Faces in the Night

by Thomas Conuel

  But perhaps beyond the darkness she was now spinning toward, souls were reunited. It was the great hope held out by the Catholic faith she had been raised in--that somewhere out there beyond the world as she knew it, there was another better world. If she could only let herself go, let herself go drifting into that dark cavern yawning above her then she might perhaps find that other world and her father would be there smoking and pecking out his column, two-finger typist that he was. And he would look up at her and smile.

  Katherine shook herself fiercely. She must not give in to such a comforting lie. She had to fight on; fight to return to her body. Her father was gone and he wasn’t waiting for her anywhere. Certainly not in the darkness that loomed above her. If he could speak, he’d be telling her to keep kicking; don’t give up. “Never, ever, give up on yourself, Kath,” he used to say. “Just never give up, and you’ll be OK.”

  Katherine gasped and shook herself again and again.

  And then far away she heard a jangle, a ringing sound. The telephone?

  It came again and then stopped. For a moment the jangling sound had stopped her progress toward the great dark hole. The blue light drew back into the darkness, and for several seconds bobbed about like a cork on a dark ocean—lost and random in its movements. But then the blue light regained control. It focused like a laser on her and spun closer growing in size and intensity, pressing forward in the darkness.

  Now was her time—her time to leave. It was goodbye. The blue light would guide her.

  And then somebody or something was pounding on her chest. Hard. Smacking her with repeated thumps. It hurt. A mouth was over hers and a blast of hot breath blew into her mouth. She gagged for a moment and then exhaled.

  Again it came. The mouth clamped over hers, and a blast of air blown deep into her chest.

  “Kath, Kath, Kath,” it was Blake’s voice, desperate, but far, far away. “Come back, Kath, Come back.”

  Katherine hovering right at the mouth of the black hole saw the blue light recoil a bit. For an instant it wavered out of focus. Somebody hit her chest hard again. And then the mouth was again blowing air into her mouth. The black gaping hole just above her convulsed and jerked in on itself like a jellyfish poked with a stick. The blue light spun about in an angry uncontrolled swirl, losing focus, twisting counter-clockwise, its hypnotic eye desperately trying to refocus.

  And then she was falling.

  Falling from a great height; her stomach wrenched into her throat, her air passages burning, gasping and sucking in air, the old falling dream again. She pitched downward like a diver in a black ocean hurtling through darkness and at the last moment pulled up before hitting. She opened her eyes and saw Blake astride her, his lips locked over hers, blowing air into her lungs with his mouth.

  “Kath,” he said simply when she opened her eyes, and he was crying. “Kath, I thought I’d lost you.”

  She turned her head and drew in a breath of fresh sweet air on her own and then turned back to him. She reached up and cradled the back of his head with her right hand. With her open palm she drew his face down to hers and kissed him hard on the mouth.

  * * *

  Chapter 75

  The entity was gone, at least for tonight—out on its own mission—using its formidable but finite energy to accomplish the assignment that he had failed to complete.

  Bad luck, tonight!

  Bad timing, tonight!

  Those stupid college students fiddling around with their stupid pizza and beer in the parking lot—allowing her an escape route.

  And before that, those sorority girls on an exercise run charging by at just the wrong time.

  He was not used to this. In the past, when the entity set him after a person, timing and circumstances had always fit snugly together leading to a quick success. But not tonight. The luck and cunning that the entity showered on him when on a mission had inexplicably been missing.

  He had always been successful. At least a dozen times. It was the one thing he was good at it. But not tonight. And now the entity was upset with him. But the entity still needed him.

  He lay there in his small bedroom, alone in the dark as he had always been throughout his life. Sleep would not come. He tossed in bed. When loneliness first seized you, it could pierce your soul. He’d had some bad times with loneliness back in college. But he had learned how to keep its pervasive coldness at bay. You adapted to always being alone. You closed off your mind and didn’t allow things in. You accepted your status as an outsider and stood on the sidelines not ever smiling. He had fought loneliness with grim routine, until the entity found him and gave him things to do, people to hunt and hurt; memories to hold onto.

