Sleep Revised

by Wright, Michael

  “Hey, Bob!” Morrison’s voice thundered across the tiles and glassware.

  The coroner, Bob, turned to him and his face fell. “You again?” He began toward them.

  Clark took a step back toward Morrison, and looked at the oncoming coroner. He was dressed out in scrubs, on his forehead a pair of very thick glasses sat, dangling just at the point where they would remain but if moved an inch in any direction they would certainly have fallen. The man had a duck-like face. It was sharp at the bottom but rounded at the top. His eyes were squinted, apparently from not wearing his glasses that were seated on his head, and his mouth fell into a natural scowl.

  “You here about that boy, again?” His tone was sour, but from the way it flowed out, Clark assumed it was his usual demeanor.

  “Yep. Here to get a positive identification.” Morrison’s voice had cheered a little, as if he enjoyed bothering the mallard-like coroner as he scurried around in the dungeon, sorting through the death as it poured in.

  Bob turned to Clark, “How are you doing, I’m Bob Dempsey. Are you of the family?”

  “No, uh. I’m his therapist, Clark Bell. I’ve been treating Jon for two years now.”

  Surprise. “Really? Well. Normally I try to cater to the family to make this part easier but…How well did you know him?”

  “I saw him every week and helped him work through his darkest secrets and fought his demons with him, if that’s any clue.”

  Bob nodded, “Some people are detached from their work.”

  “I know. I do keep a comfortable distance from my patients, but I can honestly say that I know them very well. I won’t go hysterical if that is what you were fishing for.”

  “I didn’t expect it.” His tone fell casual, and as he turned he shifted back into his professional mode, reaching for a fresh pair of latex gloves from the box that sat nearby. By it was a bottle of hand sanitizer and some tissues that were printed with various characters from Winnie the Pooh. Clark found that bitterly humorous.

  He led them over to the cooler. It was spotless as the rest of the morgue. The stainless steel was deeply grained, and it looked to have been recently meticulously cleaned. The black handles on the drawers provided an easy grab for any size hand, and Bob reached for the top drawer, but dropped his hand down and pulled out the drawer from the middle, tapping his fingers against it as if he could tell the body by the echo it made inside of it’s metal box. “Just got him in as I got this one emptied. I haven’t had a chance to do any work on him yet, just the preliminary. I’ll be doing a full autopsy later on tonight, unless there’s any objections…?”

  Clark shook his head.

  “I just want to make sure that it was in fact an accident. When they said they were calling someone to ID the boy I didn’t know it would be his shrink.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Just a gut feeling.” His eyes looked at him sideways, then faded back toward the body.

  Morrison’s hand bumped Clark’s arm, and he shook his head silently, then gestured with his eyes back toward Bob.

  Clark held his stare for a moment and then turned back as well, sure that as soon as they were out of earshot he would have some idea what was really trying to be said. He had a good feeling as to what was intended, and he didn’t like it.

  “He’s okay in the face, as I’m sure you have been informed, except for his lower jaw. That seems to be broken pretty badly, so he will be slightly agape.” Bob worked gently and slowly peeled back the sheet to mid chest-level on Jon.

  Pale skin reflected back the light in a silent way. It seemed to absorb instead of reflect, and it stood out in a sour gray against the cold metal. Bruises marked his face, as if he had been in a match with Rocky Balboa and on the wrong team. His hair, which was normally meticulously kept in place, was askew and wet still from the rain. His jaw hung at an unnatural and painful angle, his mouth baring open, releasing the beginnings of decay and the leftovers of stomach acid and bile from his throat. His bony shoulders poked out of place, each one dislocated in their own way, probably as the car had dragged him along.

  Bob turned to him.

  Clark could only stare for a moment. It had been two weeks since he had last seen him, the last session before Jon’s big vacation where he would go to the mountains and enjoy the fresh air while hiking. It had been a better session. It was the one that had given him hope for the boy.

  “Yeah,” he breathed, “it’s him.”

