Sight Unseen

by Andrew Neiderman

  “Where?”

  “Yeah, where?”

  “Home, in my house.”

  “You were in bed?”

  “Sure.” He looked at Charlie, but Charlie didn’t change expression. He had been schooled in how to behave. David could almost hear Comfort teach the lesson. “Where else?”

  “That’s what I wanted to know. People daydream, right?”

  “It wasn’t a daydream.”

  “Well, people dream after they wake up. They might be sitting around somewhere and might be bored, and they start to dream. Couldn’t that have happened to you?”

  “It didn’t. Not this dream.”

  “It does happen to you though, right? You do daydream?”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe the dream happened while you were on Diane Jones’s road. You’ve been up there at night before, haven’t you? And I don’t mean to help Diane Jones with her schoolwork.”

  David blanched and nodded.

  “You and your friends were doing some snooping around. Harmless excitement. I can understand that. But it’s hard with a lot of guys…they’re fooling around…one of your friends got hurt one night…you guys almost got caught…so you started going up there by yourself, isn’t that right?”

  “No,” David said, but Comfort didn’t appear to have heard him.

  “Maybe this one night you stopped along the way because Diane was walking up the road and—”

  “No,” David said quickly. “It happened in my home, while I was sleeping.”

  “Uh-huh. You don’t have to answer so quickly, David. I know this is hard, but you’ve got to give everything a little more thought, okay?” Comfort said, still maintaining that pleasant, soft tone of voice.

  “I don’t have to think about that.”

  “I see. David,” Comfort said leaning forward, “I had a case recently that concerned a little boy who unfortunately witnessed his father beating his mother to death. You can imagine how hard it was for that boy to talk about what happened. So, you know what he did—he talked about it as though it was a bad dream. He didn’t want to believe it really happened,” Comfort concluded, raising his arms.

  He’s made this all up, David thought, but he didn’t reveal his thought. He nodded to go along with it.

  “I didn’t see it happen,” he said. “I dreamt it.”

  Comfort just stared at him.

  “David,” he said, his voice getting sterner now, “we’re going to get to the bottom of this. I’m going to bring in all kinds of experts, and we’re going to find evidence that’s going to lead us to the killer, one way or another. It’s just a matter of time.”

  “Good,” David said.

  “All right,” Comfort said after a long pause. He stood up. “Let’s go see if returning to the scene helps jar your memory any.” Charlie got up and David started out. “We’ll go in my car,” Comfort said and directed David to the unmarked police vehicle. He got into the back seat, and Charlie got into the front. No one spoke any more until they reached Diane’s avenue and pulled up at the entrance to the path. David noted that some markers had been left there, and the bushes on the side of the road were well trampled down.

  “Wait a minute,” Comfort said after he had pressed down on his door lever. “Where does your dream start? Does it start right here or in there?”

  “It starts on the road. She’s coming up the road, carrying her books and—”

  “Carrying her books?”

  “Yes.”

  “We didn’t find any books last night or this morning.”

  “She was coming back from a friend’s house. They were studying,” David said. It was more like he was reciting it.

  “All right. Go on.”

  “The shadow, the man, came out of the woods.”

  “Where? Here?”

  “No, back a ways.”

  “Take us to the spot,” Comfort said and they all got out.

  David walked back a dozen yards and stared at the forest until he was sure of the exact spot. Then he walked toward it, parting some of the brush at the side of the road.

  “He came out of here,” he said. Comfort looked at Charlie, and the two of them moved through the brush to the first row of trees.

  “There are recent tracks here,” Charlie said after kneeling down close to the earth. “A big foot size.” He looked up at the state investigator. “Like I found back at her house.”

  “Shit,” Comfort said. “Look, kid, who the fuck was in here?” He came back to the road quickly. He looked like he was going to attack him. “Who the hell did you see?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know…yet.”

  “What’dya mean, yet?”

  “It may come to me slowly,” he said. “Maybe in another dream.”

  “What? Jesus. Now you listen to me. No one can dream what’s going to happen to someone else. You can have a feeling about it, maybe, but you can’t dream it with such detail. You had to have seen this…you know who it was. Why are you covering up? Did you have something to do with it? Did you bait this girl? Maybe you met her at her girlfriend’s house and told her you would walk her home so she would feel safe, and then things got out of hand, right? Whoever it was who was in this with you went too far, right?”

  “No,” he said, amazed at the idea. “I swear, no.”

  Comfort still looked as if he were going to strike him. David could see the frustration building in him. His thick neck seemed to widen, and his face became puffy.

  “Go back to the path,” he commanded. David walked down to it and started in, with Comfort and Charlie right behind him. “Describe it all again,” Comfort said. “As we go.”

  “He dragged her through here, twisting her arm,” David began. Tears were forming in his eyes, and his voice was shaky. “She was sobbing, but she didn’t scream; she was too afraid.”

  “How do you know she was too afraid?”

  “I felt her pain, her fear.”