  When he died and they came to clean out his room, they would find his mementoes. He always took one thing from his victims to keep as a remembrance—a ring, a wallet, a photo. With Lovely Lisa, the jogger, he had taken one of her fancy, orange-trimmed jogging shoes. There it was now—on the shelf alongside a wedding ring taken from the housewife in the red bikini, and a driver’s license-type photo taken from the wallet of the waitress at the phone booth. Barbara, the nurse in the snowbank, had contributed an antique gold locket containing a photo of an older woman and an engraved inscription “To my Dearest Daughter.”

  When he was gone they would come to clean out his room and prepare it for sale. They would puzzle over his life—he would leave no relatives, no will, nobody to give the small condo to. They would wonder about these objects on his shelf that didn’t seem connected to him, but never know where they came from. Just unexplained objects on a small shelf near his bed.

  He didn’t know what would happen next—or what would happen to him. Perhaps the entity would send him elsewhere—Seattle, Austin, Miami, Buffalo—there were all sorts of possibilities. He read the newspapers every day and knew there were others like him operating right now in those cities. Or, he could even serve another entity.

  There was also the possibility that the entity would not need his services ever again after tomorrow night. Perhaps the entity would dispose of him too. That was a bad and troubling thought. And such a waste of an experienced hunter. He hoped the entity had other assignments for him. He could go anywhere. He could pick up and move and be gone to another assignment in less than a day.

  Deep in the early morning the entity sent him images—historic stuff. Meant to keep his attention and hone his feeling of inclusion in the inner circle. Perhaps too, a way of offering forgiveness; of telling him not to worry about the botched effort of the night, but prepare for the all-important next move.

  The images were scattered and weak, not like the full compelling Quabbin stories that had flashed through his mind as he wandered the great reservoir.

  A Clipper ship, out of Salem, Massachusetts—that must be around 1750 or so—the height of the China trade when Salem was one of the most important ports in the world, but after the mischief of the Salem Witch Trials in 1692. The entity was onboard the ship. He did not get a clear picture as he had in the past. But he could see some things. Men hanging other men from the ship’s rigging; the entity pacing about on deck urging them on, and then those same men who had done the hangings brutally tossed overboard into the ocean by the entity, who had gained great strength and power during the episode. And later the discovery of the great ship drifting at sea, all aboard either dead or missing except a single red-haired man who had no name. Nobody knew what to make of him, and he said nothing to his rescuers. They brought him ashore to Salem, Massachusetts where he lived for some time. And then one day he simply vanished.

  And before that—it looked like an old English Courtyard; a hanging, an innocent man; pleading that he was falsely accused; much wailing from his family and the entity there moving amongst the crowd. Public hangings were big events in England around 1650—a crowd pleaser. The entity had been involved in many.

  He lay and let the images roll through his mind until they stopped, and then he reached out to his bedside table and let his h
and settle on a stone object. A stone cross with a bright blue stone in its center. As long as he had that, the entity needed him.

  The entity had shown him the cross and guided him to the Belton cemetery to claim it. And tomorrow night was the Summer Solstice—the longest day of the year. The hinges of the universe cracked open for just an instant—a small wrinkle in time, a locked door that for only an instant could be pushed open.

  He would be ready. He would be there with the stone cross—the ancient icon that the entity had commanded him to find and recover.

  * * *

  Chapter 76

  Lester Carlson lay in his big bed in the gray house on Belton Common. At first he let images of Katherine, naked and stepping from the bathroom, roam through his mind. There were possibilities. What if her husband, Blake, didn’t make it—couldn’t ever resolve this thing he had about his friend who died in Vietnam. At some point Katherine might move on. He shook his head. It wasn’t going to happen—still that one moment as she stood naked was worth a lot.

