Waking Hours

by Wiehl, Lis

  “I hardly have time to play these days,” Dani apologized, trying to recall the last time she’d sat down at it.

  “So many people have electronic pianos these days,” Willis said. “It makes sense, I know. They don’t sound as good, but they’re a lot easier to move.”

  “How can I help you?” she asked him, moving her office chair around to the other side of her desk to sit opposite him. She realized that most of what she’d learned about the therapist’s proper demeanor and body language was inapplicable. She hoped sitting a little closer might make up for the usual intimacy-enhancing tools and tricks. “What’s going on?”

  “Well,” he said, his smile weaker now, “I guess if I knew what was going on, I wouldn’t need to talk to you. You know that line from Macbeth, in Act II, when he talks about the ‘sleep that knits the raveled sleeve of care’?”

  “The balm of hurt minds,” Dani quoted, surprised that she could remember a play she hadn’t read since college. Unraveled, she’d told Tommy that very day.

  “That’s the one,” Willis said. “I guess I could use a little more balm.”

  “You’re having trouble sleeping?” Dani asked. “You know, there are a lot of new medications these days that could help you.”

  “Well,” Willis said, “I suppose we could do that. You’re the doctor. It’s not so much the lack of sleep, I guess. I’ve been having some fairly troubling dreams.”

  Dani recalled the section she’d taken in abnormal psychology covering sensory impairment, but it was hardly something she felt expert in. The mind of a blind person started out the same as everybody else’s, but then what happened to it as it developed?

  “What sort of dreams?” she asked him.

  “Well,” he said. He paused, thinking. “I wish I knew. It’s something I have trouble putting into words. If my wife . . . Anyway, I can’t quite express it. Have you heard of neural plasticity?”

  She had. The term referred to the way the brain adapted to injury and reorganized its functions by reassigning tasks to new neural networks. One example was how paralyzed stroke victims regained motor functions by training new parts of their brains to control voluntary muscle activity.

  “What about neural plasticity?” she asked him.

  “You know, when blind people dream . . . ,” he began. “They’ve done experiments with MRIs or CAT scans, I forget . . . that show that when blind people dream, the visual cortex lights up, just as it does in sighted people. Lights up when we read Braille too. Did you know that?”

  “I remember reading something about that,” she said. Braille readers experienced touch as a kind of sight, her ab psych professor had said.

  “They used to think it was use it or lose it,” Willis continued. “That it atrophied. Now they know that sometimes the other senses take over the part that isn’t being used. My doctor told me that’s why I have perfect pitch. And what he calls a phonographic memory.”

  Dani knew that Willis had been a musician who’d played piano in jazz bands his whole life, even though he was unable to read sheet music. She knew blind people often possessed remarkable aural memory, able to recite long conversations word for word.

  “Are you remembering things in your dreams?”

  “Am I?” he asked. “Well . . . I just don’t know. That’s a good question, Dani. I knew you’d be good at this. You know, there are sounds animals can hear that we can’t hear, like those high-pitched dog whistles. And there are colors animals can see that we can’t see. Infrared and ultraviolet and even beyond that. You wonder what else we’re surrounded by that we can’t see or don’t know. So I was thinking, what if, suddenly, you could?”

  “It would probably be very disturbing,” Dani said.

  “So I guess,” Willis said, “maybe I’m seeing things, in my dreams. I mean, seeing things. Maybe it’s totally normal for people like you, but it’s new to me. For you, maybe it would be like discovering a sense you didn’t know you had, if you can imagine that.”

  “It’s very difficult for me to imagine what that must be like,” Dani said.

  “I had sight until I was eighteen months old, you know,” Willis told her. “Childhood retinoblastoma. So maybe . . . maybe it’s actually a memory. I take it most people can’t remember anything much before the age of three, right?”

  “Isolated images,” Dani said. “But intact complete memories are rare.”

  “Uh-huh,” Willis said.

  “Can you describe what you see in your dreams?”

