Night Movies

by Mary SanGiovanni

  So Dr. Winston was, I’m sure, exercising the simplest of social as well as professional behaviors by focusing his attention on his class, on Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” and not on Francis Culmer. He didn’t seem to notice when, after a few more moments, the boy came back down the hall and leaned against the doorway.

  Culmer looked gangly, too tall and too thin to fit quite right in that rectangle of space, and for several long moments, those glassy eyes fixed on me. I felt the stares of other students as they looked from him to me. It made me uncomfortable. I often caught him looking at me like that, either in the cafeteria or the library, or out on campus as I walked between buildings. He rarely spoke to me, and for that, I was glad. But he did look, and his gaze was intense, both somehow worshipful and hateful, as if he were inexorably drawn to something about me, and he loathed both himself and me for that.

  I shifted in my seat, wishing he’d just go away. He didn’t, and as each disquieting second ticked by, I could hear more of the students around me shuffling papers, coughing, even whispering. Dr. Winston, however, continued talking and writing on the board, and didn’t turn around until a tentative voice from the back of the room broke into his monologue with, “Uh, excuse me, Professor?”

  “Yes?” Dr. Winston sounded both distracted and annoyed to have been interrupted. He turned.

  The stares of the students drew his attention to Culmer.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Yes,” Culmer said in that slightly affected tone he had. His gaze remained fixed on me for a few more dragging seconds. Suddenly, he stood up straight and turned to Dr. Winston. He raised a hunting rifle that he’d been keeping just out of our line of view through the doorway and pointed it at the professor, cocked the lever, and fired. An explosion of red across the center of Dr. Winston’s chest jarred against his pale blue shirt. The professor’s expression barely changed, too caught off guard to even be surprised, and he crumpled to the floor, a balloon of life and intelligence and wit poked through and immediately deflated.

  No one screamed at first, and no one cried. We were in shock, I think. Calmly, Culmer entered the room with that shuffle of his, closing the space between himself and the gasping man who coughed a light spray of blood onto his chin. Dr. Winston’s hands grasped uselessly at the dark stain spreading across the front of his shirt. His mouth worked open and closed as if trying to say something. His wide eyes, I saw, were glazing.

  Culmer stepped on his throat with one scuffed, dirty sneaker and leaned his weight forward. Ugly little choking sounds, like the rattle of something small and hard in a wooden tube, escaped from the gaping lips. Then the sounds stopped and the movement stopped. Blood spread unevenly from beneath Dr. Winston’s back. He was dead.

  Culmer removed his foot and turned to us. To me.

  “You,” he said to the class, “are going to help me with something.”

  * * * * *

  The brilliant hues of the arboretum faded into the background. For several seconds, my inability to breathe fed my panic. The shuffling figure in front of me moved slowly, taking casual interest in the arboretum’s extensive collection of orchids. Most of him was swathed in shadow.

  Had he seen me? I glanced around. He must have. We were the only people left. The dead weights in my legs were dissolving, threatening to leave them to buckle from under me. I imagined myself about to—

  crumple to the floor—

  collapse where I stood, unable to even back away from the spot, from the shuffling form so nonchalantly invading the sanctuary of the arboretum. Panicked, I looked around again for someone to help me get my legs moving.

  Ichi, ni (one, two....)

  I had seen Culmer, and I was awake—it wasn’t the nightmare where he stood outside my window covered in other people’s blood, screaming, screaming until dawn. He was here in Japan, here, and how the hell had he found me? How the hell had he even found this place?

  San, shi (three, four….)

  As I peered through the shadows creeping over and in between the orchids, I mentally ran names from my old life Culmer could have threatened for information, scanned possible electronic or paper trails he could have followed. But how had he gotten out of jail? How—?

  I turned back to the path ahead of me, seized with the sudden terrifying idea that among my rapid-fire thoughts, I had become distracted, and Culmer was no longer ahead of me on the path. He could have turned a corner and doubled back. For a moment, the world in front of me wavered.

