Eyes that do not Open

by Claudio Hernández

  His mouth drew a smile.

  Could it be true that the Remote Vision could have had changed at the age of sixty-three?

  At least it was different, and he didn’t follow the same protocol. He now forgot things, ended up in a sudden confusion or didn’t see properly the letters of the vehicle, either because there were missing letters in the words or he saw them blurry. Even though he could hear the sound of waves, he couldn’t accurately perceive what was around, whereas in the past, he was, in fact, able to do it and the most worrying part of it all: his right foot was rhythmically tapping on the floor as if something was wrong.

  After this, the information just stopped, and he felt slightly confused and dizzy. The headache decreased a bit and he felt the urge to drink water, a lot of water, maybe a beer.

  He remembered that when this type of Remote Vision occurred, he should walk for at least five minutes and clear his mind from all the concentration since the information had been received from the same remote location and not through distance like it had been happening up until now.

  “Fuck, this is bullshit,” he whispered as he tried to get up from the chair, whiny, with some saliva on the corner of his lips. His eyes were lost, and he no longer saw Ava Cox but her car. A Ford vehicle, quite robust and painted in white abandoned somewhere in the east side of Maine.

  It was said that any person who had an experience with bilocation couldn’t make an effort to analyze information until fifteen minutes had passed. Andrew had already analyzed it, just before the heavy needle on the clock marked five to one.

  He had been in two separate places at the same time for ten minutes.

  His lips dried in a forced smile. He licked his saliva. The sun streams drew lines of fire on the linoleum floor. His feet were quietly dragging stepping on them, crossing the gleams that shone on the tip of his black shoes as he walked past them. He was heading to his table where tons of folders and plastic foils stained with something yellow were waiting for him. What could that be? Beer or coffee?

  Both.

  After all, it wasn’t a table different from what Landon flaunted. It looked as if a small typhoon had been there. Andrew, however, outweighed him every time because he covered the wall in front of him with pictures, maps, and drawings. Afterward, he observed them, sometimes from afar, some other times closely and he even threw little paper balls to those fucking pictures.

  Andrew had also wished to be a good cigar smoker, but swallowing smoke wasn’t something for him. Neither was swallowing whiskey, well, yes, something went down his throat. He reached the border of the table leaning on his tiny hand. He felt pain, but just a little bit. He was now curved as if wanting to jump over a river.

  And he remembered the CIA used that Remote Vision technique to “gather” information for military purposes.

  He swallowed again.

  He hadn’t been trained to execute the Remote Vision, but he knew what to do in these cases. Something his own experience had taught him. However, this had caught him by surprise even though he knew what to do.

  He was questioning something very interesting.

  Had he been in two places at the same time?

  The minute hand gave a final push and got stuck like a pine tree in the woods, under the number twelve. The clock struck 13:00 hours.

  12

  Some nails were scratching the walls. It was them. The sicko had collapsed on the floor, but it had fallen on a rough and thick carpet. It was face up, exhausted and breathing heavily. He closed his eyes. His lips were sealed as a closed zipper, like a perfect line across his face.

  The red light bathed his naked body as a pool of blood, or even worse as if projecting a rain of blood.

  The screams, muffled by the thick walls, kept going.

  That sicko didn’t know anything about clocks.

  Or about pain.

  13

  Around two in the afternoon, when the sun was almost on the highest place during that spring and he could sort out the tiny cirrocumulus clouds, Tom decided that it was time to spend a good deal of time on his cabin’s bridge with his fishing rod.

  With a somehow shabby look, beard and hollow eyes under a pair of bushy eyebrows, Tom picked, with his bony hands, the tiny fishing rod that was hanging from one of the four cabin walls; just by the door. Someday, those very same hands, but chubbier and stronger, had pulled the trigger of an assault rifle, model M-16A1, 5.56 mm for months. He had no weapons now, just his fishing rod. After Indochina’s horrific war, he had decided he would smoke pot and eat canned green beans.

  His mind was somewhere else.

