Eyes to See

by Joseph Nassise

  Dripping wet and shivering with cold, I came back inside and dialed the police, the fear thick in my throat.

  They were quick in arriving. They always are when the welfare of a child is at stake. But by then it was too late. Elizabeth had vanished, and I would spend the next five years searching in vain for even a hint of what had happened to her.

  I was still in the midst of that search when I found Whisper.

  Or rather, Whisper found me.

  5

  NOW

  With the threat to my life now over, I sagged against a nearby wall and caught my breath. That had been a bit too close for my liking and I needed a minute to compose myself. When I was ready, I went in search of my employer.

  Outside the darkness of the closed apartment, the lights in the hallway interfered with my vision and I was forced to negotiate the stairwell by keeping one hand on the banister all the way down. I kept waiting to trip over Thompson’s unconscious form, but I never did, and suspected he’d beaten a hasty retreat the moment he’d come to; I know I would have had our positions been reversed.

  I made it back outside to find the group, including Thompson, waiting for me. I’m convinced more than half of them didn’t expect me to return, but then again I was used to people underestimating me due to my condition. Annoyed, I felt like telling them I was blind not helpless, but it wasn’t worth the trouble.

  I gave them a quick rundown of the events as they had occurred and did what I could to assure them that Velvet would not be returning to pay them a visit anytime soon. Their troubles were over. Then, before they could ask too many questions about where the ghost had gone, questions I honestly didn’t have answers to, I walked down the street to the corner and hailed a cab.

  As I climbed inside the vehicle, the cracked mirror in my pocket feeling curiously heavy, my cell phone began to ring. I pulled it out and answered it with a simple, “Hunt.”

  “I need you on the Hill,” Detective Stanton said in his usual annoyed tone, and then rattled off an address.

  Apparently I was Mr. Popular tonight; first a job and now some paid consulting with the Boston PD. I was pretty well worn out from all I’d just been through, but I knew better than to argue with Stanton. He had me cold and I knew he’d squeeze me for every ounce he could get. Being called out abruptly like this was a minor inconvenience compared to what he could do to make even the shattered remnants of my life considerably less comfortable, so I told him where I was, explained it would be at least fifteen minutes before I could get to his location, and sat back to wait out the ride.

  Beacon Hill lies just north of Boston Common and is the city’s most upscale neighborhood. Founded in the late 1790s, it still retains much of its original character, with brick-lined sidewalks, perpetually burning gas lamps, and narrow streets that often change direction without notice. It was built with old money and old money still maintains it. Even the slightest changes to its mix of Victorian, Federal, and Colonial Revival architecture are strictly regulated, and there is enough social and political power floating about in the neighborhood that uniformed police officers can often be found guarding public parking spaces for their wealthy patrons. The Hill was only a short physical distance from where I lived in Dorchester, but in every other sense, the two neighborhoods were worlds apart.

  The sudden onslaught of cobblestones beneath the tires let me know when we turned onto Seventh. Three more blocks and we’d be there. A few minutes later the car pulled over to the right and came to a stop, engine idling. I paid the driver, turned down his offer of help, and got out.

  I stood on the sidewalk for a moment, getting my bearings. The wind had picked up during the drive over and it diffused the sound around me, making it seem to be coming through gossamer curtains, but I could still hear the casual conversation of the officers standing watch at the door of a brownstone nearby. I withdrew my cane, extended it, and made my way toward them.

  The officers couldn’t miss my approach, a tall thin figure dressed in black tapping the tip of his cane against the pavement in front of him, and so I wasn’t surprised when one of them challenged my presence.

  “I’m sorry, sir, but you can’t come in here.”

  I kept moving forward, knowing they’d be hesitant to touch me because of the cane, as if blindness was an infectious disease or something, and spoke without stopping.

  “I’m Hunt. Jeremiah Hunt. Stanton called for me.”

  I passed them, reached the front steps, and started upward as the patrolman continued to object, telling me this was a crime scene and I wasn’t allowed inside.

  Like I didn’t know that already.

  Idiot.

  I hadn’t gone more than another step or two, however, before I heard the door above me open and a gruff voice said, “It’s okay, Williams. I’ve got it.”

  Homicide Detective Miles Stanton gave me a moment to fold up my cane and put it in the pocket of my duster. Then, taking my arm, he guided me up the stairs and in through the front door.

  “Took you long enough, Hunt.”

  He had a deep baritone voice and a gruff attitude to match, exactly what you would expect coming from a short, stocky fireplug of a man. This time, though, there was also a little tremor in his tone, a slight quivering that wasn’t usually there.

  That was a bad sign.

  I’d known Stanton for several years, ever since the initial investigation into Elizabeth’s disappearance. While we certainly weren’t friends, I couldn’t say we were enemies, either. That would require us to see each other as equals, something neither of us was willing to do. Stanton clearly thought of me as an inferior, to be ordered around at will, and I, well, I tried not to think of Stanton at all.

  Most days, it worked out pretty well for both of us.

  “Here. Put these on.”