  Oh God, oh God BREATHE

  Go, roku (five, six….)

  I staggered toward a nearby bench and sank to it, forcing myself to breathe, forcing the world to reform into clear and solid shapes again. Where had he gone? Would I see him before I heard the shot?

  Stay calm and breathe and count

  Shichi (seven....)

  I had to get out of there. I had to get home. Christ, how could I have been so stupid? How could I have really believed there was anywhere I could go that would truly be far enough away?

  Hachi (eight....)

  I stood and my legs finally gave out. With a hard thud, I landed back on the bench. Tears blurred the blended rainbow of flowers in front of me, their tints now darkened, now somehow made sinister and alien, by the approaching night.

  Kyu (nine....)

  I screamed when fingers closed around my shoulder. I looked up to find a park caretaker, a slight man with beautiful brown eyes and a shock of black hair. The fingers quickly darted away, and in their place, a voice spoke, faltering, almost ingratiating with measured, careful respect.

  “Excuse me,” he said to me in Japanese. “Can I—”

  * * * * *

  “Help you? In what way?”

  Instead of turning his attention to the guy who had spoken, Culmer had glared at me.

  “You’re going to help me prove something to her.” He tilted his head in my direction, that look of abject, obsessive hate and love in his eyes, and my breath caught in my chest. He was going to kill me. I knew it. My thoughts crashed into each other—a lifetime of memories, of unfinished business and unfulfilled dreams, of people I wanted to say good-bye to. My hand shook as I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. He was going to kill me. There were no tears—not just then—but I fought the urge to throw up.

  Before I could get my mouth to work, he turned to the guy who had spoken and motioned at him with the gun. When the guy didn’t move, no doubt paralyzed by fear and confused as to the directive, Culmer rolled his eyes.

  “You,” he said, pointing at him with the gun. “You and your girl. Come here. Everyone else, line up against the blackboard so I can see you. So we can talk. No, not you, Gina. Not you. You stay right there.”

  The gun swung in my direction, and for just a moment, I closed my eyes. When I opened them again, the majority of the class was lined up against the blackboard, shivering and whimpering. The guy who had spoken, as well as his girlfriend, stood near Culmer. They looked like rabbits ready to bolt, their body language screaming to pull away from Culmer’s presence.

  The gun dangled in Culmer’s arm, and with his empty hand, he nervously drummed against his thigh.

  The two he had singled out were a couple, both from eastern Pennsylvania. They’d been high school sweethearts, and had planned the submission and acceptance of their college applications for the same schools, so that they could be together. They loved each other—gazed at each other with quiet and complete admiration, remembered things for each other, told each other everything. He was going to propose, three months after graduation. He already had the ring.

  His roommate told me all that in the weeks after.... I hadn’t known them well, but from the honest feeling with which his roommate spoke about them, I wish I had.

  She (her name was Lynn) had been smart, with a warm white smile and an athlete’s soft, smooth tan and lean build. She always wore her hair in a messy blonde knot on top of her head. I remember, because even with streams of yellow escaping to w
isp around her face, she still looked pretty. I envy that. I have long, dark waves of heavy Italian hair that take over an hour to make look effortless.

  They called Lynn’s boyfriend Cappy for reasons lost to the kegger-induced haze of semesters past, but his real name was Marshall. He was an obvious complement to her—tall, sandy-haired, a sort of teen-show quarterback type with a kind face and strong-looking hands that girls swooned over. He liked to play baseball. He was pretty good, too. He was a pitcher—left-handed, his roommate had told me with some degree of pride.

  I don’t think Culmer knew either of them at all. It didn’t seem to matter, though. He’d chosen Marshall and Lynn and Dr. Winston and me. We were pieces that neatly fit some part of a greater whole, gears that facilitated the machinery of his motivation. We were a part of the inner whirrings in his head.