  “You felt it, huh? But you weren’t really here. You felt it in a dream,” Comfort said. David ignored him.

  When they reached the clearing, David stopped the narrative. Lieutenant Comfort came up beside him and squeezed his upper arm, a little harder than David expected. It stung, but he didn’t complain or rub it.

  “Keep talking, kid.”

  He started to describe the rape. His heart began beating madly, and he felt weak and dizzy. His voice cracked and faded; his throat was drying up quickly.

  “Fishline, fishline, how’d you know it was fishline?” Comfort asked. All his questions were fast and punchy now.

  “I don’t know. It just came to me.”

  “Just came to you. Do you fish a lot?”

  “No. Hardly ever.”

  “But you knew it was fishline?”

  “Yes.”

  “This other guy, your friend, he fishes a lot?”

  “There was no friend. I’m telling you the truth. I wasn’t here with anyone; it was a dream.”

  “Uh-huh. Where did he beat her? Right here? He was swinging the branch and striking her right here?” David nodded. “Show me. Show me how he swung it.”

  David stepped forward, but he couldn’t recreate the actual beating. He couldn’t lift his arms. In his mind she was there. The vision was so vivid; it was too real. He saw blow after blow, and he saw the cloth bag tear. He saw the shadow reach out, pull it from her head, and beat down on her.

  He put his hands over his eyes and groaned.

  “What is it, kid? Talk.”

  “I can’t stand it; I can’t stand seeing it.”

  “You did see it then, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, but in my dream. It was just so real when I saw it that I can’t forget it.”

  “So how come you forgot the killer? Who’s the man? Who’s the man?” Comfort demanded. “Is he a friend? It’s a friend, right? An older boy, a bigger boy.” Lieutenant Comfort looked at Charlie and then
back at David. “Was it this Gerry Porter?”

  “No!” David covered his face with his hands.

  The shadow was turning; some of the darkness was going. He could see the side of his face. Why was he turning? He threw the torn cloth bag to the right. It got caught on a branch and then fell.

  David spun around.

  “What is it, kid?” Comfort asked.

  David looked up at him. It was obvious the policeman was expecting him to confess to something. The fool, he thought; the fool.

  “I don’t know,” he said. He wasn’t going to lead him to the torn bag. He didn’t want him to have it. He would label it and hold it for forensics, but it wouldn’t be any help to them. It could only be a help to him, David thought. Besides, anything new that he added to the story now only confirmed the suspicions the state policeman had. He would simply use it as more evidence that David was lying about the dream. “I don’t know anything else,” he added. “I told you all I know.”

  “From a dream?”

  “Yes.”

  “You still insist this is all from a dream?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t believe you, kid. I think you know that I am going to get to the truth and when I do—”

  “I’m telling you the truth,” David insisted. Comfort said nothing. David looked at Charlie, but Charlie looked as skeptical as Lieutenant Comfort. David looked about the clearing again. It had become such a hateful place.

  “Go on home, kid,” Comfort said. “If your memory gets a little better, come see us. I hope it gets better before we come see you, understand?”

  “I’m not lying,” David said. He glared back at him this time.

  “Right, but when I prove you are, I’m going see that they get you into adult court.”

  David saw no point in continuing his denials. He looked at the pond and then started down the path. On the way, he gazed to the right and saw the torn cloth bag under a bush, but again, he resisted saying anything about it. Instead, he walked out of the woods and started for home. He was breathing heavily and fighting back the tears.

  A few moments later, Comfort and Charlie drove by. Neither looked at him. He watched the car make the turn at the end of the avenue and disappear. As soon as it had, he stopped and waited a moment. Then he turned around and ran back to the bushes, making his way quickly down the path until he reached the cloth bag.

  For a moment all he could do was look at it. Inside were small blood stains and some strands of her hair. Finally he reached down and took it into his hands. It felt hot to his touch. He crumpled it into as small a ball as he could and stuck it in his shirt.

  He rushed out of the woods again and ran down the road to home, feeling as if he carried something wild and dangerous against his skin. For him the torn bag was pulsating and alive. He believed he couldn’t hold onto it too long, for through it, the shadow of death would reach him. It was both the doorway into and the doorway out of the darkness.

  He would have to open it, for in doing so, he would come face to face with the killer. He knew this as surely as he knew his own name, and the knowledge terrified him. But it was something he had to do.

  He didn’t want to bring the torn cloth bag inside; it was like bringing death into his house. He was also afraid that his mother might see it and want to know what it was. If he told her, she would go wild. She was hysterical enough as it was. He hurried to the back of his house and hid it behind a bush. Then he went inside, surprised that his mother was already home from work, since she had gone in late.

  “I couldn’t work,” she told him when he asked her why she was home so early. “I tried, but it was very difficult facing people. People are talking about you, you know. The whole town knows the story. You can imagine,” she said and then punctuated it with a short laugh. “Look who I’m saying can imagine. Mr. Imagination himself. So, my fortune teller, you want to explain?”

