Cinema of Shadows

by Michael West

She awoke to find Tyler standing over her.

  Before Kim could utter a word, he pressed his lips to her mouth, his tongue dancing with hers. She could feel his hands on her breasts, strong hands, squeezing, groping, could feel his muscular body sliding up against her, poking at her thigh.

  When their kiss finally broke, Tyler said, “You’re bleeding.”

  Kim looked down. She lay in a pool of her own blood, a dark stain that was spreading out, covering the sheet beneath her legs, running off onto the carpet in thick scarlet waterfalls.

  Panicking, she looked over and saw that Tyler had already picked up the phone to call 911. She also saw movement behind him, a dark shape hidden in the corner of the room. It took a step forward and Kim could see that it was the drowned little girl. There was something in her arms.

  “Now I won’t be alone,” the dead thing said.

  The creature held a baby, its body covered in clotted grime, a ripped umbilical cord dangling between tiny stillborn legs.

  The drowned girl hugged it close. “It’ll grow here.”

  Kim sat bolt upright in bed, a scream building in her throat. Another nightmare. Just another damn nightmare.

  Kim swallowed hard and looked over at Tyler’s slumbering form, listening to his steady breathing, watching his chest rise and fall. She looked around the unfamiliar surroundings, slowly remembered where she was, then threw off the covers and slid out of bed.

  She staggered into the hall, into the bathroom. She turned on the light with hesitation, afraid for a moment she would see the dead little girl behind her in the mirror.

  Tears formed in the corner of her eye and Kim wiped them away with the back of her hand. She turned on the water, filled her cupped hands, then threw some onto her face.

  Tyler was still asleep when she walked back into the bedroom. She crawled into bed beside him, felt his warmth against her naked back, and listened to him as he inhaled soft whispers and exhaled snarls. The evening’s conversation still echoed in her mind, and her thoughts returned to Burke’s offer, to joining the investigation. The idea turned her blood into a cold mountain stream. She shuddered, pulled the covers tight, her hands clenched around a wad of fabric between her breasts.

  Do not do this.

  Kim forced her eyes closed. Tears trickled slowly down her cheeks, falling onto the sheets like drops of rain.

  Do not do this, she told herself again, her fingers fiddling with the crucifix that hung from her neck.

  And then she heard another voice, calm, reassuring. The bridge is in the past, and the past can’t hurt you.

  Kim sighed. Then why was she still rehashing that night? Why did it terrify her so much, so intensely, especially this week?

  Because it was real again. Anna’s whispers, Kevin’s hand ...

  And now Tyler had become a part of it.

  She opened her eyes and craned her neck to look at him. Was he alone there in the darkness of his slumber, or was she running hand-in-hand with him across the sunlit hills of his cortex?

  The encouraging voice again, Are you sure it’s real, or afraid it’s real? Because Burke is sure. Burke has been doing this as long as you’ve been alive, and he’s not afraid of anything.

  She swallowed, thinking of the cinema from the pictures on the professor’s desk, then looking back at Tyler. Kim turned, hugged his broad, muscular chest, feeling warm and safe and protected.

  But can you? Can you really?

  She closed her eyes.

  I’d rather be in his dreams than have him in mine.

  15

  The next morning, Tyler took her back to the dorm on his way to work. His car was a yellow Pontiac, and with the exception of some coffee stains around his cup holder, it looked as if it had just rolled off the lot. Kim saw him stealing glances as he drove, and after a few minutes on the road, he reached over and took her hand in his own.

  “You look tired,” he told her.

  “Thanks a lot.” She giggled and ran her fingers through her damp hair. They’d made love in the shower and she could still feel a tingle deep within her, as if her body was unwilling to let go of the wonderful feeling that had so recently flooded it.

  Made love.

  Kim had to smile. She’d never referred to sex like that before.

  She reached up for the sun visor, flipped it down to look in the make-up mirror. There were dark circles around her eyes. She frowned. “Guess I didn’t get much sleep.”

  “Sorry.” Tyler squeezed her hand.