  Lester Carlson climbed out of bed and went downstairs. He had returned from the cemetery after Katherine left for Amherst and cooked himself dinner. His daughter Maria was away, playing a short tour in Vermont and upstate New York. So he cooked for one. It was one thing he had promised Emily he would do—eat a decent dinner before any drinking. Funny how the older you got the more your wife became like your mother. He’d known more than a few old retired boys who couldn’t cook an egg; literally could not get themselves breakfast and had to wait for their wives to prepare it for them.

  Emily and he had always enjoyed cooking together. When she was in the hospital dying of cancer, they had talked about his life after she was gone. There would be women and there would be drinking—Emily knew and accepted that. Please, do me one favor, she had said. Eat right!

  They had both laughed at that, Emily sounding like the wife turned mother. But he knew she was right and meant well. And the world had turned a lot lonelier after she was gone, and sometimes the only thing holding his days together was that promise to cook and eat a decent dinner before opening the next bottle of scotch. The habit of dinner became the glue to his day, the way he defined tasks—before dinner and after dinner.

  Tonight it had been a homemade spaghetti sauce with Italian sausage, pasta, fresh peas, and a salad. After dinner Lester Carlson washed the dishes and poured his first scotch.

  Now he was downstairs again—restless, nervous, tense, but not sure why. The discovery of old Elijah’s Durman’s grave had unsettled him. It somehow portended change. He felt that as surely as he felt physical sensations. It was like the node of death feeling that the pilot Tip Winter had experienced in Vietnam and later described to him. Something was hovering about, something indefinable and non-concrete; something he could only intuit and not explain. Something was going to happen; something that was not good.

  He paced the floor.

  Outside it was dark. Lester Carlson poured scotch over ice in a crystal tumbler. There was no point trying to sleep when you felt like this. The missing cross bothered him. To discover the grave of this creepy old legendary Elijah Durman character right in his back yard—well, OK, call that coincidence. But then to have somebody steal the cross from the tombstone that same day—that was more than coincidence. That was pieces that cross and converge. Not good.

  He had never thought of himself as intuitive. Intuitive was the opposite of his favorite approach—careful analysis. But there had been so much that had happened to him here in Belton that defied rational analysis—the feeling that first afternoon when the hearse had passed by carrying the bones of the missing soldier and he had felt cold hands gripping him; the horrific face at this window that night; the image of the Colonial militiaman exploding into the face as he sat in the Jones Library; and the good face—the child--the guiding hand as he rambled Quabbin.

  Now, tonight his whole body quivered with perception and nervous anticipation. A new set of sensors were in place like giant antennae sweeping back and forth through the night sky, sampling signals from a distant and unknown world. Something was moving into place out there in a part of the universe beyond human perception, seeking position, clicking into place, preparing for its next move.

  He had participated in two historic events that had come to define his life--Vietnam 25 years ago; and the construction of Quabbin Reservoir 60 years ago.

  Were they connected?

  Katherine saw a connection with a crazy old story about a crazy old man and a never-ending vow to return for vengeance—Elijah Durman. Dammed hard to say if that made sense; dammed hard to say that it didn’t make sense either. Dammed hard to be sure about anything these days.

  Lester Carlson sipped scotch and stood morosely looking out the screen door in his kitchen. It was quiet tonight. Traffic on the road circling the Town Common had almost ceased. Midnight had slipped by. It was a dark night with a half-moon bobbing about on a ridge of scudding clouds. Tomorrow would bring the summer solstice.

  Vietnam, Lester Carlson said the word under his breath.

  God forsaken Vietnam. Now a tourist destination. Once a part of hell.

  If you wanted to you could make the point—a stretch really—that he was responsible for much that had happened there—maybe for at least a couple of years. Maria had him apologize for his part and that was fine, but he had no real regrets. Well OK—some doubts.

  He would go to his grave feeling bad about all the lives lost in a stupid war; and that he had not pushed others like McNamara and Rusk to act. To get the hell out!

