Eyes to See

by Joseph Nassise

  “It wasn’t until somebody phoned in an anonymous tip that they started to look outside their own little boundaries. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when they started figuring out how long it had all been going on, right under their noses!”

  “I thought all the changes after 9/11 were supposed to prevent stuff like that from happening?” I asked.

  “You’re right; they are. The thing is that they haven’t implemented more than five percent of the changes they were supposed to implement, so …”

  I frowned. It had to be more than that. How could they have missed the obvious?

  “You mean the writing didn’t clue them in?” I asked.

  Dmitri turned in his chair to face me. “What writing?”

  29

  NOW

  “On the walls. The Hebrew and Chaldean and …”

  My voice trailed off as I realized neither of them had any idea what I was talking about.

  I pulled the photos out of my satchel and handed them over. Because I wanted Denise to see them as well, I convinced her to break the link between us, returning me to my usual state of blindness.

  “You actually understand this stuff?” Dmitri asked, flipping through them.

  “Yeah. Once upon a time I read that stuff for a living.” For the first time in five years, I suddenly missed my days as a professor at Harvard. Strange the lives we lead …

  Dmitri pulled a picture out of the stack. “This is Old Norse, right?”

  I had him describe it to me and then said, “Yes,” surprised that he’d recognized it. “How did you know?”

  “I had a great aunt who taught some of it to me and my brother when we were kids.”

  “Your great aunt taught you Old Norse?” Denise asked, as if she hadn’t heard him correctly.

  “Believe it or not, yes. My father’s family was Russian, but my mother’s side was Scandinavian. They met in Finland, during the war, and later, after they were married, we used to visit her sister in Kajaani.” His voice grew a little distant as he remembered. “We’d wanted a code we could use just between the two of us. My brother and I, that is. Aunt Natalia was a bit of a history buff, taught us some of the symbols so we could leave messages for each other that our parents couldn’t read.”

  He laughed at the memories. “Drove ’em nuts for months, we did.”

  I didn’t care about his happy childhood. All I wanted to know was what the writing in the picture he was holding actually said.

  “Oh,” he replied, when promoted. “It’s nothing. Gibberish.”

  “What?”

  “Well, I’m not an expert or anything, but from what I’m seeing, you’ve got someone who knows the individual runes but not how to put them together into coherent phrases. The letters, or rather the words, are correct, but not the combinations they make.”

  He pointed at a particular line in one photo. “Like this one. ‘Sky water stone blue’ would be the literal translation. Which, in English, pretty much means nothing. Like I said. Crap.”

  He did the same thing for several of the other photos. All of which echoed my original thoughts when I’d looked at them the first few times.

  “Could it be some kind of code?” I asked, testing my current theory out on him.

  “Sure. It could be. I mean, anything’s possible, right? We’re talking about a psychopath after all, but I don’t see what the point would be.”

  Denise jumped in. “What do you mean?”

  “Look,” he said, flipping through the various photos. “You’ve got what, four, maybe five different languages here?”

  Despite the fact that I couldn’t see what he was referring to, I nodded. There were actually six, but I understood his point.

  “The killer is already using languages that are ancient, ones that are practically forgotten by all but a handful of people like Hunt here. The message is therefore obscured, mysterious, unreadable to the average joe and certainly nothing the cops are going to understand right off the bat. Isn’t that why they called you in, Hunt?”

  “Yes.”

  “So why go through the trouble of putting it into some kind of code, especially one that’s so obscure that the cops run the risk of never decoding it? The killer would want to make it hard, but not impossible.”

  “If what Hunt says is true, and I have no doubt that it is, what we’ve got right now is impossible. And that doesn’t make any sense.”

  Unless you simply wanted to get someone’s attention, I thought.

  Like mine.

  “So you’re saying there isn’t any evidence of writing like this at any of the other crime scenes?”

  From the rapid clicking I heard, I knew that Dmitri had gone back to poking through the computer files. After a few minutes of searching, he said, “Nope. Nothing.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure.”

  The messages had been for me.

  The realization hit me like a freight train. The killer was specifically trying to get my attention. First with the writing and then with the charms. And I was getting close, too; I could feel it, like the electrical tension in the air before a storm. My subconscious knew I was on the right track and was urging me on, but I hadn’t had the time to work it all out yet.

  I stopped my musing when I realized the room had gotten strangely quiet.

  “Ah, guys? What’s up?”

  “Just a sec, Hunt,” Dmitri said. In a softer voice, one not meant for me, he asked, “What is it?”

  I felt Denise shift uncomfortably in the seat beside me. “I’ve seen this man before. Is there a better picture?”

  Dmitri’s fingers tapped at the keyboard. He explained what was happening as one of the monitors filled with the victim’s personal information while another held a full-size image of the man’s face.

  “Joshua Barnes,” Dmitri read. “Of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.”

  The name meant nothing to me. Nor did it mean anything to the other two.

  “Can you go through them one at a time?” Denise asked.

  Dmitri complied, putting the larger images up one at a time.