  She flipped the visor back up. “Not your fault. Just not used to sleeping in a strange bed, I guess.”

  “You’re not sorry are you?”

  “That depends.” She looked at him and tried to make it sound like a joke. “Am I going to see you again?”

  Tyler glanced at her with curious eyes. He then returned his attention to the road, his head wagging. “Who was he?”

  “Who was who?”

  “The prick that hurt you.”

  Kim looked away, watched the tree-lined street pass by her window. “Does it matter?”

  He squeezed her hand again. “It matters that you know I’m not him.”

  “Believe me, I know.” She turned her eyes back to him, and a smile blossomed across her face. “Sorry if I’m acting a little gun shy, but I haven’t been in a real relationship in a long time.”

  Tyler thought this over. “Is this a relationship?”

  She giggled grimly. “You have to ask?”

  “Well, people define things differently. You could say that we’re ‘dating’ ...” He took his other hand off the wheel a moment, hooked his fingers to make quotation marks. Normally, something so lame would have caused Kim’s eyes to roll, but Tyler managed to make it look cute. “... or that we’re ‘just having a good time.’ You are still having a good time, aren’t you?”

  “Best time of my life.”

  “Good.” He pulled up to the front of Todd Hall, parked, then added, “Me too. Wanna catch a movie or something tomorrow night?”

  “I don’t care what we do, as long as it’s not roller skating.”

  “No roller skating. I promise.” Tyler chucked and held up three fingers. “Scout’s honor.”

  “A Boy Scout, no less.” Kim grinned, moved in for a kiss.

  Her belt vibrated.

  She stiffened, then plucked the phone from her hip and flipped it open. “Yeah?”

  “Where the hell are you?”

  It was Tashima.

  “I’m at the front door,” Kim told her, annoyed.

  “It’s almost ten o’clock, girl. We got class in an hour.”

  “I’ll be up in a minute.”

  “Uh huh. If you’re not in here in five, I’ll be callin’ your ass again.”

  “Bye.” Kim folded her phone and returned her gaze to Tyler. “Jeez ... And I thought Mom was bad.”

  He chuckled. “At least she cares. Back in my frat days, I could’ve been dead in a ditch somewhere and nobody would have given a shit for days.”

  She grinned. “Now, where were we before we got distracted?”

  He leaned in. “Right about here.”

  “Oh ... right.” She kissed him, tried to draw closer to him, but the seat belts and center console wouldn’t allow it. When she finally managed to pull herself away, she climbed from his car, closed the door and waved through the open window. “Bye, Dr. Tyler.”

  He waved back. “Bye. Tomorrow night?”

  Kim nodded, still smiling. “Can’t wait.”

  Tyler pulled away from the curb and drove off down the road. She watched the car grow smaller until it became a Matchbox vehicle in the distance, then saw it turned and disappear from her sight.

  She’d heard girls talk about “the walk of shame,” coming home the morning after a one-night-stand, wearing the same clothes they’d worn out the night before, their hair a mess and reeking of sweat and sex. But as Kim walked into the dorm, she felt no shame at all. True, she was wearing the same jeans and T-shirt s
he’d left in, but she’d showered and washed her hair, and she knew it was not a one-night-stand.

  Kim smiled as she mounted the stairs to her floor. She felt reborn. When she got into Tyler’s car last night, she’d still been that scared teenager from Edna Collings Bridge. Now, for the first time since being touched by that drowned little girl, she actually believed it was possible to rein in her own terrors, to keep them from holding her back.

  Tashima sat on the edge of her bed, waving her phone. “I was just about to say, ‘time’s up.’”

  Kim closed the door. “When are you and the guys going to that old movie house?”

  “We got our walk-through thing this afternoon, why do you care?”

  “Because ...” Kim’s fingers curled into fists at her sides. No more thinking it over. No more fear. “I’m going with you.”

  16

  Police cars were at the medical center’s main entrance when Tyler arrived for the start of his shift, their red and blue strobes made dim by the bright morning sun. He noticed with a dull sense of dread that it was not just the campus authorities that had been called to the scene. There were Pleasant View officers as well. He had the ominous thought that this was the biological emergency they’d been drilling for. There were no men in neon haz-mat suits, however, and the next scenarios to cross his mind were hostage situations and bomb threats.