  Oh, Christ. Face it! He felt bad about everything connected with Vietnam.

  But regrets were something else. Regrets were sorrows for actions thoughtlessly or carelessly taken. And he had not been careless.

  He had not thoughtlessly wasted American lives.

  With hindsight, you could say he should have done things differently. But given the facts as he knew them at the time, he had believed in what he was doing in Vietnam.

  Quabbin Reservoir was another matter.

  * * *

  Chapter 77

  Yes, indeed. Quabbin was another matter. He had never considered it a problem.

  Vietnam? OK—he had lots of weight to carry there—big leaking buckets of misplaced confidence; misguided strategies, and misunderstood enemies.

  But Quabbin Reservoir?

  Boston needed a reliable water supply as it grew in the mid-20th century, and the Swift River Valley had water. That’s how Quabbin had come about—big city with big need for water finds an out-of-the-way place with lots of water—need and opportunity combine. A simple case of economic and civic reality.

  The water resource engineers from the state studied maps at big wooden tables in Boston; they calculated population figures; they weighed political ramifications, and they reached a conclusion. The sparsely populated towns of Enfield, Greenwich, Prescott, and Dana in central Massachusetts were not all that essential. The four towns supported no major businesses, had no major highways, and no major politicians to upset when the waters of Quabbin Reservoir buried those towns.

  On a map you could see why the valley was such an obvious choice for a reservoir. It was a low-lying area surrounded by rugged hills, most 500 to 600 feet high. A natural basin with three branches of the Swift River running through the valley floor. It needed only two well-placed dams to impound the waters and create a giant reservoir. In the end, topography had dictated that people be displaced, homes destroyed, and 200 years of small-town history, tradition, and culture obliterated by a reservoir built to serve the city of Boston 75 miles away.

  Lester Carlson had been young then, and quick, and bright, and filled with an urge to move out into the world and leave his mark. He really didn’t care what happened to his home town of Enfield. He was leaving for good. He did not plan on ever coming back.

  Through the years a few images remained from those last days in the valley. He could remember his father sitting one rainy
evening at the back of his grocery store, the main store in Enfield, talking quietly with his brother, Eddie, Lester Carlson’s uncle, a great bear of a man with a barrel chest, long tangled beard, and a hearty, deep laugh.

  The two sat talking quietly, and Lester Carlson, moving about the store putting groceries onto shelves for the next morning’s business, listened in vain for the familiar booming laugh of Uncle Eddie. Finally he realized something was amiss and started to listen in on the conversation. His father sounded on the verge of tears. Lester Carlson heard him mention closing the store, heard him sigh and say to his brother that he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to find another job at his age. A 45 year-old man who had run a country store his whole life was not much in demand, and the Depression was already ruining the economy to boot, and even young fellows couldn’t find work.

  His father had been right. Lester Carlson recalled how he and his father had closed but not locked the store for the last time one rainy Saturday night in 1936. His father stood in the rain for several minutes after closing the door slowly shaking his head.

  “No point in locking it tonight son,” he finally said. “We’ll leave it unlocked for the wrecking crews and just say goodbye.”

  Lester Carlson nodded. His job of stocking the shelves had dissipated week by week—his father buying and selling less and less. Later, the next day, he and his father had stood across the road and watched as the state wrecking crews leveled the country store. A few old tins of stale flour remained on the front counter. One of the men in the wrecking crew scooped up the tins of flour, and as the front of the store collapsed around the bulldozer battering it, the man from the wrecking crew threw the flour in the air like confetti.

  The state had paid his father for the store—not nearly enough his father claimed, and in the end his father had been right about jobs. There were no jobs for a 45-year-old man. His father had spent his last 15 years unemployed, living off a small savings account, caring for his wife, Lester Carlson’s mother, a frail woman who never adjusted to life away from the valley. They had lived right here in this old gray house in Belton.