  We didn’t know the extent of those inner whirrings, though—not then. Later, there would be diaries—dozens of them—and letters home. There would be speculations from newscasters and interviewed psychiatrists. There would be extensive news coverage of the trial. But not then. In that moment, and in each moment that followed, separate and agonizing and unique to the moments before and after it, we didn’t know—not what Culmer was thinking, or what he was truly capable of.

  We didn’t know he’d thought it all out, had planned each detail and waited until every aspect was in place to carry it out. We didn’t know then that he’d barricaded the doors to the school building, posting signs handwritten on loose leaf that any attempt to open those doors would set off bombs.

  And we couldn’t fathom why—not then and not even now. There never is a truly satisfying answer to why people commit the extreme acts of violence that they do. That he loved me so much he had grown to hate me—well that was the only answer, saturated as it was in my guilt, that I could take away from that night. It wasn’t really an answer, though. Nor was Culmer’s dad taking off when he was nine, or his mother’s addiction to painkillers, or the weeks, months, years he spent alone with his own thoughts. My own therapist told me that I’d never get better so long as I kept looking for an explanation, a reason why. I’d never find an acceptable one. Something had gone wrong in Culmer’s wiring. He was angry and unbalanced, and that—and that alone—was why he had done what he’d done.

  He wanted me to think it was about me, that all of it had been for me. That it was my fault for not loving him. I knew that even as my class stood like frightened animals herded to slaughter, even as he held an innocent couple at gunpoint, from the look in his eyes. They weren’t glassy now, but clear and empty fathoms, and that was actually more terrible.

  Once everyone was where Culmer had put them, he closed the one door to the classroom, locked it, and told two jocks whose names I didn’t know to drag a desk up under the doorknob.

  “So we can have some privacy,” he said once the task was complete, and offered us that weird ripple of his mouth that I suppose was a smile.

  Then he turned back to me. “You don’t really know who I am, do you?”

  “Y-yes. Yes, I do. Francis Culmer.”

  He shrugged. “Huh. That’s more than I’d given you credit for. You know my name. You know anything else about me? Where I’m from? What my favorite movie is? How I like my coffee?”

  “I don’t know anything else about you,” I whispered. “How could I know those things?”

  Nothing in his face indicated that he was perturbed by my answer, but his voice, insistent and strained, made my skin crawl. “I know those things about you,” he said quietly. “Gina Montenello, from Bloomfield, New Jersey, then Bradford, Vermont, then back to New Jersey again – Wexton – for high school and college. Favorite color, purple. Favorite movie, The Usual Suspects. Clothing size 8, shoe size, 7 ½, bra size 36C. You drink tea instead of coffee—two Splendas and skim milk. You love cats. You are left-handed. Your favorite flower is the tiger lily.”

  I couldn’t speak, but a cold fear spread through my limbs as he talked, weighing them down. How did he know so much about me? And why?

  “It’s love,” he said to me, as if that explained everything. “When you love someone, the things that are important to that person become important to you, too. Like these two.” He gestured at Marshall and Lynn by swinging the muzzle of the rifle up in their direction. “Am I right?”

  Lynn buried her face in Marshall’s chest. Marshall nodded mutely.

  To me, Culmer said, “Am I important, Gina? Am I?”

  “Francis—”

  “You’re important to me. I can remember the first time I saw you. Freshman orientation welcome speech, auditorium, third row. You wore your hair up in these beautiful waves. Coral tank top and denim shorts. Sandals.”

  His gaze drifted and his voice trailed off, and for several seconds, an awkward silence settled into the crevices of discomfort between us.

  Suddenly, he seemed to awaken, the light in his mind switching back on, while the empty windows of his eyes showed no more than a return to the present.

  “I’ve been devoted to you ever since. Ever since that first day. If you’d ever noticed me, you’d see that. I’ve done everything I could to show you. Paid parking tickets you never knew you got. Shadowed you while you were jogging to make sure no one ever attacked you on the path. Came to all your art shows so I could admire your sculptures. Even saw you that one year in the school play—sat in the front row. You know, we could have had a love like they do. Because I’m willing to change the world for you. I’ll show you.”