  A few more passed before Denise pointed to another, this time of a blond woman in her late forties. “I’ve seen her, too.”

  Pages from a different police report must have replaced those on the monitor as Dmitri matched the photo to the file and said, “Angela Travis. Clarkston, Georgia.”

  The names meant nothing to me.

  “Keep going. Let me see the rest,” she said.

  One by one the photos flipped passed. When Denise had gone through them all, we reactivated the link and I took a turn. I was keeping a silent count in my head and we were almost to the end when Dmitri flipped to another photograph and I felt my heart stop.

  My hand whipped out as if of its own accord and pointed to the screen.

  “Son of a bitch!” I said. “That’s Scream.”

  30

  THEN

  It didn’t take me long to read the entire book.

  If I had read it that first year following Elizabeth’s disappearance, I know that I never would have given it another thought. I would have scoffed at the information it contained and brushed it off as fanciful imaginings, alien to my rational point of view.

  But my confidence in modern rational thought had eroded over the passing years as science failed me time and time again. It wasn’t a big step to go from psychics and tarot-card readers to a belief in magick.

  For that’s what the book contained.

  Magick.

  Rituals, actually. Dozens of them, designed to help you impose your will on reality. Everything from finding the love of your life to cursing your worst enemy and the seven generations that came after him. Rituals to bring you wealth and power. Rituals to make your sex life better. Rituals that let you speak to the dead. You name it, it was in there.

  There was only one that I was interested in, however.

  It must have been a popular page, for t
he book naturally fell open to it when I leafed through the text.

  “To See that which is Unseen” it said at the top of the page.

  I seized on it the way a drowning man seizes a lifeline. Lost was the same thing as unseen, wasn’t it? And if Elizabeth was unseen, the ritual should help me locate her. At the very least it should let me know if she was still alive, something I believed fervently in the depths of my heart.

  The Preacher was right. This book would help me find my daughter. I was certain of it!

  The ritual required a number of unusual ingredients, and it took me several days to gather them all together. Some I could find fairly easily around the house, others required a bit more effort. Eventually I had everything I needed. The weather had gone sour by then, however, and I was forced to wait three more days until the rains stopped. I used the time to memorize all the incantations and to walk through the process in my head over and over again, so that I would be prepared when the time came.

  By midweek the rains stopped and the skies cleared.

  At last, I was ready.

  I chose a dark, moonless night. Not only did the ritual require it, but it would also give me another benefit. While I was long past caring what my neighbors thought of me personally, I knew that certain elements of the ritual would give them an excuse to call the police, and I couldn’t have that. The darkness would help protect me from prying eyes.

  I washed thoroughly, as the instructions specified, scrubbing every inch of my body in the shower until my skin glowed pink with the effort. Once I was finished, I lathered up again and began the slow process of shaving my entire body, starting with my arms and working my way down across my chest to my groin and ending with my legs. It was slow work, my hands shaking from the concentrated effort and the knowledge that if I cut myself I would be forced to go back and start the whole process of purification all over again, but I managed to get it done without mishap. When I stepped out of the shower, the cool air teasing my flesh like the touch of phantom fingers, I felt oddly naked in ways that I’d never considered. I dried off and then padded across the room on bare feet to the sink. The pair of barber’s clippers were already waiting and it took only a few more minutes to give myself a buzz cut, which itself was then removed with some shaving cream and a fresh razor. By the time I was finished I was barer than the day I’d slid out of the womb.

  I gave myself a once over in the mirror, dried the dampness from my scalp, and then dressed myself in the ceremonial robe I’d made from a pair of black silk sheets I’d dug out of the back of the linen closet earlier. For just a moment the memory of the last time Anne and I had used those sheets surfaced, but I stuffed it back down into the cellar of my memory and slammed the door on it as quickly as possible.

  The backyard seemed to be the best place for the ceremony. It was shielded from the neighbors’ view by a ten-foot fence and a row of mature oak trees. It was also large enough to lay out the twelve-by-twelve sacred space that the ritual called for. I had spent the afternoon getting it ready and was confident that all was prepared.

  Taking a deep breath and trying to control my excitement, I stepped outside and began.

  I drew the proper symbols in the grass of the backyard with the coarse salt that I had purchased from the grocery store, a representation of the element of earth. To represent the element of Fire, I lit backyard tiki torches and then jammed them into the ground in the proper locations within the symbols I’d just drawn. Earlier that day I had uprooted the bird bath from the side yard, cleaned it out, and filled it with bottled spring water. It now stood off to one side of my ritual space, representing the element of Water. The element Air was provided by a battery-operated fan I’d found in the attic.

  With all four elements represented, each arranged in its proper place according to the cardinal point of the compass that it corresponded to, the grid was finished.

  It was time for the second half of the ritual.

  Of all the items the ritual called for, the goat had been the hardest to obtain. I’d been forced to roam the suburban farms south of the city until I’d found one that even had goats and then go back several nights in a row until one of the damned beasts came close enough to the fence for me to grab it without raising too much attention. It had kicked a bit at first, leaving what would turn out to be a decent sized welt on my left thigh, but I got it into the car and back to the house without too much difficulty.