  “It’s hard to put into words,” Willis said. “I mean, sometimes I’ll sit on a couch, and I’ll think, This couch is orange. But it’s not orange to people who can see. Just to me. So I can use words, but they mean different things to me and to you.”

  “Is it one dream or several different dreams?” she asked.

  “Just one,” he said. “But I’ve had it more than once.”

  He reached down with his right hand to where he’d set his briefcase on the floor beside him and picked it up. He held it in his lap as he undid the straps that closed it. “I’ve got something for you,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind. I tried . . . not sure if this will help.” He took out an object wrapped in bubble wrap.

  “Blind people hate bubble wrap,” he told Dani, smiling as he felt with his fingertips to find the Scotch tape holding the package closed. “It’s like reading a book where the words explode.” He unwrapped the object. “You remember that my wife, Bette, is a potter?” he said.

  “I do,” Dani said. “I have a platter she made for my parents’ wedding anniversary.”

  “Well, I was going to try to draw you a picture of what I saw,” Willis said, “but I thought maybe this would work better. Except that what I saw in my dream wasn’t solid. But if it was solid, it would have looked something like this. Best I can do.” He handed her a figurine about ten inches high.

  She examined it. “You say it wasn’t solid,” she told him. “What was it made out of?”

  “Heat,” he said. “It was warm. So maybe it was made out of light. I want to say the light was white or golden. But it’s like I was saying about the orange couch. What’s orange to me isn’t necessarily orange to you. I know that.”

  The figure she held was a human form. Human, except for what appeared to be wings sprouting from his back. Or her back. The gender was not defined, but the image was familiar.

  “What did this . . .” She paused. “Was it male or female—can you say?”

  “I can’t,” Willis said. “I’m sorry. You’d think I should be able to remember because it spoke to me. But the voice wasn’t . . . I couldn’t tell.”

  “What did the voice say to you?”

  “Well, that’s just it,” Willis said. “That’s why I wanted to talk to you. To warn you.”

  “Warn me about what?”

  “It said, ‘Tell Dani I’m coming.’ Though I don’t know if that’s good or bad.”

  33.

  “Tommy—Frank DeGidio,” Tommy heard when he checked his voice mail. “You asked me to call you if anybody found a dead dog. Some kids called one in today. It’s down at the station if you want to look at it. I’m here late tonight.”

  His second message was from Carl: “I’m home if you need me—come by for dinner if you’d like. I’m making beef stew.”

  Tommy had called Carl with a question. He jumped on his bike and rode the three miles to his friend’s house. He found the older man by his woodshed, chopping firewood, and helped him stack the last quarter cord. Carl reiterated his invitation to dinner, and while he set the table, Tommy lit a fire in the fireplace.

  “Have you ever seen a bay tree?” Carl said, fishing a bay leaf out of the stew and holding it up for examination. “It’s actually from the laurel family. Unbelievably aromatic. The Greeks made wreathes from them to give away as prizes at athletic events, in honor of Apollo. Hence the phrase ‘resting on one’s laurels.’ In the Bible, the laurel symbolizes the triumphant resurrection of Christ. I
t’s also on the dollar bill, on either side of George Washington.”

  “It’s also the name of a girl I knew in college,” Tommy replied. “Hence the phrase ‘Hi, this is Laurel—why don’t you call me?’ ”

  “So you said you wanted to know who St. Adrian was,” Carl said.

  “Just curious,” Tommy said. “The place gives me the creeps. I’ve never known exactly who it’s named for.”

  “There were actually two St. Adrians,” Carl said. “Or ‘Hadrians.’ Hadrian of Nicomedia was a Roman guard who converted to Christianity and was martyred in AD 306. They chopped his arms and legs and head off, but when the Romans tried to burn his body, a thunderstorm put the fire out and the executioners were killed by lightning bolts.”

  “Let that be a lesson to you,” Tommy said. “What about the other one?”

  “The other one was a Berber from Greek-speaking North Africa who became the abbot of the monastery at Canterbury, in England. Pope Gregory I actually offered him the archbishopric, but he declined, so Gregory Uno gave it to Theodore of Tarsus. Both Theodore and Adrian were highly educated men who spoke Greek and Latin. Adrian did a lot toward making education available to the common man. I suspect that’s why they named the school after him. He made the monastery’s library available to lay scholars and tried to teach the peasants to read, that sort of thing. One source credits him with wiping out paganism in England.”