  The coroner’s head bobbed and he reached for the sheet and slowly pulled it back over the head, being careful to let the corners reach all the way out and fold around his head, outlining his face almost perfectly. Like a mockery of the Turin Shroud. He closed the drawer with a hollow and resounding thud.

  The door squeaked shut, and as the latch clicked he felt the temperature raise a little bit, unaware that the open cooler had been cooling the air around him so much. He turned to Morrison, who nodded, and then turned over to the office door. “We’re gonna have some papers for you to sign now.”

  “Okay. I can do that.”

  “Funeral arrangements are supposed to be being made by the sister, Samantha. Turns out your boy here had a plot picked out for himself here in town.. Bought it a couple months ago, I guess.”

  Clark nodded, “He did. He told me about it. Said he didn’t want to go out of here unprepared.”

  “I know he didn’t plan it like this.”

  A positive grunt was all that Clark could manage to answer that.

  Morrison, looking behind him to see Bob having already gone back to work on sorting through some sort of set of papers on the far end of the morgue, and he spoke softly to Clark, dulling his words with a thick jaw. “Hey, you wanna go get a bite to eat? I’d like to catch up a bit with you, if that’s okay? Been awhile, and…well you know, I wanted to see how you’re doing.”

  Clark stared at him a moment, “So we can talk things over?”

  “Yeah,” Morrison piped as he stepped forward and opened the metal door and led them back into the hallway. Clark went ahead of him and felt the slickness of his footprints that he had left there only a few moments ago beneath him and stepped to the far side of the hall to avoid them.

  Morrison did not do that, but in thick boots splashed through them. “I’m off anyway. Put in a long day today, I don’t think they’ll be missing me too much.” He tapped a door frame as he walked through, waving to a secretary. “You remember that place we used to stop at? The one by the hospital?”

  “Yeah,” Clark said. “I’m still a regular. They keep the coffee running for me.”

  “Great! I’ll see you there. On me.”

  Clark gave his thanks and wondered what was on Morrison’s mind—given the time they had known each other, he didn’t take the man for someone to go and want to recollect the good old days over a hot cup of coffee. When he reached the door and heard the rain, he pushed it from his mind, and raised his hand above his head, leaving the thought completely behind as the moisture soaked through him.

  2

  The rain slowed down. It was down to a slim drizzle by the time that Clark was safely seated inside of his hideaway, the hole in the wall he had called home for too long. Morrison sat across from him, thumbing through the very slim menu that was primarily built up of variations of eggs, sausage, bacon, steak and toast. On the corner they listed a couple burgers, but nobody seemed to eat those. The place was called Johnson’s, though he knew for a fact that nobody named Johnson worked there, or owned it and never had. It specialized in the usual cheap diner fare—short order to the core. The place had been there for years, growing a steady list of regulars, and Clark had found himself fitting into that list over the past two years of patronage.

  “Some things never change, do they?” Morrison said as he set down the menu.

  “Nope.” Clark said, eying the waitress that was headed for them as soon as they took to the booth, but had been interrupted by someone who seemed to be unsatisfied with the
ir sweet tea levels.

  She hovered over to their table, a white blouse and black skirt covered by a baby blue apron, whipped out a notepad and smiled at him. “What do you boys want to drink tonight?”

  Clark glanced at Morrison, “I’ll have coffee. Two creams, no sugar. Thanks, Molly.”

  “The same, hold the cow.” Morrison said.

  Molly looked at him. Then scribbled it down. “I’ll be right back then, boys. Fresh pot.”

  “Thanks.” Clark said again, and turned back to Morrison as she walked away. “Hold the cow?”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  The table shifted as he set his elbows onto it, the bolts that held it to the browning tile floor had long since began to slide loose. They wiggled out of their threads and were dancing upward. The laminated top of the table was etched with scratches from rough handling over the years, and the condiments shook when he leaned forward, cupping his forehead in his hands.

