Fearful Symmetries (19 page)

Lew looked from the spindly man to Marcy. Then to me.

“So maybe I saw something once,” he said.

Just to have control again, I nodded for him to continue.

The spindly man shifted his chair in anticipation.

“We were at . . . well, it doesn’t matter,” Lew started off. “Way past the DMZ. Deep, no support. Somebody was shooting at us from a fortified position. So we ventilated his little roost, and he stopped shooting like you have to. Because you’re dead.”

“Exactly,” the spindly man said. “The dead don’t shoot, of course they don’t. What is this, television?”

Lew wasn’t listening to him anymore, though.

“Only, once we broke cover, that dead sniper, he came back up over the lip of his little parapet. Except—I was the only one to see it—he was still dead. And there was another man up there with him. Moving that dead sniper’s arms like a puppet. Putting his finger on the trigger. We lost three more men that day.”

“And you made it home,” the spindly man said. “Good for you. You’re living, breathing proof of the intangible. You saw it, respected it, and were given your life in return. Who else, now?”

There was Jackie, Gwen, Drake, and me.

“When her father died,” Jackie started, her hand gripping Gwen’s knee, but then Drake cut in: “I used to lie in my bed all night. I knew there weren’t any monsters in the closet, or under the bed. That was stupid. But outside. Outside was much bigger.”

“It is, it is,” the spindly man said, smiling again, his lips thin enough as to hardly even be there at all.

“So one night,” Drake said. “One night I decided I was going to call it out. My fear, I mean. I was going to get up, go to my window, peek out the corner. If nobody was there, then it was just all in my head. But then, when I pulled the curtain to the side, there was a pair of eyes looking back at me.”

The spindly man laughed in his chest.

Jackie gripped Gwen’s hand harder.

“It was my own reflection,” Drake said then, right to the spindly man. “It was proof I was being stupid. That I was a kid. Does that count?”

“Did it feel stupid?” the spindly man asked. “Or did you sleep in your parents’ room that night?”

Drake didn’t say anything. Just drummed his fingers.

“After my husband passed over,” Jackie said then, speaking for her and Gwen both, evidently, “we could hear something in the garage some nights.”

“Mom,” Gwen said, trying to shut her up.

“And one time I finally went out there, with a spatula.”

“To scramble some brains . . .” the spindly man said.

“There was a puppy,” Jackie said. “He’d left us a puppy.”

“The garage door was open, Mom,” Gwen said.

“And, tell me,” the spindly man said. “Did you keep it, this puppy? Are you giving it unmonitored access to your house now?”

“Unmonitored?” Lew said, defensive.

“Who knows what our pets are up to when we’re away,” the spindly man said, angling his narrow face over at me now. “They could stand up on two legs, walk all around. Sniff at the vents for things only a dog could smell living up there. Waiting up there.”

“Stop,” Evelyn said.

The spindly man was still watching me.

“Good professor?” he said.

I looked from face to face of the group.

This wasn’t at all where I’d meant this discussion to go. But, I had to admit, what we were doing, it was showing what we brought to the story. Which had to reveal, in part, the means by which it had got to us. Like an archetypal well of shared stories. One King had the savvy to tap into.

We all had a devil on our back trail.

Or, in my case, in front of me.

“The day of the wreck,” I said, swallowing loudly. At least in my ears. “The driver of the furniture truck. I don’t think he was a person. Not anymore. I think he’d been waiting all day just to cross that intersection. He was—he was smiling when we hit him. And you don’t smile, do you? What kind of a person smiles when a kid’s about to get disfigured for life?”

Jackie reached across Gwen to pat my thigh.

“Now,” the spindly man said, to the group. “The good doctor here. Do you actually believe a man in a black suit was driving that truck that day, or has his own memory and guilt altered his memory of it?”

“This is over,” I said, standing, my chair scraping away from me. It was too loud in the tight gym. Too sudden. And I didn’t care.

“But—” Marcy said.

“He’s right,” Lew said, standing as well, his eyes with mine.

The soldier, always looking for someone to guard. It was so clichéd, so stupid. And I was so thankful for him.

He went around collecting plates, everybody else standing to help, to arrange.

Everybody except the spindly man.