  He shook his head. What a world.

  Inside, Al at the security desk stood at attention. His face, normally buried in a mystery novel or true crime exposé, was now watchful and alert. He gave Tyler a nod. “Good morning, Doc.”

  “What’s the story with all these patrol cars?”

  Al shook his head. “Somethin’ big goin’ on down in the morgue. All I knows is nobody gets in or out unless they flash me some kinda badge.”

  Tyler tapped the picture ID clipped to his breast pocket. “Hospital staff included?”

  “You can go on, Doc,” the guard told him. “Matter of fact, there’s a detective lookin’ for ya.”

  Tyler’s eyebrow leapt up. He moved into the lobby, made his way to the stairs. The M.E. must’ve finished with his report on Martinez. Maybe he’d found something in the body, something to explain the injuries, the cold, something this detective now wanted to go over with him.

  He thought this over a moment, then reconsidered.

  Why would there be a swarm of campus and city police here for the results of an autopsy?

  A uniformed officer stood by the stairwell door, speaking into her walkie-talkie. She was his age, maybe younger, and her black hair was drawn upward, held captive beneath her hat. When she saw him approach, her hand went up. “Sorry sir, the stairs are off limits for the time being.”

  He pointed once more to the picture on his ID. “Tyler Bachman. The guard said a detective wanted to see me?”

  “Yes, Doctor.” She turned back to her radio. “Dr. Bachman’s here. Tell Perry I’m bringing him down now.”

  “What’s this all about?” Tyler wanted to know.

  “It’s a helluva mess,” was all she would give up.

  The officer led him down steps and through a basement corridor. When they walked into the morgue, he saw exactly what she meant.

  The room had been trashed. Freezer doors hung half off their hinges. Multi-colored papers lay scattered about like confetti. On the autopsy table, Martinez lay naked with his innards unwrapped and his brain still a burden to the hanging scale.

  Another body lay on the floor.

  Bill Friesen’s eyes were wide and glassy. A scalpel jutted from his neck like a silver monument and arterial blood pooled beneath his cheek and shoulder. There were more instruments lodged in his chest, more blood painting his scrubs.

  Two paramedics stood off to the side with a gurney. One was a kid fresh out of high school. The other, an older man in his late thirties, early forties. His eyes were sunken and darkly ringed.

  Just like Kim’s eyes, Tyler thought, wishing he were still warm in bed with her now.

  They were waiting patiently for the investigators to finish taking photos and collecting trace evidence so that they could cart the body away. Tyler found himself wondering where they would take him, across town or across the room, then he forced himself to turn away.

  His glance met a man in a brown suit jacket and tan pants. The man’s temples were gray, his face solemn. “Dr. Bachman?” he asked.

  Tyler nodded.

  The man held out his hand. “Detective Roy Perry, Pleasant View PD.”

  Tyler shook it absently. He felt numb. Words came slowly to his lips. “What the hell happened here?”

  “I was hoping you might be able to shed some light, Doctor” Perry replied. “The M.E. was examining the body of one of your patients from the ER.” He checked the small steno pad in his hand. “One Segundo —”

  “Martinez.” Tyler nodded. His eyes went back to the body on the metal table, looking into the empty bowl of its opened skull. “Yeah, Billy was ... he was supposed to have some results for me today.”

  Perry grabbed a rolling chair from Billy’s desk and gestured for Tyler to sit. “Some officers questioned the men who brought him in yesterday. You stated the injuries were inconsistent with their story. One of the men was a Jesus Mendez.”

  “I never got his name.” Tyler sat down, trembling. Even with the haz-mat drills, he’d never worried for his safety here. Not really. But that sense of security — real or imagined — was now as dead as Bill Friesen. In a hospital that had cameras to watch every coming and going, a hospital filled with doctors and patients and its own team of armed guards, Billy had been murdered. Had that scalpel gone into his neck first or last? Had he been able to scream for help? Had he been lying there all night?

