Sleep Revised

by Wright, Michael

  She wondered how many people in that neighborhood were packing, and even more how many of them were legal. If she had to guess, it was a very uneven ratio that did not lean in her favor if she were there after dark.

  The porch had a line of small black mailboxes, crudely marked with letters that had been painted on with an extremely unsteady hand and packed full of what looked like ads for cheaper cell phone service and discounted cable. She counted six boxes, and reached for the one marked “3” pulling it open and spotting a few envelopes inside. A brief survey told her they were just bills that would never be paid.

  Sam walked up to a door that had certainly seen better days, and knocked it inward with her hand, the unlocked door swung crookedly inward and showed a stairwell that wound up into the hallway beyond. She took another quick glance behind her and saw that the man with the gun had not stopped. The street was quiet except for the sound of leaves flapping in the wind on dilapidated tree branches and the distant thud of bass speakers in a car sound system.

  She closed the door behind her, the loose-hinged monstrosity clattered against the crooked jamb and echoed off of the once-white painted cinder block walls. There were a few tags she could see on the wall, most were just profanities and one was a very elaborate cartoonish illustration of some guy’s genitalia. From what she could make out of it, someone was dreaming much bigger than reality would allow to be true.

  A stair creaked under her booted foot and the other ones merely squeaked as she ascended. She passed one door which was hanging on broken hinges. It was left open and from what she could tell had been abandoned for a long time. From inside, she could see dim light through the blinds that lit up the living room, or whatever was left of it.

  She continued to the next level following the brief turn that led to another dull and worn set of stairs. The door on that one was shut tight and she could clearly make out the number three in a reflective label that was stuck right below the rusted ring of a peephole. The door itself was painted a hideous puke green, and the doorknob was crusted with corrosion that had almost grown to match the color of the door around the edges.

  Sam took another look at the piece of paper that was shrunk in her hands, she re-read the number and stuffed the piece of paper into her jacket pocket, then dug past a small Swiss army tool she kept in that pocket and pulled out the key. It was still on the string it had been on the night before, swinging in the doorway of her motel room as if waiting for her.

  The key fought as she shoved it into the lock, and after a moment it popped into place, the old tumblers crying out as metal ground on metal and gave a final squeak as she turned it.

  Warm air came flowing out of the building, followed by the smell of musty rooms and old food. Light tumbled into the darkness as the heavy wooden door fell open in front of her.

  Sam took a deep breath, and looked behind her, checking to see if anyone had followed her up. Someone with long hair and deep eyes, hands over his face, waiting for her to turn around and check for him.

  Peekaboo.

  She chanced sticking a foot into the doorway, watching it be swallowed by the gentle shadow that seemed to hang over the room. When it remained whole and she did not feel any pull from the other side, she stepped all the way in.

  He must have the windows covered, she thought, reaching into her pocket for her cell phone.

  The plastic case around her iPhone met her fingertips and she slid it out, fumbling on the lockscreen for the flashlight tool. It came on with almost blinding suddenness, and she shone it around the walls of the narrow entryway. Cut out of the sagging paneling was a crude square that was too big for the cover, and she thumbed the light-switch upward.

  From the living room a yellow glow emerged, and she reached behind her for the doorknob, drawing the key out and sticking it into her pocket. She swung the large wooden door and shut it tightly. When she glanced up, she spotted a crucifix nailed to the wall above the door frame. She considered it a moment and then locked the deadbolt on the door.

  The apartment around her was quiet, she could hear the light hum of the compressor on the refrigerator, but nothing else. There was a stale smell to the whole place that caused her to wrinkle her nose. It smelled like old food and standing water, water that had long been overdue for dumping, filled with maggots and mosquito larvae. It was a sweet and sour smell that mingled with chemical smell, a smell somewhat like paint.

  What did you do in here, Jon?

  She thumbed the screen on her iPhone and turned the flashlight off, checking the top bar to see if she had any reception. There was barely any in the dingy place, but it would make a call if she needed to.

  Sam stepped carefully into the living room, spying a plate that held a half-eaten slice of pizza, and a glass of what looked like what might have been Coke at one time. Beside it was a bottle of pills. She turned around to survey the rest of the room, and paused when she saw a tall shadow figure standing at the far end.

  4

  “You didn’t see anyone?” Morrison said, standing on the walkway in front of Clark’s door.

  “Not a soul.” Clark said, watching the Detective scribble something down on his pad.

  “Weird.” Morrison bent down to look at the floor, as if he expected to find some tracks leading in the general direction of the fleeing suspect. “And that note is all that he left?”

  “Yes.” Clark said. The same questions as the night before, when he had rang the detective’s phone past his duty hours. Out of frustration he rehashed the story again: “I went to the door and there was nobody there. It was nine at night so I thought it might be someone who needed something.”

  A nod. “You typically have visitors that late?”

  Clark gave him a look.

  “Of course.” He walked to the end of the walkway and stared down at the pavement below, surveying the surrounding buildings. It was mostly quiet that time of day, between kids off at school, and others off at work the parking lot was virtually deserted. Normally, there were at least one or two cars per apartment in the complex. That was what he remembered at least.