He hadn’t moved from his chair. He was just letting the group course around him, his arms crossed like he was in a pout, and wanted us to know it.

As was custom in our little group, I stayed in what had been our circle, shook hands and gripped shoulders. It made me feel like the captain going down with the ship. Lew held onto my hand longer than he had to, pulled me close.

“You good?” he said, meaning the spindly man.

“I’m golden,” I said, and smiled to prove it, then ducked my head for Evelyn to drape her just-made scarf around my neck.

She pecked me on the cheek, Drake shook my hand, and the last one through the double doors was Gwen. She looked back to me, her eyes plaintive, almost. Like she was telling me no.

I raised my hand in farewell.

Behind me, the spindly man coughed into his hand.

“We have to leave now,” I told him.

“Thought it went until eight,” he said, standing to face me.

“Not tonight.”

When I reached for his chair, to put it up, he took it instead, jerked it away.

“Good selection,” he said. “‘The Man in the Black Suit.’” I identify with it, you could say.”

“You never told us your proof,” I said. “Of the intangible.”

We were standing at center court.

“Some of us don’t need proof,” he said, measuring his words. “But, tonight. Next campfire I find myself at, I might tell the riveting story of the book group. The one who didn’t know what they were playing with. The one who thought stories are just made up. What do you think, doc? I got a winner there?”

“Tonight was a horror story for us,” I told him, more than a little proud of myself for coming up with that, “not you.”

“So I take I’m . . . uninvited?” he said.

“Will that stop you?” I said back.

He looked to the dark gym behind me. To get me to look as well, it seemed.

I didn’t. I wouldn’t.

“Maybe tonight’s story isn’t even over yet,” he said, then, before I could reply, he was pushing back into the double doors. “Tell Captain Lewis thank you if you will, for the dish. And for remembering.”

“Rememb—?” I started, but now he was tipping his hat, bowing out.

Gone.

I finally breathed.

And looked behind me, now that I could.

The whole gym was dark, a patchwork of deeper and deeper shadows. At work tonight, there were going to be walls and walls of shadows, I knew. Me moving silently through them with a cart, a dolly, a back brace. A broken son. One I was so grateful for, it hurt.

I wanted to cry, I think.

Instead, I straightened the spindly man’s chair. It was already straight, but I wanted to make it straighter.

Next I turned like always, to nod bye to the ghost of the book group. To thank it for keeping me sane, for letting me give back, pay my dues.

And then I walked across the thick blue sideline, for the double doors that would lock comfortably behind me, and only looked up when I was almost there, to the crash-bars, the door handles.

Two points of flame, flickering in the reflection.

My back straightened and I gulped air as quietly as I could.

Behind me. The spindly man, he’d crept around to a side door, let himself in, was standing behind me now, his fingertips extending into claws, his rows of teeth glistening against each other, his eyes on fire.

I jerked back from the reflection. It was a stupid move, should have sent me right into his chest.

Only—nothing.

I even looked again, which is always the first mistake, the first step onto that slippery slope.

Just emptiness behind me. The whole gym, nobody.

I spun back around to the doors, sure he’d got around me somehow, would be waiting.

It was just me.

I nodded that I was being stupid, that I was scaring myself like Drake had been talking about, and took another step forward.

The orange eyes faded in again.

I shook my head no, no.

The eyes did too.

And then, like I had to, I cupped my hand over the right side of my face. And then lowered that hand, covered my other eye.

It was me.

I was the devil, I am the devil, the one smiling behind the wheel that day.

In Stephen King’s story, the kid’s dad’s looking over his shoulder into the tangled woods, he’s cueing in to some indistinct rustling in the trees. Some smell, some evil presence.

My face was lost in the brush, though.

He couldn’t see me hunched over and grinning, my face wet with tears, my split tongue reaching up to dab them off my cheek.

“Run,” I’d said to that kid, that nine-year-old. Or, I’d tried to, with every trick I had. If he stayed, then something might happen to him, something bad.

But it does anyway.

He was all but asleep. Or he was asleep and then the sound woke him up. Or he was dreaming and never awoke at all. All three possibilities occurred to him later, when he was telling the story to a friend, after realizing that he had nothing to show for what he’d experienced, or thought he’d experienced—no proof, nothing but a dull and slowly fading sense of fear. Without proof, he began to doubt himself. For surely what he thought had happened couldn’t have actually happened, could it? Wasn’t it better to think he was dreaming or crazy than to think that things like that could happen?