  He pointed the gun at Lynn’s head and Marshall stepped in front of her.

  “Don’t—” Marshall began, and Culmer shifted the gun and shot him in the forehead. I don’t think I’d ever heard something so loud. The reverberations, at least in my head, drowned out my startled cry. They rang through the sudden teary babbling and begging that weren’t quite words but rather, impotent workings of our throats. Lynn was already crying, already sinking to the ground after him, cradling what was left of his bloody head in her lap, stroking his cheek, her legs streaked with his blood. She looked up at Culmer, the tears blurring her eyes, her chest heaving in great silent sobs. Gray and red splattered her blouse and neck and chest, a fine mist of red on her cheeks, which the tears picked up and carried off the tips of her nose and chin. She held Marshall, the loosed strands of blond dancing in the air around her head. She shuddered one great breath.

  She didn’t look scared. Just heartbroken and lost, like all the will to speak or stand had simply leaked away. We saw it on her face, an empty kind of pleading while she absently stroked Marshall’s cheek. This lasted for a moment longer before Culmer tilted his head thoughtfully, pulled a small handgun out of his back pocket, and shot her in the throat.

  Her eyes got really big for a moment as she gaped soundlessly, blood flowing freely down her chest and over her bottom lip. Then she folded over Marshall and lay still.

  “I wish just once you’d look at me like she looked at him,” Culmer said wistfully, so quietly I didn’t realize at first that he was talking to me. He looked up, his dead eyes big and blue and vacant. “Would you say it?”

  “Say what?”

  “Say you love me. Say it just once so I can hear how it sounds. You’ve said it before. To a musician and an artist and a jock, three stupid oversexed assholes who never appreciated how beautiful and musical those words must sound coming from you. Say it once, just once, so I can know what it feels like.”

  The words stuck in my throat. Tears ran hot on my face, and I felt my nose running. I sniffled quietly.

  “Say it!” he snapped and I flinched. I looked helplessly at the remaining students, huddled together, pale and tear-streaked and hollow-eyed, exhausted and scared. Just say it, their expressions said. Just tell him whatever he wants.

  “I…I’ll s-s-say anything you w-want,” I told him, “if you let us g-go.”

  “Let you go?” He frowned as if my suggestion simply and absurdly defied the laws of physics. After a moment
’s consideration, he shook his head, venting frustration in a long, impatient sigh. “We’re not done yet.”

  * * * * *

  When I got home from the arboretum, I locked all the doors and windows. To do that made me almost as angry as I was scared. I crossed the kitchen to the fridge and took out the open bottle of white wine. Taking a wine glass from the cabinet, I poured myself some of the Pinot and gulped it down, then filled the glass again. This one I sipped, forcing my breathing to slow, forcing my heart to stop pounding against the cage of my chest.

  My gaze found the kitchen window, the one that looked out onto my own small garden, my own little bench built for me by the local carpenter, the closest thing I had to a friend anywhere in the world. In some of my dreams, Culmer would appear just behind that bench, nearly transparent in the fog and moonlight. I would watch him cross the back lawn, tramping through the garden, and as he got closer, I’d see the blood on his shirt. Blood dripped from his hair down into his eyes, and from his eyes, stark red-black lines in the cheesecloth-white of his face. The blood on his hands was the thickest; it dripped off the tips of his fingers and pattered to the ground, leaving dual trails in his wake.

  In the dreams, Culmer didn’t shuffle. His deliberate stride held purpose. He would come within ten feet or so of the house and his black-lipped mouth would open, and he would scream. Even in sleep, that sound made my whole body shiver. It was the sound of his frustration and ineffectiveness, but it was also the sound of pure violence, the thunder of gunfire, the useless pumping of the heart as its efforts spilled onto cool tile floors. It was the sound of hearts breaking—hearts that could not bear the loss of their child, their brother, their lover. It was the liquid roar of a vacuum which something is rushing to fill, the vacuum left by the sudden departure of life. It was the sound of death itself.