of all the staining impurities in the tub, then cleaning the entire bathroom, the whole time telling himself that what had just happened with Carrie and the Atmosphere was a preordained event, that the Giver had wanted her to supply, and that he, Bobby Lindsay, would be adored in the eyes of the Giver for being there to make it happen.

  But things hadn't turned out that way.

  Bobby remembered wanting so badly to bring the Atmosphere to the Giver at that moment, to show him what he had done. But he thought otherwise, and suddenly found himself fighting the demands of the Giver, instead seeking further opportunities to harvest additional Suppliers. In his hasty efforts to do so, the Giver had forsaken him of his memories a short time thereafter, and he instantly found himself lost like a young boy in the mall without his mother, standing in the bathroom with his dead mutilated sister spread-eagled on the floor, blood at his feet, and a strange object in his grasp. Frightened, he stuffed his sister into the suitcase and hid her from the world.

  No, he did not murder her. The Atmosphere did. Which was all good and fine, as long as he would be able to retain his memories and continue on with his duty as Harbinger.

  Bobby heard a sound far ahead in the tunnel, approaching rapidly, a familiar engine-like hum growing louder and louder. He held the Atmosphere close, waiting in silence as the deep drone grew. The dirt walls around him began to resonate, above, below, and on all sides. He pulled his legs in and sat squat, head touching the dirt wall above, rubbing his left elbow against the blinking bracelet on his ankle. He peered ahead, searching for a presence, fearful that the sound might be coming from the Outsiders—that they may have found him.

  But the growing tone materialized from ahead, not from behind. If the Outsiders had followed him, they would have approached from behind.

  He felt his blood begin to race and he smiled, knowing that this couldn't be the approach of the Outsiders. It was the Giver, coming for him, just as it did weeks ago in his room, when it first asked him to harvest.

  Looking again, he heard a pulse—the pulse—making itself present in the background of the turbine-like resonation.

  Then he saw the Giver.

  Unable to coerce the
strength to dig through her knapsack and search out the keys, Jaimie rang the buzzer at the entrance of her building. She rang and rang, incessantly, but the electronic hails went unanswered, and she reluctantly squirmed out from the knapsack's binds and blindly rifled through her belongings until the keys jingled past her grasp. She fished them out, her distress causing her body to shake as much as the keys in her hand. The dozen or so keys all looked the same through her tears, and she was unable to immediately pinpoint an accurate target into the lock.

  Finally, one slipped in and she entered the building.

  She approached the elevator and entered, pressing the button for the fourth floor. The doors shut and she rode up in silence, leaning against the rear wall, the elevator providing her a smooth, short, uninterrupted ride. The doors opened. Wiping her flowing tears with her sleeve, she moved down the hall to apartment 4F, her home. She battled with the keys again, not as long this time, finding the right one on the third try. She opened the door and staggered inside, making it to the center of the living room. She stood there for a moment, confused, then the world went grey around her.

  Her knapsack fell from her hand and she fainted on the carpet.

  Breaths exploding from his lungs in short, powerful bursts, staying as still as an insect avoiding the prospect of becoming prey, Bobby Lindsay watched as the scaly black thing approached him. It looked like a snake in freshly shed skin, slick and wet, its length disappearing far into the dark tunnel ahead. Although it appeared to have no head, it still seemed to possess a sense of direction, the foremost tip ending in a pinpoint that swayed and waned like an eel prowling from its lair.

  It stopped in front of Bobby in an upright position, swaying in a hypnotic fashion, flexing its probing end, sizing him up not much unlike a cobra would a charmer's horn. It then slowly began crawling over him, like a giant poking finger, 'feeling him out', first his legs, then his body, and soon his face, the roving appendage prodding and prodding, the pinpoint end opening up into a suction-cup formation, seemingly tasting him, leaving warm circles of moisture where it came in contact with his skin.