He had been in the bedroom, down the hall, at the far end of his apartment, when he had heard a noise. The lights were off, but they had been off for just a few moments, so he didn’t think he was asleep yet. Even if he was, he was pretty sure he had woken up immediately. If not, how was he to explain the fact that he was later standing there, in the living room, staring.

Sleepwalking?
the friend he was trying to explain it to speculated.

But no, he wasn’t a sleepwalker, he’d never been one, no history of it in his family either. His friend had been watching too much TV. He hadn’t dreamed it. Even if part of him hoped he had.

He had been in the bedroom when he had heard the noise. The air conditioner wasn’t on, even though it was a hot evening, the sort of evening when he usually would have turned it on—if it had been on, even on low, he wouldn’t have heard the noise. He remembered it being hot, but couldn’t remember feeling any discomfort—which was surprising, he had to admit, but there it was. He had to tell it as he remembered it if he was to have any hope of making sense of it. He had to trust his impulses—if he didn’t trust them, what if anything was left for him to rely on?

Just tell the story
—this from his friend. The friend did not understand that this was all part of it for him, that sorting through the tangled impressions was something he had to do to know how much to trust what he was telling, how much to believe what he’d experienced. But yes, all right, he would try to tell it the way the friend wanted to hear it: clean. He would do his best.

He had been in the bedroom when he heard a noise. At first he thought it was from outside, a bird banging against the living room window—that was the first thing that had come to his mind, a bird striking the window hard, once, twice, a third time. But then it had kept up and the sound had changed too. For a moment he lay in the bed, drowsy, just listening, a little curious but also half-asleep, not really taking it in. For a moment his mind went from thinking about a bird on the outside of the window to a bird on the inside of the window. And then his mind focused and he realized that no, it wasn’t a bird: there was someone in the house.

Nothing like this had ever happened to him before. He wasn’t sure what to do. Even as it was happening he couldn’t quite believe it. He got up, left the bed and made for the bedroom door, but once there, paused shy of the sill, waited. He didn’t know how exactly he was supposed to act, what he was supposed to do. Should he call the police? No, his phone was in the living room, where the noise was coming from. Should he stay in the bedroom until they were gone? No, he had too many things that he couldn’t afford to have them (whoever
they
were) steal. He had no gun, no weapon of any kind, and the kitchen where he kept his knives was in the other direction.

In the end, he simply grabbed a book from the nightstand, the largest and heaviest one in the stack, and moved as quickly and silently as he could out toward the living room.

At first, with the room mostly in darkness except for the slight light shining through the windows, he didn’t see anything. The room was a strange crisscross of lighter and darker shadow, some parts of it visible, others not visible at all. The end window was up, propped halfway open. There was a smell to the room, bitter and pungent, that he wanted to take as the smell of the outside air. But no, it was more than that.

At first the room seemed empty. He stood in the doorway hesitating, wondering if he’d just been imagining the noise. But then he saw something move. One of the shadows in the far corner flowed out and he saw a dim, vague shape. It was more or less the size of a man, though crouched and almost toppling forward in a posture that he felt would be difficult for a man to maintain. But maybe what he was seeing was partly shadow rather than body. It moved slowly, seemingly unaware of him. It traveled slowly along beside the wall. It knocked against the objects near the wall, rattling them—this, he realized, must have been the sound he had heard—but it seemed to be not aware of this either, and did little to alter its course. Instead it simply pushed forward, objects rattling in its path.

He tried to speak, but his throat was dry and all that came out was a kind of inarticulate barking sound. Somehow the intruder didn’t seem to hear him. It continued to move forward, around the edge of the room, at exactly the same pace it had been moving before.
I should be afraid
, he thought, and then suddenly realized he
was
afraid—that was the strangest thing. He felt like the fear was happening to another person,
like I was at a distance from my body, observing it
.

Maybe it was a dream
, his friend said.

No, he said, yes, of course he had considered this, but no, he didn’t think it was a dream—though he would prefer if it had been. But that wasn’t all, he said to the friend, that wasn’t the worst yet, he said, just be quiet and listen, that’s only the beginning.