  He handed me some bunched-up fabric and I knew from prior experience that I’d been given a pair of booties made from stretchable cloth. They went over the outside of my shoes, like old-fashioned galoshes, and were intended to keep me from contaminating the crime scene, preventing me from tracking in anything from outside on the bottom of my shoes. The fact that I had to wear them told me that the scene hadn’t been fully processed; the body was still in place. Without worrying about which end was the front and which was the back, I used Stanton’s arm for balance and pulled the booties over my shoes.

  “All right,” I said, once I had both feet on the ground again. “What have we got?”

  Stanton didn’t answer.

  Another bad sign.

  He just took my arm and led me through the house and up a flight of stairs to the second floor.

  As we headed down the main hallway I started to get nervous and decided I wasn’t going any farther until I got some answers out of him. I pulled my arm free and stopped. “Come on, Detective, cut the bullshit. You’ve got to tell me something.”

  I could sense his gaze on me for a long moment before he answered. “All right, fine,” he said, and I was surprised to hear the strain in his voice. “We’ve got a homicide, obviously. A woman named Brenda Connolly. No sign of forced entry. No sign of a struggle. In fact, there isn’t much of anything except the body itself.”

  His voice got a little catch in it when he said the word “body.” A sighted person never would have noticed, that’s how well he hid it, but I had trained my ears to take the place of my eyes and to me his discomfort was as plain as day.

  He didn’t say anything for a long time, and I was finally forced to prompt him. “And?”

  Stanton blew out his breath in frustration. “And it’s bad,” he said. “So bad that it’s probably better that you can’t see it.”

  Stanton had been on the force a long time. I imagined he’d seen just about the worst things that human beings could do to one another. If what he’d seen had made him this uncomfortable …

  But he wasn’t finished. “Look, Hunt. You know how it is. People don’t get murdered on the Hill. Especially not like this. The
pressure to wrap this up quickly is going to be intense. If I don’t come up with something soon, the captain is going have me punching parking tickets in Southie before the week’s out.”

  While I would be perfectly happy to see Detective Stanton demoted to little better than an errand boy, I knew he’d be less than thrilled. And when Stanton wasn’t happy, he had a habit of making my life equally miserable. So if I wanted the freedom to continue the search for my daughter, I’d have to help him out as best I could.

  He started walking again and I shuffled along beside him, our booted feet whispering against the hardwood floor. His voice hardened and regained its usual steel. “I’m sure I don’t have to remind you about the rules. You’re here to do that thing you do and identify the killer. Period. There isn’t any room for fucking up, got it?”

  Gotta love him. Even when he desperately needed my help, he still had to put the screws in.

  Nice.

  But the truth was that it didn’t even bother me all that much anymore. Maybe once upon a time I might have cared, but no longer. Stanton could say and do whatever he wanted; in the end, finding Elizabeth was all that mattered. He was nothing more than a means to an end.

  Helping him out kept my access open to the latest information about my daughter’s case. I’d been declared persona non grata years ago, thanks to Anne’s machinations, and Stanton was my only link to the occasional lead that came in. I’d do backflips if that was what he wanted, provided the flow of information continued.

  I was here to use my skills to give Stanton a jump start on his investigation. You see, Stanton thinks I’m psychic. Has ever since the day we first met. I can’t say that I blame him; if I saw someone do what I’d done that night, I’d probably believe they were psychic, too. Working with a psychic was even becoming respectable, in some areas. As long as the other homicide dicks at the station didn’t find out what he was doing, Stanton was perfectly happy to use my particular set of skills as he saw fit.

  Psychic he could deal with. It was something he could get his head around.

  Believing I can see dead people and communicate with them?

  Not so much.

  Which was fine with me. Trying to explain the nuances of my relationship with the dead would have been too much for both of us.

  Sure, there were days that I wished the dead could speak directly to me, but there were just as many others when I am equally thankful that they cannot. Like the times when they just pop in uninvited. That always creeps me out.

  Besides, I don’t need them to speak; there is a lot I can learn just by observing what they do at the scene of the crime.

  So I come whenever Stanton calls, I keep my eyes open, and give him whatever I can pick up at the scene. In return, he keeps me up to date on my daughter’s by now very cold case. Tit for tat. Everybody is happy.

  When we reached the end of the hallway he pulled back slightly on my arm, bringing me to a halt.

  “The body’s in the bedroom in front of you. I know you need peace and quiet to …” he hesitated, searching for words, “ … do what you do, so I’m just gonna wait out here in the hallway. Holler if you need me.”

  He guided me inside the room and the click I heard over my shoulder told me he’d closed the door behind him on his way out.

  I immediately felt the heat of the crime scene lights set up around the room. Even if I hadn’t, the whiteout before my eyes would have been enough to clue me in to their presence. No way was I going to take a chance of fumbling around trying to turn them off, though. Since I had no idea where the body was and didn’t want to accidentally stumble on it the hard way, I stayed right where I was. My inability to see anything meant that I was going to need Whisper’s help.

  I raised my face to the ceiling and extended my arms out to either side, palms up. Closing my eyes, I called out softly.

  “Come to me, Whisper. Come to me.”

  As I called her name, I pictured her doing what I wanted, having learned over time that a bit of positive reinforcement went a long way to helping the summons to be successful.

