Sight Unseen

by Andrew Neiderman

  Right now he was imagining the light lifting from the grass and worming its way through the night until it found a dark house to invade. Once inside, it soaked the sleeping inhabitants in the hot illumination, melting them into some dark liquid that would soak through the sheets. In the morning their friends and relatives would come looking for them and find only a grayish-black stain in each bed. He pressed his eyelids closed tightly in order to end the horrible images. Sometimes that worked; sometimes it made things worse. Tonight, it seemed to be making things worse.

  “David?”

  He welcomed the sound of his name. It helped rescue him from these terrible thoughts. He looked up at the kitchen window. His mother pressed her forehead against the screen to get a glimpse of him, but she couldn’t see him. He knew it and he didn’t move or respond. Her shadow was enormous on the lawn. He was fascinated by the size of it.

  And then he thought, maybe our shadows are our real selves released only when light presses upon us. His mother was really that big. Her physical body was the illusion, only she didn’t know it. Few people, if any, knew it. Maybe only he knew it. What he had to do was find someone else who saw and thought the same things. He always came back to that: the need to share, the need to find someone who could help him understand.

  “David, are you out there?” She waited a moment. He held his breath. “I know you’re out there, David. I want you to come in. It’s late and it’s getting cooler, and you remember what I told you about polio. David?”

  He remembered what she had said. Her words were filled with warnings, but he didn’t believe them nor did he fear them because he didn’t see it happening to him. He was confident about it, even though three new cases had been reported in Monticello, a village only ten miles away.

  “Oh,” she said, “you’re such a rotten kid. Get inside or I won’t let you out tomorrow night. Did you hear me, David? I won’t let you go anywhere with your friends if you don’t come right in this minute.” She spit her words out and waited, her face still pressed against the screen.

  He closed his eyes and thought about her threat. No, she would let him out, he concluded. She was going to play Mah-jongg tomorrow night. All her friends would be over, and she’d want him out of her way. Her threats didn’t matter.

  “David, if I have to come out there, you’re going to be one sorry child.”

  She waited; he waited. Then he heard her mutter and saw her pull back. She didn’t come out. The “Jack Benny Show” ended. He could barely hear his mother and grandmother talking, but from the rhythms of their dialogue and the tone of their voices, he knew his mother had appealed to her for help. A few moments later his grandmother was at the window. Her shadow on the lawn was even bigger, but to him it was warmer.

  “David. You should come in. Come.”

  He stood up. The darkness had been so comforting. He hated to leave it and was reluctant to go in to sleep. He was afraid of the dreams.

  “David.”

  “I’m coming.”

  “Good. He’s coming, Roselyn,” she told his mother. “I’ll make him some hot milk.”

  “You baby him too much,” his mother said. “He’s fourteen years old.”

  He avoided the reach of escaped illumination as though moving through it would be painful. He didn’t trust the white light since he had just imagined the distortions and animations. He hovered along the house and walked to the door.

  The bats turned into the streetlight and then flew off. And then he thought he heard someone whisper his name. He paused for a moment to listen harder. There was someone out there, someone like him, waiting. There had to be. Who was it? Maybe he was right about shadows being the true self, and maybe he had left his shadow in the darkness. Maybe shadows could be peeled away like snakeskins. Maybe he was getting closer and closer to discovering who he really was. But that possibility didn’t excite him; it frightened him.

  “I don’t want to know who I am,” he whispered into the night. He thought he heard laughter. The shadows knew he had no choice. He would have to know.

  David was always fascinated by morning, by the beginning of a new day, by the opening of his eyes and the discovery that so much time apparently had passed so quickly. Night had to be an illusion. He had plans to stay up throughout the night so he could witness all of it and believe in the hours, but always, he became too tired and fell asleep, betraying himself.

  But more disturbing, there were these new dreams. His fear of them was growing to the point where he would try to stay awake for as long as possible in order to stave them off. In these new and more intense nightmares, he would be walking through the village, moving in slow motion, turning and capturing everything like a movie camera. Usually, there was no one else around, but lately, people were looking at him from behind closed windows, their faces pressed into the glass so firmly they looked painted on. For some reason they were afraid to come out into the streets when he was there. He could see the fear in their faces. Why should they be afraid of him? he wondered.

  After he awoke he would lie there and remember the dreams. This morning he was more frightened than usual. In last night’s dream, he had walked to the center of town as usual. Only this time there was a coffin there, an opened coffin. There was no one around it. It looked as if it had slipped out of the back of a hearse, but the driver hadn’t realized it. Although he struggled with himself to turn away, he couldn’t stop his legs and his forward motion. Despite his efforts for a retreat, he went right to the coffin and looked in.

  Mr. Hoffman was there, pale and waxy in his death. He looked nothing like the rosy-faced owner of the village bakery, the man with the heavy German accent who enjoyed giving cookies to little children. At night the aroma of his bread baking permeated the village. It was his best advertisement. His cousin Carl owned and operated the bagel bakery right behind his. Often, David and his friends would go down there and buy a string of bagels for a dime. They would get cream sodas in the quart bottles and sit on the hill by the railroad tracks, eating their bagels and waiting for the nine o’clock to go through.