  “Headache?” Morrison pulled a toothpick from the dispenser on the table.

  “Yeah.” Clark replied, rubbing his eyes in a circular motion. “Identifying bodies tends to do that.”

  Morrison grunted, “Yeah.”

  The radio connected to the speakers had drifted over to playing an old Boston tune, and through the crackling of the speakers he could barely make out the riffs. Clark removed his hands from his eyes and saw across the diner a kid on a Macbook. He was staring at them.

  “So…I wanted to ask you a couple questions. You know, off the record, about Jon.” Morrison said.

  Clark turned, “What kind of questions?”

  “Some, uh, personal ones.”

  “You know I can’t do that,” Clark leaned back, “it’s in my contract.”

  “No, no no!” Morrison waved a large hand dismissively, “Nothing like that. Just something that I kinda had on my mind that I didn’t want to ask in front of Bob.”

  “Why not?”

  “Bob is…kinda one of those people—”

  Two mugs met the table in front of them, and Molly manipulated the coffee pot around so that it poured smoothly into Clark’s cup first. “Here you go, guys.” The aroma shifted upwards with the steam coming off of the fresh brew, as if it was choreographed. When his cup was filled, she dropped two mini-moos in front of him, and shifted the pot over to Morrison, who paused and stared at the flow as she poured it, seeming to be nervous about it possibly sloshing out of the cup and onto him.

  “You two decided what you want, yet?” She said as she finished, not even looking at them. Her dark red ponytail spotted with a couple of other highlights, went from one shoulder to the other.

  Clark turned over his menu, “The usual.”

  She nodded, “Steak and eggs.”

  “Rare and scrambled.” He finished.”

  “You got it. How about you, sweetie?”

  Morrison turned over his menu, “Um, just get me the eggs, bacon and toast. Over easy, if you don’t mind.”

  “Sure thing.” A few flicks of the pen on her pad, and she swiped up the menus, tucking them under a thin arm and walked off to another table, checking to be sure that their sweet tea was still full before they finished another glass. Clark silently wondered how much they could drink before exploding.

  “Um…yeah.” Morrison said, looking away from Molly, and back at Clark. “I was saying.”

  The kid with the Macbook was still staring, not moving at all. His Macbook was still aglow, illuminating his face, but his hands were not moving over the keys.

  “Bob tends to look into things a little more than they should, so I wanted to ask you a personal question about it.”

  He nodded, “Go ahead.”

  “Was Jon…well, was he in the position where he would have taken his own life?”

  Clark sipped his coffee, “Excuse me?”

  “The accident. It was strange, like it was too perfect.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  A sigh, “The curb he stepped off of was empty, even at the time of the accident, as witnesses testified to. There was nothing obstructing his view. The lady had her headlights on, and even in the heavy rain and fog you could see that thing coming from where she was when he stepped out. The ‘don’t walk’ sign was on.”

  “You think he jumped in front of her?”

  “I think it’s a possibility.” Morrison took a sip of his own coffee, black and hot. “I can’t rule it out, given his mental state and all.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Clark set down his mug, “You think just because he was seeing a shrink means that he was in the type of situation to jump in front of a car?”

  “I’m just taking everything into account here.”

  “You’re assuming because I was treating him that he was a crackpot like you see on television that likes to jump in front of moving vehicles. Seeing a therapist doesn’t mean that someone is necessarily suicidal.”

  “I know that.”

  “Then why are we having this conversation? If he was a danger to himself I would have advised him to take some time and notified the necessary officials.”

  “I understand, but I have to ask. He died in a way that some people use to off themselves. I see it all the time. And I know you have a good bit to lose if he did.”

  “So I would lie about him to cover my own hide?”

  Morrison shrugged.

  Thunder rumbled outside, shaking the window. The droplets hitting the window intensified briefly, shrugging aside the calm that it had assumed.

  “I’m just saying Clark, I get that if he offed himself, you would have a whole lot of trouble, and I have to investigate any possible avenue.”