  “There’s nothing to explain, Mom. I told the truth. It’s exactly what happened.”

  “You really dreamt all this?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’ve had other dreams?” He nodded. “How was it that Grandma never mentioned them to me? How come?”

  “She didn’t want to talk about them. She wouldn’t even talk about them with me.”

  “Is that so?” She thought for a moment. “Why, it reminded her of something from the Old Country?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Probably,” he added. His mother looked very sad and very tired. She sat down at the table and rested her head against her propped-up right hand.

  “There were many things she wouldn’t tell me, too, and many questions she refused to answer. She had terrible times when she was a child, terrible. I never told you, David,” she said looking up, “but your grandmother had a brother who was murdered, gruesomely.”

  “When?” He went to the table and sat down beside her.

  “When she was about fourteen. He was only nineteen. It happened in their little village in Hungary.”

  “One of those pogroms?”

  “No.” She looked up at him. “He was murdered by his own people.”

  “People? More than one person killed him?”

  She nodded.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know much. She was very stingy with that story, a detail here, a detail there. One night he was jumped in the street and butchered. The next day no one knew anything. No one cooperated with any investigation. They never found out who did it. Shortly afterward, my grandfather sent for her and my grandmother, and they came to this country.”

  “Why wouldn’t the people in her village cooperate? What else did she tell you about it?”

  “I told you, not much.”

  “There must have been something, some hint, something…”

  “All I ever remember her saying or being willing to say was he knew something about everybody, and what he knew, they didn’t want anyone to know. I guess he was a snoop. She said he thought he could do too much. I don’t know what she meant by that, and she ran away from explaining. I thought it was a painful memory for her, so I didn’t push it.”

  “She said he thought he could do too much?”

  “Something like that. Oh, and she had a nickname for him. Whenever she said it, it brought tears to her eyes, and she stopped talking about him immediately. She called him—”

  “Gypsy eyes,” David said quickly. It was more like a loud whisper. So this was why his grandmother was afraid for him. She knew because she had seen it in her brother, and she had seen what had happened to him. Her dying admonition was more significant now: “You must be afraid of what you can do.”

  His mother’s eyes widened with surprise.

  “You know? She told you about him?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Then how did you know that?”

  “It’s what she called me just before she died,” he said. His mother stared at him a moment.

  “She probably got confused…near death, people get confused.” He didn’t say anything. His mother sat back in her chair. “I don’t like all this, David. How could you lead them right to the place and show them everything from a dream?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But what made you think you dreamt the truth?”

  “I don’t know,” he repeated. “It’s just the way it is.”

  “That’s an answer?”

  “I don’t know any other answer,” he said. She shook her head.

  “People are talking…stories…they all think you had something to do with this terrible thing.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “What are we going to do?” she asked, her lips quivering. He felt as if he were the adult and she were the child. “Even Fred…wonders,” she said. “He told me how you showed them everything exactly.”

  “It’ll be all right,” he said.

  “It’ll be all right?”

  “Yes. The killer will be found, and it will be all right.” He got up
from the table. “I’ve got to go do some studying now.” His tone of assurance seemed to help her. She took a deep breath and nodded.

  “I’ve got a chicken in the oven.”

  “Good,” he said. “I’m going to be hungry.” She smiled.

  “I know you couldn’t do anything to hurt someone like that, David. And if you knew who did such a thing, you would tell, right? Even if it was a friend. A friend,” she said. “How could such a person be a friend? You would tell, right?”

  “Of course.”

  “I knew it. I just want everyone else to know it.”

  “They’ll know it. It’ll be all right,” he repeated and went into his room.

  He really did try to study. He actually had come to welcome the pressure of having final exams in two days. It was the only way he could take his mind off the horrible events. He was grateful now for having such powerful concentration. Once he put his mind to something, he was able to fight off all distractions. He went at it so intently, he didn’t realize how long he was studying. When she called him to dinner, he discovered he had been working for nearly two hours straight.

  “I have a card game at Tillie Green’s house tonight, but I think I’ll call and cancel,” she said as she served him his supper.

  “No,” David said. “That’s the worst thing you can do.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If you start to hide at home, you’re going to have them talking more. Go face them down. Don’t let them make up stories about us.”

  She stared at him a moment and then smiled.

  “You know, you look so much older, so much more mature. I hadn’t noticed until now, but you’ve grown a few inches and filled out. It’s like it happened overnight.” He shrugged, but he did feel older. “You’re growing up so fast. No wonder your grandmother was so proud of you. You know,” she said holding her serving spoon like a baton, “I think you’re right.” She nodded her head and straightened her posture. “Who are those women to make me hide? They probably expect me to cancel. Well, I think I’ll show them. You’ll be all right if I go?”

  “No problem. I got all this studying to do anyway.”

  “You’ll call me at Tillie’s if you need me?”

  “Of course. Go. Don’t worry about it,” he said. It didn’t take much more encouragement. After dinner she went into her room and changed her clothes. He was reading at the kitchen table when she emerged again, ready to go to her game.