by Jeff Siamon
He had kept his eyes away from the bar’s entrance. He had been using his pass key to come into the building the back way to avoid seeing the place. But now Vicky’s persistence had sent him to the front entrance.
A loud burst of laughter came booming into the lobby. He twitched at the sound and nearly went on alert.
“I got up my nerve to sing tonight. Don’t you want to see me make a fool of myself?”
“No.” He meant he didn’t want to go into the bar. But he could tell by her frown, she thought he meant her. “Look. What do you want from me?”
“Uh … nothing.” The vehemence in his voice surprised her. As did his angry eyes. “Nothing. I just thought ─”
“What did you think? That you’d get prettied up and then everything was going to be all right? That that was going to make me feel that nothing horrible had happened?”
“No, I ─”
“Do you think it’s going to be that easy to laugh off what Evie did? What’s happening to me? To all of us? Well, it isn’t. This is it. This is all we get. And isn’t good. And there isn’t a damn thing you or anybody can do about it. And frankly, I don’t give a shit. Whatever’s going to happen, is going to happen. So you can go in there and sing about it if you like. For all I care.”
He went outside. She followed. Both stopped to look west. The sunset was spectacular.
“What a waste,” he said, more to himself than to Vicky.
“I’ll go with you. If you want. To the police. Or to the mayor. Or wherever. If there’s two of us ─ If we tell our stories. About what happened. Maybe we could convince someone.”
Hopeless. That’s what he thought.
“It won’t make any difference. I think the game is about over. Hell, I just wish it was over.”
“Don’t talk like that, Connie. You’re scaring me.”
The catch in her voice got to him. Everything was hopeless but he didn’t have to be a bastard about it.
“Listen. I’ve tried. It’s not going to do any good.” He told her what happened at the police station. But not at the speakeasy. She didn’t need to know that. “They’re just going to think you’re suspicious, too.”
The traffic was light. He waited for a break and then crossed the street. She followed.
“I’m scared, Connie,” she told him when they reach the other side. “I’m afraid to be alone. I’m afraid something’s going to happen to mom and dad.”
“Yeah.” He thought of Evie as he walked the block to the adjacent street where the company car park was.
She followed. “Gosh. Do you think that’s why Evie went to your place? Because she was afraid to be alone?”
He had thought that. But it had become too gruesome an idea to dwell upon. She went to him for help. He hadn’t helped. Maybe even brought it on.
They walked in silence the rest of the way to the five-story car park. Down the cross street for two blocks. The light had begun to grey except for the occasional sunset glow peak-a-boos through the alleys in between buildings.
Connie used the stairs instead of the elevator. His car was on the top level. Vicky followed. When they reached the top, the last of the sunset reds and pinks gave the level the look of an old Kodachrome photo. And his car, with its patches of red primer paint, the look of something that belonged in an old photo.
He pressed the remote and his car’s lights flashed. He walked to it and opened the driver’s door.
She followed.
“Look. Like I said, what do you want from me?”
She turned and started to walk away. “Nothing, I guess.”
The look on her face stabbed at his emotions. What little emotion hopeless allowed. “Vicky, wait. I can give you a ride home. If you need one. If you want.”
That stopped her. She wanted that. She wanted a lot more. She retraced her steps. “Thanks. I’ve already missed my ride. I was going to take a taxi.”
“What about the karaoke? Weren’t you planning on going up?”
“Well. I guess the world can get along with one less amateur singer. I think I just want to go home now.”
They got into his car. He started the engine. Then slowly made his way down the circular exit ramp to the street level.
By the time they drove onto the street, the evening light had lost most of its hues.
41
The city street lights were on but most drivers hadn’t switched to night driving. Connie was a careful driver so he had turned on his lights on the way down the ramp. Hopeless didn’t mean he was anxious to get into another traffic accident. But it also meant he had nothing to say to Vicky that wasn’t hopeless. And, anyway, what was the use in making polite talk. He’d drop her off at her parents’ place. Pick up some beer. Order a pizza. Go to his place and wait. Both for the pizza and for whatever this thing had in store for him. Hopeless.
They made the trip to the bridge in silence. Connie thought about his hopelessness. Vicky thought about Connie.
“You know, Connie,” she said. He was startled by her voice as if had forgotten she was in the car. “I didn’t put on makeup because of you.”
They were stopped at a light. He looked over at her. “I’m sorry. That was a stupid thing to say.” Now his hopelessness made him feel bad for all the slights he had given people that week.
“Not that I wouldn’t.”
The light changed to green and he pressed his foot on the accelerator.
“It’s just that … Just that when I woke up this morning, I looked dreadful. I haven’t been sleeping at all well. I had these dark circles under my eyes and my lips were as pale as a ghost’s. Actually, that’s what gave me the idea of doing karaoke tonight. I knew everybody was going to think it was weird of me to suddenly wear so much make up. So I told everyone that’s why I did it. Vicky Carlson ─ pop star.”
They began to cross the bridge. The incoming lanes to the city were crowded. The suburbanites coming in for a night on the town.
“That’s why,” she added at the end of a long silence.
They drove without speaking for a few minutes. “I had another episode.”