  The nine o’clock didn’t stop at the station in his village. It was a freight train, and on bright moonlit evenings, David and his friends could read the boxcars and be fascinated by the names of the different states. To them it seemed as though the train connected all America. Usually, there was someone at the back of the caboose, someone to call to, a man with a dark face waving back at them forlornly, a prisoner of time and space, locked and submerged within the metallic snake. Where did he go? Where had he come from?

  Once, in one of his dreams, David could see the man’s face. It wasn’t the face of a man, though; it was more like the face of a skeleton, the face of death. When the moonlight hit his chalky cheekbones, he smiled knowingly and nodded slowly. It was almost as though he and David were old friends. That dream left him in a sweat.

  He and his friends could feel the freight train long before it appeared. The grassy knoll began to tremble beneath them. Tony Martin liked to run down to the tracks and put his ear on one, just the way they saw an Indian do it in a movie. Just before it came around the far turn into town, Tony would charge back up the hill. It was a steep little slope. Often, he, like any of them, would stumble and slide on the grass. There was a danger in that, and the danger filled them with additional excitement.

  As the train rushed by and the cars rattled and thundered, they would all scream in unison, delighting in the way their voices were swallowed by the roar of the metal. It drove them back into a huddle of laughter and fear.

  The train had come in his coffin dream. Just as he reached the casket, it sounded to his left. He stood back as it rushed by; the caboose appeared, and the skeleton in a conductor’s uniform was there, waving and smiling at him. He tried to cover his face so he wouldn’t see, but his hands were frozen against his sides. After the train passed, his arms were free.

  He ran up the hill toward his house, but everyone was still asleep. It made hi
m think that the dream had really happened. He got back into his bed and awoke, as he had just done. Now it seemed impossible to distinguish between fantasy and fact. He was afraid to get up, afraid to discover what was the truth. His grandmother had to come to rouse him so he would get to school on time.

  “You’ll be late, David.”

  “Okay,” he said. He started to rise. He was tempted to say he was sick and remain in bed all day, but then he was afraid he might fall asleep and dream again. His grandmother sensed something was wrong. She came into the room to feel his forehead. “I’m all right,” he said. “Just tired.”

  “Why are you so tired? You went to bed early enough, didn’t you?”

  “Another new dream,” he said.

  She stepped back as if he had spit at her.

  “What this time?”

  He hesitated to say anything, but she remained standing by the bed, waiting. He looked down at the floor when he spoke.

  “There was a coffin in the middle of town.” He looked up to see her reaction. Her eyes were small, and her expression was so serious it made him ponder his choice of words. “It was opened and I looked. Mr. Hoffman was in it. His eyes were open, but his skin was as pale as flour.”

  “Don’t talk about it,” she said slowly, thoughtfully.

  “Why did I dream about Mr. Hoffman?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I hardly ever see him. I can’t remember when I went to the bakery last. We just go to the bagel bakery.”

  “Don’t think about it and it’ll go away.”

  “You said that about the other dreams, and they don’t go away. Sometimes I’ll be in the middle of doing something, and one of them will come back to me. Even when I’m just walking up the street, it happens.”

  “They will go away,” she insisted. “Come, get up and get washed. I’ll make you scrambled eggs,” she added and left him quickly. He had a sense of her fear, and that made him even more afraid. Usually, she was willing to answer his questions and talk about things, but when it came to the dreams, she was very short with him.

  Nevertheless, he did what she said. She had a way of bringing even more light into the morning. The aroma of the eggs and toast churned his stomach. She sang one of her Hungarian songs softly as she worked. He watched her shoulders sway. She had become heavier in old age. Her body softened and widened as though it were settling under the weight of her years.

  He had seen pictures of her when she was his mother’s age, and although there were great resemblances between them, there were great differences, too. His grandmother looked stronger, leaner, much older. Once he made a comment about that, and his mother replied that his grandmother had been through experiences that age a person faster. He didn’t understand what she meant then, but he thought he was beginning to understand it now.

  His grandmother’s life was a mystery and a wonder to him. She revealed it slowly in anecdotes and stories. To him it was as though she had lived two lives: one in Europe filled with mystery and adventure and what he suspected was a great deal of sadness and agony; and then this life here in America. She moved in with them right after his grandfather died.

  Rarely did she tell things in chronological order. Something always suggested something; and when she would begin to reminisce, he would put whatever he was doing aside and listen intently. He was even careful about asking questions when she spoke. He hated to interrupt or chance an ending to her tale. If he could just keep her from realizing what she was doing, she would go on. Once he brought her out of her reverie, she usually stopped. It was as though her past were filled with many terrifying things, and she was afraid she would slip and reveal some of them. What were they? Did they have anything to do with him?

  As usual she made him finish every bit of his breakfast. He ate too much and found it hard to work up enthusiasm for the walk to school, but she ushered him back into the bathroom. He did his hair the best he could and emerged awake and alert. His mother was just rising by the time he was ready to leave.