  The detective continued to glance at his own notes. “We’re looking for Mr. Mendez now.”

  He seemed so calm. How could he be so calm with Billy lying in his own blood on the floor like that?

  The same way you can be calm with someone’s heart in your hands. To you, it’s just a patient. To this detective, the M.E.’s just another body.

  “It appears Mendez came to take the body of his friend, and instead, attacked the examiner. Would you say he was a strong man?”

  Tyler blinked. “Billy?”

  “Mr. Mendez. Was he a large, muscular man?”

  “I ... I guess so. What does that —?”

  Perry took a step toward Billy’s body, looking it over. “The M.E. and I were members of the same gym. There’s a basketball league there and our teams played each other more than once. The M.E. had a pretty mean three point shot.”

  The detective chuckled and Tyler gaped at him.

  He does know him. How can he be so damn callous?

  “Obviously,” Perry’s voice continued on in its even, passionless tone, “for one man to overpower him, the individual would need to be very strong, take him by surprise, or be hopped up on drugs. He was in the process of recording his autopsy notes and began talking to the perpetrator, so we know he wasn’t surprised. That leaves very strong or on drugs.” Perry looked up. “Libérenos.”

  Tyler’s head snapped to attention. “Libérenos?”

  “The other voice on the tape, we believe it’s Mendez’s voice, says that word over and over again. Screams it, in fact. Libérenos.”

  “‘Free us,’” Tyler translated.

  “Free us?”

  He nodded.

  Perry offered him a curious look. “How well do you speak Spanish?”

  “Well enough.”

  “This voice — the suspected perpetrator — said ...” He consulted his notepad. “‘¡El teatro es maldito! ¡Estamos en Infierno!’ And then ‘¡Libérenos!’ Over and over again. ‘¡Libérenos! ¡Libérenos del demonio!’”

  As Tyler heard the words, the translation leapt into his mind ... and yet he still didn’t understand. He thought for a moment, making sure he’d heard the words and their order correctly. When he was certain of his rendition, he
spoke it aloud, “The theater is cursed. We’re in Hell. Free us. Free us from the demon.”

  At the word “demon,” the older paramedic’s head snapped up and he looked over at Tyler with great interest.

  17

  Kim took off her sunglasses and looked through the windshield of her powder blue VW Bug, studying the cinema that had once shown Disney and then later, John Holmes.

  The marquee was huge, like two white semi trucks suspended back to back above the entrance. Once, it must have said “CLOSED,” but the winds had run off with a few letters over the years. The left side now proclaimed “CL S,” the right “L SED.” Some of the panels had also fallen away, revealing rows of fluorescent light bulbs like ribs within.

  Between the two light boards, an erect column extended skyward with the name of the building — WOODFIELD MOVIE PALACE — encircled in tiny, clear light bulbs. This, too, was in need of restoration. Some letters hung on for dear life and many of the bulbs had shattered, leaving rings of jagged glass around their charred filaments.

  The building attached to this marquee was nothing extraordinary; just a large box of brick and mortar, covered over by the work of young, would-be artists with multiple cans of spray paint and too much time on their hands. There were poster cases along the front of the structure on either side of the entrance, past heralds for the coming of such classics as Citizen Cane, Casablanca, Gone With the Wind, The Godfather, and Star Wars. Now, however, they lay hidden beneath sheets of graffiti-covered plywood. The windows on the second floor were also boarded, with the exception of one that sported a mesh of cracks and jagged holes. She was reminded of It’s a Wonderful Life, and wondered if young lovers came out here at night, making wishes before they chucked their rocks up through the glass.

  Her eyes moved down to the box office. It was hidden by plywood as well, and for some reason, the sight made Kim shiver.

  “You okay?” Tashima asked from the passenger seat. Her braids were pulled back and pinned beneath a black ballcap.

  Kim nodded slowly, her eyes still on the ticket booth. After a moment, she reached for her door and climbed from the car. Her hand went to her forehead and found it slick with sweat. She smeared it across her skin, hoping it would be cool in the auditorium.