Visitations

by Saul, Jonas

  “I said all the way down.”

  I shake my head again.

  I hear footsteps behind me. For fear of being shot, I don’t move. I want to turn around, but I don’t want a bullet for it.

  “I thought I told you to get outside and stay outside,” he says.

  “I know, but I can’t leave you alone.” It’s the woman’s voice. “What if you needed my help?”

  “I don’t need no help. I was just getting him to the ground so as to tie him up until the police get here.”

  “He don’t look like he’s on the ground. He’s only on his knees.”

  “I was working on it. Now let me do this.”

  The long gun takes up its position, aimed at me again. I push off the wall on my left and dive for the dirty rug on the floor of the living room.

  A loud boom echoes in the house. My hearing disappears. I race my hands over my body. No blood. No wounds.

  I scramble to my feet as my hearing ebbs back. But all I hear is screaming. A woman screaming.

  She was directly behind me in the hallway. The gun went off. I wasn’t there to get hit. She got hit.

  The strange man is a blur as he runs by the living room alcove. I peek around the corner. He’s on the floor, holding the woman’s foot. It looks like an ankle wound. She’ll live.

  I bolt for the kitchen. My field press is waiting. I carefully wrap a string around the newspaper like a present and pick it up. When I peek into the hallway, the man has set the gun down. He’s got a cloth of some kind. I can see he’s applying pressure to the wound.

  I hate her screams. I have to leave. In three steps I’m in the laundry room. I unlock the deadbolt and step out into the early evening air.

  A voice comes through the air at me from all sides.

  “WE HEARD A GUNSHOT! IS EVERYONE OKAY IN THERE?”

  It sounds like one of those handheld metal things cops use to make their voices loud.

  “WE’VE GOT THE PLACE SURROUNDED. WE WANT TO TALK!”

  I look left and right. I don’t see anybody. I drop my shoulders and start for the trees. Maybe they won’t see me.

  I’ve done nothing wrong. I helped a man back to his house. This is all a bad case of mistakes.

  I’m only thirty yards from the trees. I’m going to make it. I feel great.

  “Hey, you there, freeze!”

  I hate it when people yell at me. I always run when people yell.

  “STOP! POLICE! I’LL SHOOT!”

  I run hard. I didn’t run hard enough when the boys came to put boots to my head all those years ago. The trees are steps away. Shelter, security, and comfort await me.

  I can hear the trees calling my name.

  Serenity can be found in the strangest of places, the oddest times. I thought of the many journeys I’ve had in forests just like the one I’m entering. How many times I’ve sat and stared at the sky while having lunch. How many times I’ve fallen asleep in a bed of grass and soft leaves.

  Ohhh, the leaves. How I love leaves.

  My arm doesn’t hurt anymore. I feel whole. When I sit up, I’m surprised at how fast I’m standing. It was like I stood with the effort of a thought.

  I see my satchel on the ground. I see the umbrella too. It’s still attached to the side of a man the police officers are surrounding.

  One of the cops is using both hands to push my chest. They’ve holstered their weapons. They must have shot me.

  The field press sits by itself a few feet from my body. I’m standing by it now. My fingers try to touch the Honey-Locust leaves before they’re blown away in the breeze.

  They tumble from me. My soul aches. My spirit is crying. I can feel it.

  I’m a leaf collector.

  I love leaves and they love me. We have an understanding. They whisper my name. They never yell.

  I look around. The trees have won. All I ever wanted was to leave a legacy. All I ever wanted was to be loved, adored.

  I had trespassed one too many times in a forest where the trees didn’t want me taking from their crowns.

  But in the end, I don't blame the trees. I know in their own way, they love me too because I love them.

  After the light allows me passage to a new home, I have all the lovely trees I can handle. I play with the leaves and set up displays and rummage through forests for hours and hours.

  I love leaves and they love me.

  I’m home now.

  I’m a leaf collector.

  The Uniqueness of Life

  A cold wind blew Rebecca’s hair up, her eyes closing as they watered. She turned to look over her shoulder. The street was mostly empty, other than two women who were entering the gift shop Rebecca had just left.

  She turned back around and walked on. What gave her such a feeling of dread? Why was she feeling like something was wrong? Was it instinct or intuition?

  A store window caught her attention. She slowed and gawked at a wall of televisions. The different sized screens were all tuned to the same news station, showing image after image of the current snowstorm that was blanketing the province just south of them. She shivered as the cold seemed to move right through her. She couldn’t hear what was being said through the store’s window pane and the earmuffs she wore, but she watched anyway, transfixed by the pictures on the screens. When she made to turn away, movement in the corner of the window stopped her. She did a double-take.