“Oh.” She stiffened. “Do you want to tell me about it?”
“No.” Hopeless saw no point in talking about what had happened at the speakeasy. What he had done.
“Is that how you cracked your cast?”
The sodium lights on the bridge bathed the lanes in sunset-like hues. The moon was rising behind these lights like a harvest moon. “Yeah.”
Vicky squirmed in her seat. “God, I must have eaten something that doesn’t agree with me.”
“You okay?”
“I think so. It’s just an upset stomach.”
Connie glanced at her. Her face was in shadow.
“I guess you wouldn’t want to stay with me tonight.” That was the thought Vicky had had all along. Ever since she had been waiting for him in his office.
“After what happened to Evie?”
“Well, I’m not going to do anything like that.”
“Don’t you see?”
“What?”
“Don’t you realize what happened to her?”
“Well …” She didn’t want to talk about Evie with Connie. “She must’ve been upset about something.”
“She wasn’t upset. It was all this thing’s doing. It was trying to get at me. If you stay with me, that’s what’s going to happen to you.”
“You don’t believe that, do you?”
He took the first off-ramp after the bridge. It didn’t matter what he believed. It was hopeless, anyway.
“We could tie our wrists together. Your good wrist. That way I couldn’t go anywhere without you.” She was trying to make a joke of it even though she wasn’t feeling jokey. But to Connie, it was a gruesome thought.
No more was said for several miles. Not until Connie turned onto the road that led to the housing development of Vicky’s parents.
“God, I suddenly feel awful.”
When she didn
’t say anything more, he glanced at her. She was leaning forward. Like she wanted to double over.
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know. Must’ve been something I had at lunch. I bought a sandwich from that food truck down the street. I feel like I’m going to throw up and my head hurts.”
“Do you want me to stop?”
“No. No, I’ll be okay. I’ll wait ‘til I get home. Mom’ll know what to do.”
Connie flashed his high beams at an oncoming car’s high beams. But not before the headlights blinded his vision. Then he panicked and slowed down, gripping the wheel until his fingers ached. Was he having another episode? Would that mean that he was going crash the car and kill or injure Vicky? But the oncoming car sped by and his vision returned to normal. He let go of the steering wheel for a few seconds when he realized how tightly he was gripping it.
This has got to stop, he told himself. He’d rather be crazy and be locked up then have this nightmare be true. And if hadn’t been for what had happened to Evie, he would have forced himself to believe he was cracking up. If it hadn’t been for Evie.
“Maybe you better stop,” Vicky said a few minutes later. Her voice was breathless. “I don’t want to throw up in your car.”
“Oh. Okay. Can I do anything?”
“No. Just pull over.”
The road had wide shoulders on both sides. He was able to park the car several feet from the roadway.
“Oh hell,” she moaned as the car came to a stop.
“You’re sure you’re all right?” She had opened her door and was getting out. “There might be a ditch so watch yourself. Don’t go far.”
Several cars went by in both directions. He was glad for the bright moon. There were no street lights. She’d be able to see well enough to not hit her feet. That got him thinking about his first time in university. He had gotten so drunk his shoes weren’t the only things he had thrown up on.
A few more cars went by. He put on the emergency flashers. Food poisoning could really be nasty. He had had it a few times. He opened his door and got out. Maybe she needed help to get back into the car. “Vicky?”
She wasn’t beside the car. He looked at the roadside wall of bushes and trees. The road ran through a conservation area. He had always meant to go hiking there ever since he had moved into the apartment. Farther up the road, about fifty feet or so, there was a break in the fence. It was illuminated by his headlights. He started walking towards it. Girls were more fastidious than guys. She probably wanted privacy.
“Vicky? You all right?”
When he came to the break in the fence, all he saw was a tangle of brush and bushes. Too thick for anyone to get through without sheers or a machete. But he called out her name anyway. “Vicky? You in there?”
He turned back to the car. “Hell, where did she go?”
It was the sudden shadow that told him what had happened. It moved across the ground, darkening the moonlight although there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Then he heard that whisper. the soft menace of a voice speaking sounds he didn’t understand. His vision clouded up. Then darkened. Of course, he knew what it was. This whisperer. And once again, he had the sensation that he was looking deep inside this thing’s brain. If you could call its dark mass a brain. What he saw was like a replay of a dream he might have had. Only it was no dream. It was the images the whisperer was revealing to him. People’s faces. Crowded together. Moving past a point as if he was the camera and they were what he was recording.
That’s when he saw her. Among the images in his head. Amidst a crowd of people moving past his point of view. Slowly. Orderly. Like a line up on the way to somewhere. Two, three, four abreast. Their faces pale as ashes grey. Walking zombie-like with vacant stares. In among them was Vicky. Pressed between a person on either side of her.
Suddenly she turned her head in his direction. Looked directly at him. She had a strange sense of recognition in her eyes. As if she saw something both frightening and wonderful. He wanted to reach out to her. He did, extending his hand, but there was nothing to grasp but the air.