  “By doing what?” Tommy asked.

  “By offering them something better,” Carl said. “I’m not sure we can appreciate today the kind of raw hope and peace that the message of Christ offered to people in the Dark Ages. These were people who’d never heard of a God who loved them. They spent most of their time propitiating gods who plagued them constantly with diseases and misfortunes. The pagan gods they knew were filled with wrath, and they were everywhere. So when they got the real deal, it was revolutionary. Transformative. Imagine you’ve never tasted sugar before, and then somebody hands you a chocolate ice cream cone. Maybe not the best analogy.”

  “I hear what you’re saying.”

  “But on the other hand,” Carl continued, “not everybody got it. The pagan leaders felt challenged and fought back, in which case they had to deal with Adrian’s holy warrior, Dark Charles. Some sources call him Black Charles. I sort of like Dark Charles. Sounds like a dessert—like Bananas Foster. Anyway, Charles of Gaul led a militia of monks on raids into pagan camps and waged a campaign against them, not unlike how we’re fighting insurgents today in . . . well, everywhere. Holy warriors. He succeeded, but he was pretty ruthless. No one seems to know where the pagans went, so either he got them all or they had to swim for it.”

  “Who were they?” Tommy asked. “The pagans?”

  “Druids,” Carl said. “Which is slightly ironic, because before the Romans, the druids were considered the learned scholars. The Romans had already driven them out of Europe by the end of the second century, but they fled to England and Ireland. Probably no more than a few hundred of them left by Adrian’s time, meeting and living in caves.”

  Tommy broke off another piece of sourdough bread and buttered it while Carl served him a second helping of stew.

  “So Adrian got rid of the druids?” Tommy said.

  “Dark Charles did,” Carl said, opening his second beer. “One scholar said Adrian didn’t know what Charles was up to. As long as he got results, Adrian probably looked the other way, would be my guess. As far as they were concerned, this was war. Holy war. Not on a par with the Crusades, but not dissimilar.”

  “Didn’t the druids practice human sacrifice?” Tommy asked.

  “They did,” Carl said. “Are you trying to connect this to the killing on Bull’s Rock Hill?”

  “I don’t know if it connects at all,” Tommy said. “But the evidence suggests the murder was ritualistic. And nobody can figure out what the ritual was.”

  “So you think we’re dealing with druids?” Carl said, smiling.

  Tommy laughed. “No,” he said, “but I wouldn’t put it past a bunch of kids to Google ‘druid rituals’ and come up with something they think looks authentic. Isn’t there a saying about a little knowledge being a dangerous thing?”

  He thought again of the music the kids at the party had been listening to, loud and driving and filled with hate. He could imagine how kids might be drawn to the power of symbols like swastikas or skulls and crossbones, ignoring the evil they signified.

  “I don’t know what they’d find on Google,” Carl said. “Certainly nothing authentic. The druids left no written records. The histories we have are Roman. Caesar and Suetonius, Cicero, I believe. Nobody really knows what the druids believed because the tradition was entirely oral. We think they were animists and possibly sun worshippers. And definitely necromancers.”

  “Black magic?”

  “I took a class in primitive religions at seminary,” Carl said. “Ordinarily, they sacrificed animals and saved human sacrifice for special occasions.”

  “You mean like Super Bowl parties,” Tommy joked.

  “Uh . . . no,” Carl said skeptically. “The Aztecs practiced human sacrifice as a way of telling the future. To answer the really big questions, they’d plunge a dagger into the heart of the victim and then watch how she thrashed about as she died. How that could predict the future, I have no idea. But predicting the future has always been a big part of black magic. Ever hear of alecromancy? It’s predicting the future by throwing corn to chickens and watching what order they peck the corn in.”

  “It makes about as much sense as predicting the future using frog guts,” Tommy said.