  Clark sipped the coffee that had slowly been growing cold since he had picked it up that morning before Morrison showed. It tasted a little more bitter than usual, but with the wind whipping around him he appreciated the dull warmth that it still provided. The caffeine eased his nerves and he hoped that the bitterness might take the edge off of his frayed nerves. However it had done little else than make him wish he had grabbed some food along with it. As if on cue his stomach rumbled.

  “Are you sure it couldn’t have been any kids with maybe nothing better to do?”

  “Who happened to know about this?” Clark said throwing up his hands. “Is there some secret memo everyone else gets that I don’t know about?”

  Morrison shrugged, “I just don’t see how this guy knew where you lived.”

  “He knew where to find us at that diner.”

  “If it even was him—”

  “I know it was him.”

  “—Was there anyone who knew that Jon was seeing you that he talked about? It might be something to do with this crap Jon was into.”

  “None that I know of. He was pretty much a loner except for church.” Clark sighed, “But I also didn’t know he was into all of this either. God knows, Morrison. What I want to know is why people are showing up at my front door with this stuff. I really don’t care who it was.” Clark held the note up in his free hand, looking it over again. “How widespread did you say this symbol is?”

  Morrison sighed, “How much time do you have?”

  Clark flashed his watch, “Enough.”

  “I really don’t think you do.” There was a darkness in his eyes that told him the detective was being honest, and that the truth of it was something far deeper than either of them had possibly conceived. But he also thought about the box and all of the articles that were stacked inside, and all the research that Jon had done. He considered showing him the box and al
l the articles with the obscure artwork and illustrations, maybe that would shed some light—but it would also cast doubt on the true cause of Jon’s death, which was something that would be terribly devastating to all of them.

  Clark paused, sipping his coffee again, and then dropped his hand by his side. “Come on in. I’ll make you a pot of coffee.”

  5

  Her breath caught in her throat, and she felt a cold knife slice through her chest. She clutched the phone tightly in her hand, causing the plastic to creak against her grip, and her foot slipped backwards behind her, throwing her off balance.

  She caught herself on the edge of a chair that faced the window and prepared herself for flight out of the narrow doorway.

  Crap! I locked it!

  She faced her attacker and steeled against the fear that swept over her when she looked at the face of the tall shadowy figure, then paused. The figure had not moved at her tripping and alarm. It didn’t call out to her or assault her, she realized that was because it was not a person, but a painting.

  It stood on the wall, without a frame, without the jagged edge of torn canvas sagging on the bare corners of white that trailed away into the wall behind it. It was a painting that was straight to the bare off-white walls of the apartment that may have at one time and a few hundred cigarettes ago been pearly white.

  Sam gazed at it, the tall hulking form stood menacingly close to the door that led to what she could only suppose was the bathroom. Above his horned head was a white cross scraped into the wall, as well as one on the side of each massive arm that was held out from it’s body. Behind the arms were what appeared of what might be wings, but they were too slight for her to tell. She spotted another cross below it, between the two massive feet, caging it in on all sides. Her eyes kept traveling back to it’s eyes however. Two black spheres that were somehow darker than the rest of the figure, though it had certainly been done with the same paint, probably even the same brush. The eyes looked like they were etched in, scratched out by a rough tool and then painted, and when they were painted it was with the full amount of pressure possible. She felt herself pulled into them.

  The phone vibrated in her hand, she looked at the screen and saw that it was just an email. She ignored it, but was grateful that it had pulled her away from the eyes of the painting. She felt a squirming in her stomach that slowly settled back to where it belonged, as if she was literally being pulled into the eyes. She shook off the feeling and shoved the phone back in her pocket, surveying the cluttered apartment around her.

  There was a table, if it could actually be called that, in the center of the room. A piece of plywood with a couple boxes holding it up. On top of it was a pile of papers, pictures and various writing instruments. She picked up the nibbled end of a pencil and sighed. It was long dry, but she could feel a slick film where his saliva had been, probably while he had been eating.

  Some things never change.

  There was a packed ashtray that held more than it’s fair share of butts piled one on top of the other off to the corner. She caught a glimpse of an empty carton of Newports. He hadn’t mentioned that he’d taken up smoking—as if she was one to talk—but it seemed to her like something that she should have known about him. But what had he actually mentioned in those once or twice a month phone calls that always seemed to come in the middle of the evening as she was preparing to soak in the tub or settle down with Netflix? Maybe that he was alive. That he was going to church and that he was seeing a shrink. She snorted, unable to believe that that was all that her brother really had to tell her about his life. Even worse, all she had ever bothered to ask.

  The shadow stared at her from the corner of the room, and she turned her head to look at him again—making sure he was still there.