He tried to hold on to these images. To her blank face. He had the wild thought that maybe if he could keep the image of her in his head, he could somehow rescue her. For he knew this wasn’t a hallucination. She had been taken. Without understanding the sounds of the whisper, he knew that that was what the thing was telling him. But as he concentrated on her face, the shadow that had passed over him entered his head and covered her face. She and the others she was with began to fade away. He wanted to call out to her, as if saying her name might set her free. But only the voice of the whisperer came out of his mouth. In a mumble of off-pitched noises.
Anger! It filled his eyes with its tears of frustration. First Evie. Now Vicky. A silent cry of rage tried to subdue the whispers in his head. When it failed, the pangs of hopelessness returned. But then that’s what the whisperer had wanted all along. To shock his hopelessness into utter despair.
And in despair, he fell to his knees, struck by a headache that was as powerful as a physical blow. This was another invasion. For a moment, his vision cleared long enough to see his car a few feet away. If he could get to it, perhaps it would mean safety. He tried to stand ─ managed to do so, although crouched over ─ when the ground beneath him softened. Became spongy as if groundwater was bubbling up, turning the soil into a quicksand of mud.
He began to sink to his ankles. Then to his knees. This sludge began to throb in rhythm to his heart beat. When he looked down at what was happening, he could see his legs taking on the same pulsations of the ooze. He could feel his will to resist crumbling. Hopeless was winning. Perhaps all he really wanted was to join Vicky. To end this futile battle.
Just one more whisper would do it. For that’s what this thing had intended by its invasion. To redouble his hopelessness into surrender. But at the end of the whispered sounds, he heard what seemed like a laugh. A high-pitch trill so human like, it was as if the thing was mocking him! Once more, the trill vibrated his head. But all it did was rouse his resistance. His anger. It sounded like the sneers he remembered from the schoolyard bullies when he was young. Picking on the junior kids because they were smaller and weaker. Especially the geeks like Connie. Taunting them with their bluster.
Well, he wasn’t one of the weaker kids any longer. And he wouldn’t be picked on.
He concentrated on pushing away the terror of this invasion by picturing a lattice-like net hovering in his head. Then covering the whisperer’s dark shadow that was attempting to blacken his thoughts.
He struggled for several minutes. Mentally twisting and turning his net as the thing’s shadow tried to push it aside. As the whispers became a roar. As his head ached so intolerably that a cry of pain managed to escape his muted breath. Still he persisted in resisting giving in. He would overcome this invasion as he had done before. But at the moment his net was about to collapse over the shadow, a blinding brightness suddenly enveloped him. So intense that although he closed his eyes on its glare, it burned through his eyelids. The net he had imagined began to fade away. Along with his will to resist.
Then another whisper. Another trill of triumph seemed to announce his end. He opened his eyes. Tried to stare through the brilliance. To find some path of escape. But there was only the glare. Now like grains of sands floating in the air. Each grain a micro sun burning its solar rays at him. He was back in the desert of his nightmare. Under a sun that was determined to wither away his resistance. Blasted by the grains of sand blown about by the fury of the wind. And then yet another whisper. This one shook all the fight out of him. The grains of sand battered his face. He closed his eyes on them. It was okay to let his body go. Okay to let his mind give in to this invasion. To join Vicky and the others.
Like a person succumbing to a drug, Connie was both observing what was happening to him and succumbing to the narcotic of being taken. When he sensed another shadow cooling this brightness, he was curious why the thing had di
mmed the glare.
He opened his eyes on the thought. Tired to blink away the haze of his vision. When it cleared, what he saw surprised him. It was the dream girl’s face. It hovered above the sand dunes, shimmering like a mirage. Its two black holes for eyes, unblinking and searching then finding him. It was her image that had dimmed the glare. And her mouth that whispered: “Help me, please. Please help me.” Over and over again.
It was a ghoulish sight for the face had no body attached to it. Her lips, although moving as she spoke to him, were too dark to be anything but a corpse’s lips. But he couldn’t turn away from it. She stared into his eyes as if she wished to penetrate them. And perhaps she did. For suddenly, his body convulsed as if he had touched a live wire. The force of this union flung him backwards. Out of the quicksand he had sunk into, now up to his waist. He lay on his back gulping great amounts of air. His heart beat so fiercely that his body shook from its beats. After several moments, he lay still. His head cleared. The sand dune glare began to dim until the desert sands and the dream girl’s face faded into the night. He sat up. The only brightness he saw was the glare from his car’s headlights.
It took him several deep breaths before he was able to stand. His thoughts were matted with confusion and uncertainty. Vicky had been taken. Evie had been forced to kill herself. Many others as well. Taken or ended their lives. While he remained. Still helpless to stop what was happening.
He staggered to his car. Leaned on the hood, shaking from the effects of the invasion. The moon was higher now in the sky. He glanced up at it. No shadows passed across its surface.
He straightened up and walked a few feet down the road. To stretch his limbs as well as his thoughts. Hopeless didn’t want him to consider what had happened to Vicky. It tried to tear away any logical thoughts that might encourage him.
But he forced himself to think. The dream girl. She was real. Not just an imaginary mirage. There had to be a connection between him and the girl. Perhaps a key to all of this horror. That connection somehow was a force for power. At least for him. No matter how hopeless he felt, he needed to find her.