  “Or astrology,” Carl said. “Needing to predict the future is the opposite of true faith. True faith means believing in a future you can’t predict. Bear in mind, the people being sacrificed didn’t always object. The idea was that one person would sacrifice themselves so that the others could prevail. In a lot of cultures that practiced human sacrifice, including the Aztecs and certain Polynesian cultures, the victims went willingly. It was an honor to be chosen. You’d think we’d be more evolved today, but we had kamikaze pilots in World War II sacrificing themselves for the Emperor. I doubt any of this has anything to do with . . .”

  “Julie Leonard,” Tommy said.

  “I doubt any of this applies to her,” Carl said. “Do the police think she was sacrificed?”

  “I don’t think they’ve used the word, but I don’t know,” Tommy said. “Thanks, Carl. You’ve been a big help. As usual.”

  He called Dani, got her voice mail, and asked her to meet him at The Pub in an hour. He had one more stop to make first.

  The East Salem police station was a house where Main Street met Route 35, next to the fire station and the highway department. There was a large parking lot next to the station where commuters with permits could park to catch the shuttle to the train station in Katonah.

  When Frank DeGidio called him back to say the blood he’d found in the hollow stump was canine, Tommy had asked Frank to let him know if anybody found the missing dog he’d seen on the poster at the foot of the trail leading to Bull’s Rock Hill. At the police station, Frank led Tommy around back, explaining that two teenage boys were fishing and saw what they’d thought at first was a dead raccoon floating in Lake Atticus. They’d called animal control when they realized it was either a coyote or a dog.

  “It’s a little hard to tell,” Frank said. “This thing is a mess.”

  The carcass had been placed on the lid of the Dumpster. Tommy shooed away the flies and lifted the plastic garbage bag covering the remains. The animal had what appeared to be brown fur with threads of black in it. The fur was coarse and wiry, consistent with a coyote, or maybe a terrier. He tried to remember the poster he’d seen. He closed his eyes to quiet the visual noise.

  “Any idea how long it was in the water?”

  “You’re asking me?” DeGidio said. “People gas up and float anywhere from a few days to a few weeks depending on the water tempera
ture and what was in their stomachs when they died. Dogs, who knows?”

  “Ballpark guess?”

  “Two weeks?” DeGidio said.

  Tommy retrieved his evidence kit from the back of the Jeep, donned a headlamp and a pair of latex gloves, and then reached into the guts of the animal, feeling around. Frank wrinkled his nose in disgust. Tommy examined the skull and the teeth and what was left of the lower jaw, which came off in his hand.

  “Arf, arf!” he said, jabbing the jaw at his friend.

  “Very funny,” DeGidio said, flinching nevertheless.

  “Can you grab the metal detector from the back of the Jeep?” Tommy asked.

  “Why?” DeGidio asked. “You think this thing ate somebody’s watch?”

  Tommy told DeGidio how to turn the detector on and then had him pass the dish over the mangled corpse while Tommy held it. The detector beeped as the dish passed over what Tommy assumed had to be the dog’s hip bone. He dug his fingers into the soft flesh, felt a lump, took out his Boy Scout knife, made an incision, and removed a small plastic vial about an inch long, capped at either end with a metal plug.

  “What the heck is that?” DeGidio asked.

  “It’s a microchip,” Tommy said, backing away from the corpse and shining his flashlight on the plastic vial. “They inject them under the skin when they’re puppies so that if they ever get lost or stolen, you can identify them if somebody turns them in. The vet or the animal control officer will have a scanner that can read the identification code. This dog’s name is Molly. The vet will be able to get you the owner’s phone number. When you call, just tell them she died of natural causes.”

  “So what did she really die of?” Frank asked.

  “See how the chip is melted?” Tommy said, shining the light on it, then on the carcass. “And this blackened tissue here. I think somebody lit her on fire. From the inside.”

  He handed the microchip to DeGidio, who put it in his shirt pocket.

  “Oh, man,” Frank said. He looked like he might be sick. “I swear, Tommy, the hardest part of this job is seeing what people do to animals.”