  A nod. “He was not a danger to himself. I clarified that in our last session.”

  Another sip of the black brew, “And when was that?”

  Clark sighed, “About two weeks ago. Right before his vacation. We were going to meet up again this week and go over some stuff again.”

  “What stuff?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  Molly stopped by, dripping more coffee into Morrison’s cup. “Everything okay here?” She asked.

  “It’s fine,” Morrison said, giving her a look, “the coffee is amazing.”

  “Glad you like it, sweetie.” She strode away.

  Clark took a drag from his cup, tasting more bitterness than he had before. “I have a standard of conduct to follow.”

  “I know.”

  “Then why are you asking about that when you know that I cannot disclose any of that information? Is there something here I need to know?”

  Morrison tapped his fingers on the surface of the table, then looked around him. There were few people in the diner at that time. The sweet tea addicts were a number of tables away from them, and seemed way more engrossed in staring at Molly’s legs than anything, and the kid with the Macbook, who was still sitting quietly in the back.

  “What?”

  Silence fell between them. Morrison hesitated, as if he were unsure whether or not to continue speaking. Clark followed his gaze over to Molly, who was leaning against the counter, her elbows propped up, and backside extended toward them. Clearly uninterested in anything they were saying.

  Morrison turned back, “Was he into any weird stuff?”

  Clark shifted, “Only the weird stuff an average twenty-two year old is into. Why?”

  “There was something in his personal effects. It was…odd.”

  “Like what kind of odd? Experimental porn?”

  His head shook, “No, nothing like that. Just…a drawing. It was weird. Here, I took a picture.” He began to dig in his pocket.

  “Is that within regulations?” Clark asked, inviting a little more snark in his tone than was probably necessary.

  Morrison drew the phone out, “Not exactly. But you might be able to make sense of it.” He unlocked it, and swiped through a few menus, glancing through various apps and social media updates before he s
topped at his gallery. “The thing that weirds me out about it, is I’ve seen it before. It’s popping up everywhere. Like in places that good people don’t go. I just want to make sure that Jon wasn’t a part of this crap.”

  “What crap?”

  “I’ll explain in a minute.” He handed the phone over.

  The picture was dimly lit, and pixelated. It was hard to read, but Clark could make it out when he pinched on the screen to zoom in. It was a picture of something entangled together in an infinite loop, the loop being made up of what looked like long tendrils, or jellyfish spines. There were lumps and barbs scattered through it, following each other in infinite swirl toward the center of the drawing where sat an eye. The eye stared through the screen, scribbled black harsh and violently, as if drawn in a frenzy. In the center of the eye, there was a symbol that Clark had never seen before, but he imagined it to be some older language. He scrolled further down on the picture, and saw a series of letters. Zoomed out, and pointed to it.

  “What’s that?”

  It read: “ostium aperiam”

  “Latin.” Morrison replied, sipping his coffee again.

  “You know what it means?” Clark asked, handing the phone back to him.

  “It means ‘the door will open’. As to what that is supposed to mean, I have no clue. Google didn’t help me on that front, that’s why I’m asking you.”

  “He never mentioned anything like this before.” Clark said. “I didn’t even know he was into Latin.”

  “Well you can see why I’m curious.”

  “Not really, what he had there was his own business.”

  Morrison turned his head toward the window, observing the rain. Thunder shook the glass again, and it vibrated against the frame, sounding like it was rubbing on sand. The streetlight across the road flickered along with it, punctuating the rumble as it rolled past. “This symbol is popping up places. Weird places. Murder scenes. Suicides. Random vandalism—everywhere. Not all here, mind you, all across the country. We’re keeping it pretty quiet so far, because most people just think it’s a dumb thing kids are doing these days—something they saw on the Internet and are trying to make famous. Nothing has been done about it because it’s not connected in any way. It’ll pop up, but there’s no common thread that keeps it all there, it just shows up. No pattern, no predictability.”