  She sat down on the couch and felt the poorly upholstered cushion sink below her weight. It sighed when she did so, as if her load was more than it’s surface could bear to hold, and reached into the pile of papers. She could tell immediately that it was a mixture of newspaper clippings, articles pulled from the Internet and something that looked like a forum conversation to her. “Fire Kills Seven” one headline screamed, while “Murder-Suicide Rocks Neighborhood” was whispered by another. She skimmed the house-fire article, but saw no significance to it. Stapled to it was a folded picture printed out on plain paper. She turned it over and unfolded the print. It was an eye, drawn in the ashy sheet over one of the bodies from the fire. It was timestamped from over a year ago.

  She tossed it back on the table as gooseflesh crawled up her arms.

  The other article did not have a picture attached to it, except for a brief head shot that was featured in it. The man who had been the shooter was a youngish college student. Buzz-cut, thick glasses, and a horrendous shadow in his eyes. Beside it was scribbled a small note in marker: “DrkLrd1115”. She considered it a moment, her brow raised in disbelief. Why he had kept such a laughably simple detail on such a gruesome story? She tossed it back into the pile with the rest of them and began to look around the table, trying to pick out of the mess a detail that might shed some light on things. Something that made more sense than what she had been told. Maybe something that explained what really was happening in Jon’s head the last few days of his life.

  The thunder from a car’s bass rumbled the apartment around her. She could make out words, but not their exact order as the rap blasted in the street below. The dull thud of the subwoofer mostly disguised the sound of the engine, but she could make out the puttering of a cheap muffler kit slowly making it’s way down the road.

  She slapped the flats of her hands against her knees. The sound echoed hollowly in the cramped room. She glanced over at the side table and saw another small mess of Mountain Dew and beer bottles, on it was a small notepad, covered with vague scribbles. She could make out a few shapes in the mess of pen marks, more of the mostly humanoid and somewhat distorted shapes like the painted one on the wall that had greeted her when she came in—and sat watching her still.

  Sam stood, and began to walk toward the covered window, stepping past an empty pizza box and a twelve pack of soft drinks that were piled next to the chair that was cornered against the couch. Scissors clattered to the ground from their perch on the side of the chair, where he had doubtlessly been cutting bits and pieces out and putting them together in the pile on the table.

  How long was he doing that?

  She reached the window and peeled back the heavy curtain, and peered out.

  A large, red eye stared back at her from below.

  6

  “You’ll pardon the poor housekeeping.” Clark said as Morrison stepped in, having emerged from a trip to his car. “I had to let the maid go.”

  “It’s no problem to me,” Morrison said, “I got the same problem back at my house.”

  “The coffee will be done in a minute.You mind sitting at the bar?” He gestured to the living room, “My couch is a little occupied at the moment.”

  Morrison glanced in the room and saw the piles of pictures and articles that were strewn across the surface. “You working on something?”

  Clark considered him, “You could say that.” The coffee pot sputtered. “Research.”

  Morrison tossed a manila folder onto the bar, and with two spread hands leaned down onto the faux-granite surface. It protested underneath his weight, but settled quickly, the fiberboard underneath the laminate swallowed the pressure.

  Clark pulled a couple of mugs from a cabinet and set them on the counter. “What’s that?” He said, pointing to the folder.

  Morrison glanced at the folder, then turned to him, “That’s what I have to tell you about.”

  “About the eye?”

  “Partly.”

  “And the other part?”

  He held the gaze, “Why this thing matters to me at all.”

  The coffee pot spat again as the dark liquid streamed out of the filter basket, pushing through the grounds and thin material of the filter, dripping
into the glass pot below. The uneven rhythm of the drip fell in line with the heartbeats of the two men, both slightly offbeat of each other. Clark could feel it pound in his ears as Morrison stared.

  “What is it?” His mind turned back to the pile of papers that occupied his living room, the ones he had spent the previous evening sorting and digging through before the devilish game of ding-dong-ditch had interrupted him. Was it more info that Jon would have latched on to and incorporated into his own little perverse file?

  “I’ll get to that. It…it needs some backdrop before I just come out and tell you.” He slid the stool out and climbed on top of it.

  “Fair enough.” Clark leaned against the counter, which on the other side of the bar put him right in front of the kitchen sink, piled with a few too many cups and a smattering of soiled spoons.

  Morrison rubbed the back of his neck, and then reached into his back pocket, pulling out his wallet.

  Clark checked the coffee.

  Morrison pulled a folded picture from the folds of the leather wallet and tossed it down on the counter, replacing the wallet into his pocket and he gestured toward the picture. Clark picked it up and began to carefully unfold it.

  “That,” Morrison said softly, “is my niece.”

  The picture showed a young teenage girl, just barely past the midpoint of puberty, when the world seemed awkward and hideous. In her eyes was a light as her brace-filled teeth filled her smile that was in no way forced, but honestly sincere.

  Clark nodded, “Beautiful girl.” He was sincere in it. He wondered if he and Carol would have ever been able to produce a child like that, one so full of life and light.

  “She’s dead.” Morrison stated.

  Clark looked up at him, then glanced back at the picture, unable to see how the healthy young girl there could possibly be dead and her death recited in such a tired fashion.