  I unclipped the goat from the dog run I’d been using to keep it from wandering out of the yard and led it over to the center of the circle, next to the largest Tupperware bowl I’d been able to find inside the house. It already held a mixture of various herbs that I’d picked up at the local apothecary, as well as a handful of Crisco cooking grease to give it a paste-like consistency.

  Positioning the goat so that its throat was over the bowl, I straddled it, using the pressure of my thighs to keep it from moving. I grabbed the goat around the muzzle with my left hand and hauled its head back to expose its neck.

  I was all ready to begin the ceremony when the damn thing bleated at me.

  That one little sound nearly undid it all.

  Hearing it, I couldn’t help myself.

  I looked down.

  A pair of round, dark eyes stared back up at me.

  In the space of a heartbeat the goat went from just another piece of equipment I needed to complete the ritual to a living, breathing creature, one that I was about to slaughter with my own hands.

  My hands began to shake.

  My throat went dry.

  I couldn’t do this.

  Then the voice of the Preacher came back to me.

  “I know you can find her, if you’ve got the courage. If you care enough about her to do what must be done.”

  That was enough to steel my resolve. My grip tightened and I closed my ears to the goat’s increasingly nervous cries. I’d tucked a straight razor into the bathrobe tie I was using as a belt, and I withdrew it now, holding it open in my right hand. I raised my arms to either side and shouted the words of the incantation to the dark sky above. When I was finished, I pulled the goat’s head up even higher and slashed its throat with the straight razor.

  Or, at least I tried to.

  Expecting my straight razor to slice without resistance through the goat’s hairy hide, I was surprised to feel my hand jerk to a stop when the blade caught on a particularly tough piece of flesh only halfway through the job. Blood splashed, hot, thick, and pungent, while the animal twisted and jerked from side to side, trying to get away.

  I almost let go, too.

  Blood pumped from its neck in thick spurts with every beat of its heart. It got everywhere: on my shoes, on my legs, on my arms; somehow I even managed to smear it across my freshly shaven scalp. I was disgusted, horrified, but I knew I couldn’t leave the poor beast like that. I had to finish the job.

  I jerked the blade free, causing a fresh spout of blood to erupt in the process, and then made another attempt, slashing the beast’s throat in the other direction.

  With its throat now completely open to the night air, the goat died swiftly.

  The blood was everywhere, but thankfully enough of it landed in the bowl for me to do what I needed to do, and that was all that mattered.

  I shoved the carcass to one side, out of the way, and then knelt in the bloody grass next to the catch bowl, extending my left hand over it.

  I used the razor to slice my palm and then let the blood dribble down into the bowl to mix with that of the goat and the rest of the ingredients.

  As the blood flowed, I sang the final incantation in a shaky, pain-filled voice, and then, with the chant completed, I dipped both hands into the bowl and smeared the resulting mixture over both my eyes.

  After all that had happened, my stomach nearly erupted in protest. The blood was thick and hot, like warmed honey, and it dripped down my face in thick rivulets. Some of it pooled at the corners of my mouth and pried its way inside, so I could taste i
t, rank and unappealing.

  Gorge rose in my throat, but I forced it back down, refusing to let anything spoil the ritual.

  Nothing happened.

  I knelt there—blood dripping down my face, my hand pulsing with pain, the corpse of a murdered goat only a few feet away—waiting.

  Still nothing.

  I don’t know what I expected, but nothing certainly wasn’t it.

  A hundred questions swam through my mind: Had I said the incantations right? What about the mixture, had I combined the ingredients properly? What if I dabbed some more of the bloody mess on my eyes, would that make it work better or screw it up?

  As I frantically pondered those questions and more, the sane, rational side of my brain tried to reassert itself.

  Of course it didn’t work, you idiot! it told me. Magick isn’t real. Everyone knows that!

  Much to my surprise, I listened to that voice. I got up from the tableau in the backyard with disgust pouring out of me. I scrambled inside the house without a backward glance and made it to the bathroom before I finally lost control and ended up vomiting repeatedly into the toilet.

  When the storm had passed, I stepped into the shower and tried to scrub the image of that goat’s neck beneath my knife from the forefront of my mind. I was in there a long time, and when I came out, I still didn’t feel much better, though my skin was nearly raw from all the effort.

  I needed a drink and I needed it now.

  I dressed quickly and left the house behind. There was a package store three blocks down that was open late; I could pick up a bottle of tequila there and drink until I couldn’t see straight. It sounded like the perfect idea.

  The strangeness hit somewhere in the midst of that second block. My eyes were fixed firmly on my destination, that neon Budweiser sign in the store window like a beacon in the night, when a kind of pressure wave rolled over me. It was as if the fabric of reality was a giant sheet and someone had just lifted up a corner and snapped the whole thing in my direction. I stumbled and went down on one knee.