  It was the reflection of a man standing across the street, staring at her. Even through the reflection, and the angle of the window, she was sure he was watching her. What she was surer of, was that it was her husband, Mark.

  Rebecca spun around and looked across the road at her husband, a multitude of thoughts going through her mind. Why wasn’t he at work? Was he following her? Why didn’t he come over and say something?

  “Mark,” she yelled, waving her gloved hands.

  He nodded and turned away.

  “Mark!” she yelled again, as he disappeared around the corner of a building.

  What the hell is that about?

  Rebecca hustled along as fast as she could on the slippery snow. She made it to the flashing yellow light on her side and, after looking up and down Main Street, she hustled across. In less than a minute, she’d reached the spot where Mark had been, and then looked around the corner where he had turned.

  He was gone. Vanished.

  That’s strange. Why would he take off like that?

  She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out her cell phone. After dialing his office number, she got his voice mail. She tried his cell. No answer.

  Strange.

  The incident only served to intensify the butterflies in her stomach, confirming something was wrong. Mark wouldn’t just walk away like that. Not after fifteen years of marriage. He was acting more like a stranger than her husband.

  She decided to finish her banking and leave the downtown area. The cold had kept many people indoors today, but Mark had asked her to do a deposit at the bank for him. She’d thought she’d add a little shopping to her excursion, but now she just wanted to head home.

  She started walking and thought again, why would he do that? Even if he had business downtown today, he always had the time to stop and say hello.

  A part of her was scared to find out the real reason for him being downtown.

  She made it to the bank without seeing him again. The two front doors were large wooden ones that opened to two more doors that had been added for security. She stepped through and immediately headed for the line. There was one teller working the counter. She counted four people waiting to be served, which meant at least five to ten minutes of standing around. She lined up anyway, but kept a watchful eye on the window looking out at the street.

  Random cars passed by slowly, their exhaust looking smoky in the cold January morning air. She reveled in the heat of the bank, loosening her scarf a little and removing her mittens. She pulled off her earmuffs and placed them in her oversized purse.

 
The line moved. Two people in front of her. After a minute, the line moved again.

  She looked up at the bank’s window and saw Mark.

  He stood very close to the bank window’s glass, staring in at her. It was a hard stare, like he was trying to bore through her, his face forward, forehead almost touching the pane.

  She frowned and gestured with her hands, mouthing the words, ‘what’s going on?’.

  Her husband just stood there, staring in at her. It was eerie how he seemed to be immobile. He looked like he was made of stone, and - although he wasn’t dressed well enough for the weather - he didn’t appear to be shivering.

  The people ahead of her in the line moved forward. Rebecca was next. The bank’s doors opened, and a woman in her twenties walked over to stand behind Rebecca, removing her hat and blowing into her cupped palms.

  Rebecca glanced back at her husband, confusion starting to turn to anger.

  What the hell is this game? Why not come in, out of the cold and wait with me?

  She gestured for him to come in and join her.

  He lifted his right hand out of his pocket and touched the window, palm open. He waited a few seconds and then smacked the window.

  Rebecca jumped. The woman behind her looked up.

  “You okay?”

  Rebecca looked at her and pointed at her husband. “That didn’t startle you? When he smacked the window?”

  The young woman looked over at the bank’s window and then back at Rebecca.

  “Who smacked the window? What are you talking about?”

  Her stomach dropped. An eerie, almost theatrical feeling coursed through her, as if she was in a movie and none of this was real.

  She looked out at her husband again.

  His right hand came away from the glass and he beckoned for her to join him. Come outside, he motioned. After a few seconds, he waved his hand faster, now struggling to keep his head straight. He looked like he was having an epileptic seizure on the sidewalk.

  Rebecca made the decision to step out of line and leave the bank. She placed the earmuffs back on her head, the gloves on her hands, and tightened the scarf. She had to put an end to this insanity. She could always come back in after talking to him. He couldn’t stand out there, waving like a madman. She didn’t want to acknowledge that the woman in line behind her couldn’t see him - that was not something she was ready to accept.

  She hit the inner doors and started through them as two burly men entered. It struck her as odd because they were both wearing matching green long-sleeved turtlenecks with no coats.

  One of the men knocked into her, causing Rebecca to stumble into the wall.

  “Hey,” she said, recovering her balance.

  She couldn’t believe people could be so rude. They ignored her, continued into the bank, and shut the doors. She heard the click as the thumb lock snapped in place.

  Why would they lock the doors?

  She headed for the outside with bigger questions on her mind. The cold hit her immediately. She hopped down the few steps, being mindful of any ice buildup, and spun around the edge of the building to face Mark.

  The sidewalk was empty.