  “Why didn’t anyone wake me?” she asked and yawned. She was wrapped in her light-brown cotton bathrobe and wore his father’s old, dark-brown leather slippers, one of the few possessions of his that she permitted in the house. He used to think it was odd that his father left without his slippers. He would stare at them as though there were qualities about them that would reveal things about his father, but they were just a pair of old, comfortable slippers. Nothing magical happened if he slipped his feet into them.

  “Wake you for what, Roselyn?” his grandmother asked. She had already washed, rinsed and dried all his dishes. “You don’t go to work at the drugstore until eleven today.”

  “Did he eat?” his mother asked and yawned again. She ran her fingers through her shoulder-length black hair. Lately he had begun to notice more and more gray strands. She used to blame their appearance on anything he did to aggravate her, but there were too many of them now to justify that fantasy.

  His mother had been a very pretty woman. She had a slim figure and large, dark eyes. Her skin was still olive colored, but the smoothness had been disturbed by deepening wrinkles around her mouth, the corners of her eyes, and in her forehead. Whenever anyone looking at the photograph album commented about her good looks, she would invariably say, “That was before I got married.” David used to believe that marriage was the same as casting a spell on someone. Until it was over, he or she was stuck in the magic. But he soon realized that all marriages weren’t the same as the marriage his mother had experienced.

  “He ate, he ate, Roselyn. Let him go. He’ll be late and he’ll blame it on you.”

  “I went to bed late,” she said, more of an excuse to herself than to him or his grandmother. He let her kiss him, an act of forgiveness. Her body still had the scents of warm blankets and starched sheets. His look of reproachful silence woke her a little more. “Are you all right? You look a little pale this morning. Did something happen?”

  He shot a quick glance at his grandmother. She closed and opened her eyes. He understood.

  “No, nothing happened. I gotta go.”

  Before she could ask any more questions, he rushed out the back door and down the back porch steps, nearly taking the railing off when he made the turn into the yard. There was a path through the bushes and woods that he used as a shortcut to school, which was only a half a mile from his house.

  He could hear the other students shouting at one another as they reached the school grounds. There was also the sound of buses arriving with the children who lived more than a mile and a quarter from the school. As he drew closer, he heard the laughter of elementary kids. Bells rang. Teachers were shouting out of doors and windows. The world was coming alive just on the other side of the trees, and he felt good about it. All his nightmares could be left behind until he went home again.

  It was warmer than usual in school. Everyone predicted one of the hottest summers on record would be coming. He sensed that this was so. The overheated rooms made everything sticky and heavy, but when he and his friends came charging out of the building, they were disappointed because they didn’t rush out into cool, reviving air. They made plans to meet down at the train station where they could play box ball with a Spaulding rubber ball. They could play under the overhang because that part of the structure had a cement floor. He looked forward to it, and that filled him with some renewed energy.

  He ran back over the path to home, charging under branches and feeling the exuberance that came from the freedom and speed of his legs. He felt he could almost fly, and he took an ecstatic pleasure in himself.

  Then he saw her and stopped quickly, unable for the moment to do anything else but look at her.

  His grandmother was waiting for him at the back door, standing on the porch. Her hands grasped the railing where she had been leaning over to peer down the path toward the school. He could tell she had been there for a while, and that frightened him. She looked white with anxiety. He moved forward, slowing
down to a walk; but she beckoned him to come faster, so he picked up the pace and charged up the steps, pounding the rungs so hard the entire wooden structure shook.

  “Quiet,” she said. His heart was beating so hard, he thought his grandmother could hear it thump. He held his school books against his chest.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Your mother is home from the store already. She got a headache, and Mr. Rosenblatt gave her the rest of the day off.”

  “Oh,” he said relieved. If that was all, he could deal with it. He wasn’t going to hang around the house long anyway. He wouldn’t have to worry about disturbing her. The headaches had become part of who his mother was. Almost anything could give her one, especially something annoying that he might do. He had come to accept it, and he believed his grandmother had done the same. Vaguely, he thought that it might all have something to do with his mother’s bad marriage and his father’s leaving. He couldn’t imagine the woman in the early pictures, taken during happier times, having any headaches.

  His grandmother didn’t move. She continued to glare at him, her large blue eyes on fire with excitement. She had her silver-gray hair pinned back as usual, but some strands had escaped and curled over her forehead. He thought she would stop to fix it if she knew. She was a fanatic for neatness and cleanliness.

  He started to go around her, but she seized his wrist. He was surprised at how tight her grip was.

  “I want you to say nothing about your dream.”

  “Dream?” He had almost forgotten about it.

  “The dream you told me about this morning.”

  “You already told me not to say anything this morning, remember?” He didn’t need another warning. He didn’t like talking about it anyway because when he talked about it, the visions were nearly as vivid as they were when he dreamt them.

  But her look of terror did not diminish. He couldn’t remember her staring at him so intently before. It made him feel like a stranger. She still had not released her grip on his wrist. It was beginning to hurt.