  I repeated my request, over and over again, until at last I felt a presence join me and her cold, slim hand slip inside my own.

  One thing was for certain: my growing headache was going to get considerably worse before the day was done.

  6

  NOW

  “Lend me your eyes,” I said to Whisper. I kept my voice low, respecting the quiet emptiness of the room around us and the still, unseen presence of the dead.

  There was a moment of dizziness, startling in its intensity, and then the taste of bitter ashes flooded my mouth and I could see again.

  Sort of.

  Looking through the eyes of the dead is a sensory experience unlike any other. It had taken me weeks to get used to it in the early days. Now, several years later, it barely made me flinch.

  If you’d asked me ahead of time what I thought the dead might see from their place on the other side of life, I would have probably described a visual representation of hell on earth, all dark shadows and wet, oozing rot, the miasma of a thousand different dark emotions swirling amidst the entropy that was the lot of all of us in the end.

  The reality, however, is startlingly different.

  The first thing you see is this incredible explosion of color, ten times brighter and more vivid than anything I remember from before my “sacrifice.” Right about then you realize that you aren’t alone, that the supernatural denizens of the world around you are now clearly visible. From that first glance you understand that we regularly interact with creatures far stranger and deadlier than you ever previously imagined. It’s not that they weren’t there before, it’s just that humans rarely recognize them for what they are. Ghosts don’t have that problem. They see everything, from the fallen angels that swoop over the narrow city streets on ash gray wings to the changelings that walk among us unseen, safe in their human guises. The glamour-like charms that supernatural entities use to conceal themselves from human sight are no match for the eyes of a ghost.

  But perhaps the cruelest irony is the fact that the dead can see all of the emotions that they can no longer experience as fully as they had in life. And not just the emotions of the living, either. Objects can gather and hold emotional residues as well. A child’s teddy bear might glow with the pure white light of unconditional love, while the hairbrush used to brush a woman’s long, glossy hair might reflect the scarlet eroticism felt by her husband as he wielded it night after night over twenty years of marriage. Each and every object gives off an aura of some kind and the more important the object is to its owner, the brighter the glow. In my own home, the photograph of Elizabeth that stands on the mantelpiece practically burns with the harsh, silver light of my regret and lack of forgiveness.

  When I take over Whisper’s sight, I have to deal with all that emotion, too. How the dead manage it is beyond me.

  I glanced down at her, noting for what seemed the thousandth time the vacant way that her eyes wandered thanks to my commandeering her vision. As always, I was struck by her resemblance to Elizabeth. Same dark hair, same bright eyes. Even that impish little grin Elizabeth used to wear can be seen on Whisper’s face from time to time, when something causes her to forget, even if just for a moment, the ghostly existence to which she was condemned.

  She and Scream had just shown up one day, not too long after my sacrifice. I don’t know what drew them to me or what makes them stay. I do know that I can count on them whenever I need their help, something I can’t say about many of my so-called friends among the living.

  Along the way these two ghosts and I have discovered that we are bound together in some kind of mystical fashion. When I need to, I can borrow Whisper’s sight or Scream’s strength. Sometimes both at once, if the need is great enough. But I don’t do it often. Linking with one of them for too long leaves me exhausted. Linking with both often ends with me lying unconscious on the floor.

  Sometimes looking through Whi
sper’s eyes can be difficult; tonight the view was pretty good. It was more or less upright and squared off and through it I was able to take a good look around.

  The writing immediately caught my eye. Black marker on white walls will do that. I spun in a slow circle, drinking it all in, stunned by what I was seeing. Sumerian pictographs. Chaldean script. Egyptian hieroglyphics. Norse runes. A few languages that I didn’t recognize, but if I had to hazard a guess I would have said they were as old as the others, if not older.

  Thanks to Whisper’s unusual ocular powers, the letters seemed to lurch in different directions, like insects trying to escape the touch of the light. They gave off a patina of emotion, from hunger to pain, from desire to obsession, but the one underlying feeling that shone through without question was one of menace. Whoever put them there knew what they were doing. The feeling seeped under the skin in much the same way that water seeps beneath the earth, slow and sure, going where it wills, unfettered and untamed.

  Despite my familiarity with most of the languages, I didn’t immediately recognize any of the phrases displayed around me and I knew it was going to take a bit of effort to decipher just what it all said.

  I noticed the body as soon as I could tear my gaze away from the writing on the walls. It was hard to miss. It was only the fact that once upon a time, in what seemed like another life, I’d made my living translating ancient languages at Harvard that had kept me from focusing on it right away.

  She’d been beautiful once. Long blond hair that fell just past her shoulders. A narrow waist. Strong, sculpted legs. Her nakedness made it easy to see that this was a woman who had liked to take care of herself. But the position and stillness of the body stole the illusion of life away like fog in the sunlight, turning beauty into horror.

  Her flesh had an odd blue green tint to it. I stared at it for a few minutes, nonplussed. It was way too early for the discoloration to have been caused by decomposition, and the fact that it covered every square inch of her flesh that I could see ruled out postmortem lividity as well. Her aura still lingered, which was also unusual. You didn’t see that with a Normal, which meant she was something either more, or less, than human.