  He was gone again.

  Her eyes had been off him no more than five seconds. It was impossible, but he’d vanished. Again. It was not only ridiculous, it was getting stupid. Now she was pissed off.

  The comment by the woman in the bank, suggesting that she hadn’t been able to see Mark at the window, came back to her.

  She shook it off and moved to stand where her husband had stood not half a minute before.

  Firecrackers started going off.

  Then she heard screaming.

  She slowly turned and looked through the bank window. What she saw, chilled her more than the icy cold that tried to permeate her clothing.

  The two men who had bumped into her on their way in the bank were holding guns. She could see the woman who’d been standing in line behind her, crouched down on her knees on the cold tiled floor.

  In that moment, one of the gunmen grabbed the woman’s hair and shouted something. Rebecca could hear the woman scream. The man placed a weapon to the edge of the woman’s head. It looked like the other gunman was trying to convince the teller to do something.

  Then the gun exploded in the gunman’s hand. The woman’s hair puffed up on the opposite side of her head, her eyes opening wide, then slowly shutting, as she slumped down and crumpled to the floor.

  Without realizing she was doing it, or the danger involved, Rebecca began screaming. The gunman turned and looked at her. He swiveled his gun in her direction.

  Rebecca turned, and made to run, but slipped on the snow and fell. The second she made contact with the snow-covered sidewalk, the glass above her shattered as two bullets broke through it. It amazed her that she had the clarity of mind to even count the two pops from the weapon.

  With everything she had, Rebecca crawled. She cleared the base of the window, got to her feet and ran three steps to the edge of the building, where she turned behind the brick wall, and dove for the snow bank the plow had left behind after cleaning the parking lot.

  No other bullets followed her.

  Fearful that they would give chase, Rebecca got up, headed for the alleyway behind the bank, and hopped a fence to disappear down the street on another block.

  A police siren wailed in the distance.

  When her cell phone rang, she jumped and almost slipped again. Why didn’t she think to call the police herself?

  Panicking, she reached into her pocket for her cell phone.

  “Hello?” Her voice sounded hesitant, broken.

  “My name is Doctor Manning. I’m on staff at Liberty Memorial. I would like to speak with Rebecca Saffren please.”

  “This is, I mean, I’m Rebecca.”

  The cold had come back in. Her body performed an all-body shiver that worked on her voice.

  “I’m sorry to tell you this over the phone, but your husband has been in an accident.”

  “What? Is he, all right?” Then another thought occurred to her. “He’s not dead, is he?” She slowed down, turned a corner and continued walking at a quick pace, her joints stiffening as she went. Her left knee had taken most of the fall in front of the bank. In the cold, it ached enough to make her limp.

  “Oh no, he’s not dead. We wouldn’t tell you something like that over the phone, Mrs. Saffren. He came in four hours ago. He was in a car accident this morning. Your husband’s a lucky man. His injuries aren’t that bad considering what happened to the car. His right arm is broken and he suffered a good sized hit on the head. He’s been unconscious since we brought him in. It was only two minutes ago that he woke up and told us that he wanted to speak to you. He supplied your cell number since it wasn’t with his identification. He’s asking if you could come to the hospital. It’s strange though.”

  She stopped and leaned against the building beside her, trying to catch her breath, shivering more than she thought was possible. “Wh, what’s, str… strange?”

  “He said he needs to know if you made it out of the bank yet. I’m not sure what that means.”

  Rebecca could hear that the sirens in the distance were much closer.

  She told the doctor she was on her way and snapped her phone shut.

  As fast as the conditions allowed, she rushed to her car, convinced Mark had saved her life somehow. She still couldn’t account for how she’d seen him in the street if he’d been in the hospital all morning, but deep down inside she knew he had come for her.

  Somehow, he showed up.

  It was her turn to show up for him.

  #

  Parking at the hospital proved easy to find. She had found the drive over to be calming. There was a moment on the way that she thought she’d have to pull over to throw up, but didn’t. She’d never seen anyone killed before.

  Rebecca entered the hospital by the emergency doors, and - after asking for her husband - was given directions.
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  Five minutes of meandering through the labyrinthine halls of the medical building brought her to a ward where she found Mark sitting up in bed behind a curtained off area.

  The moment she saw him, she took in his injuries, and the cast on his broken arm. “Oh, Mark,” she walked over, leaned up close, and kissed his forehead. “What happened?”

  He blinked and looked up at her, his eyes watering. “I had this dream. I saw you. In the bank. You were going to be killed. I felt it. I wanted you out of that bank so bad that I bet everything I owned on convincing you to join me on my side of the window where you’d be safe. Does any of that make sense?”