He spoke aloud but the figure didn’t notice and he felt a strange sort of distanced fear—like the fear was all around him but he was swaddled from it somehow, insulated. He had, of course, already been afraid. The moment he thought someone else might be in the house he had been afraid. But this, this wasn’t the same sort of fear. This fear was of another order entirely.

Then the figure passed before a window—not the open window, he explained to his friend, but a closed one—and the fear rushed closer. For when the figure crossed into the light he realized he could see through it. It was the shape and size of a human but indistinct, its edges blurred somehow, as if it were not existing here precisely at all, but instead existing somewhere else, in a place that happened, somehow, to overlap with this space. Its edges were blurred and even within its boundaries its features were shifting and unclear, as if he was watching something in the process of becoming real. Or, another part of him thought, ceasing to be real. But even then, with the figure indistinct, he could tell that it was the size and shape of a human but not human at all, and he was terrified of what it might be.

The figure seemed to be shining slightly, vaguely glowing, though a moment ago in the shadows it hadn’t been. And this luminescence seemed to be emanating from somewhere within its person, right about where the head, such as it was, met the body, such as it was. This puzzled him for a moment until the figure moved further and he abruptly realized that what he was seeing was coming not from the shape at all, but from behind it, that he was seeing through it to the streetlight shining outside. That he could see
through
it.

Almost without knowing what he was doing he hurled the book at it. The book struck but went right through, not even slowing down, and struck the window behind it, making it shiver, before falling to the floor. The figure stopped abruptly as if it had finally heard something, and turned to face the window, its arms twitching, but paid no attention to the book itself. When it continued, it was moving more quickly this time, heading toward the other window, the one that was open.

A moment later and it was starting through the opening, squeezing through it, before he had thought to move. He rushed toward the window itself and reached it with the figure halfway in and halfway out, eager to close and lock it as soon as the figure was out. But in his rush to shut the window, he managed to close it right on the figure itself.

But just as with the book, the window passed right through the figure. He felt no resistance at all, as if the figure wasn’t really there. For a moment the window was open and the figure stretched out across the sash, and then the window was closed and the figure split, bisected by a piece of glass.

Considering the way the book had passed through it, he expected the figure to just keep going, to move slowly out through the glass and away into the night until it became lost among the other shadows. Instead, it hesitated for a moment and then suddenly began to flail its limbs. A moment later it divided into two halves, one on either side of the glass. The one on the outside fell down somewhere into the bushes and was lost. The one on the inside slipped down the sash and spilled onto the floor and lay still.

When he rushed over and turned on the light, he found that the wall and floor where the figure had been were covered with what looked like a swath of blood. That was all that was left of the figure.

He called the police, reported an intruder. He waited, patiently for them to come, and while he was waiting stayed staring at the bloody wall and floor. The color of the blood, he noticed, seemed to be fading, the stain too diminishing. As he waited and watched it faded entirely, leaving only a dampness on the floor. Then that too faded and was gone.

By the time the police arrived, there was nothing to suggest there had ever been anything there at all. And had there been? He had to wonder. Had he perhaps dreamed it all?

And what on earth could it be?

Whether he had dreamt it or not, he admitted to his friend, he hadn’t slept that night, nor the next, nor the next, because he kept expecting it to happen again. He was afraid to go to sleep, afraid, too, to turn off the light. He felt that by closing the window on it he had made it aware of him somehow, and now he could feel it somewhere, just out of sight, trying once again to become real, starting to push its way back into the world. He had hurt it and now it would hurt him. He lay awake, listening to his heart pounding in his chest, waiting for it to come. So far it hadn’t. But it would come again, he felt that somehow, feared that, and when it did he knew that this time it would come for him.

Which was the other reason he was telling his friend the story: not only was he trying to figure out what had happened to him, whether it was real or not real—he wanted at least one other person in the world to know what had happened, what he thought had happened, so that at least one person in the world would know later why he had disappeared. Soon it would come for him, he felt, though he didn’t know how. Soon it would be his own blood on the floor and wall. Perhaps it would fade and perhaps it would not, but in either case it wouldn’t matter, at least not to him, because by that time he would be dead or gone or both.