  It was just gone.

  Above his head, the only sane thing was his green cloth cap. His gray hair, thick due to the dirt, was resting underneath.

  His curved body headed to the door while his bony fingers were getting tangled in the door handle, which creaked like hell when he opened it. He didn’t have a key. The sun targeted directly to his wrinkly eyes and he blinked several times before seeing dozens of dark dots floating everywhere.

  Before leaving, that same curved, almost decrepit body had been seen by Andrew in a couple of visions; moving behind a window. He had seen that with his Remote Vision. First thing in the morning, he just glued Ava Cox’s picture.

  A frog opened its mouth at the same time as it opened its bulging eyes and it started to croak. The sound is emitted by some airbags called vocal sacs that inflate during the amplification of the sound; a total subtleness. The male frog can have one or two vocal sacs under its throat or in both corners of its mouth. This frog was a male because it wouldn’t stop croaking and Tom let go an expletive. A spit with green phlegm invaded the frog’s territory.

  He moved forward under the heat of that fulminating sun dragging his military boots on the bridge’s planks that squeaked under his feet. The entire bridge danced as if suddenly it were foundering. With the fishing rod on his shoulder and the green hat, actually, a green cap turned backward with the peak looking at his back, he moved forward while the fishhook bit his ass. He walked several feet chewing tobacco and spat two more times before sitting down on the edge of the bridge. He crossed his puny legs and that fishhook stabbed his ass. He let go an expletive and removed the blessed fishhook from his ass without even blinking.

  He then rolled up the sleeves of his military green shirt and showed a pair of forearms. His skin, dark and dry as a lizard. The sun gently burned it and Tom complained about it. His eyes were still sharp despite his age and were set on the water; in those tiny waves that indicated that down there, there were fish.

  He threw the fishhook in an arch that challenged his shoulder and head. All of a sudden, he remembered that there was no bait in it. He complained again while he chewed that sour black tobacco and spat it into the water. A tar-like stain floated on the water and it was suddenly devoured by dozens of mouths of tiny fish.

  It was then when he saw her.

  His watch, which showed no luster due to the years he had had it, marked two and a half.

  14

  Andrew remained in the most complete silence, between the shadows of his office and the fun sun rays that managed to get through the louver. The light dizziness was now history. Now, from the chair that he occupied again, he kept looking at that fucking picture. Now that he had analyzed the information he had received some minutes back, he could remember that the missing woman had a Ford SUV and that it was white. The vehicle never appeared but Andrew had just seen it and it was far away from his office.

  Farther away from Ava Cox.

  He had seen her too.

  15

  “What the hell is that?” Tom’s voice sound torn. He was allergic to pollen and his larynx was in no condition to put up with it. He didn’t complain about the pain that caused him to swallow the thick saliva. He felt the urge to freshen up with a good beer even though he hadn’t eaten yet.

  He saw her from afar and put his bony hand on his forehead as a peak cap. As if doing so would let him se
e farther and plainly. It was an instinctive and absurd action that all the humans did. But she was there.

  On the shore.

  The blue color that seemed to glow under the disturbingly perfect sun caught his attention. It was golden with white stains; blinding. But the blue was upsetting.

  Querulously, he got up with some kind of a pain in his bones. The fishhook suddenly submerged in the water. A fish had taken the bait, but that went unnoticed for him at that time. His eyes were set on the shore.

  He kept on walking with his heavy boots and the crunching sound of the planks in time with the splashing of the water. The bridge was only 9.84 rickety feet away from the shore, uneasy as an old stain.

  He kept chewing tobacco and spitting as he got closer to the shore. After getting there, he turned around and walked on the sand that kissed the lake shore. As he got closer to the discovery, his bushy eyebrows, looking like tree branches covered in snow, rose up under his sweaty forehead.

  He put his hand on his forehead again and he saw something.

  A grebe flew right by him waving his wings as if hustling. After this, silence. His eyes were getting wider every time. Those eyes that had seen so many abominations. It was different this time, after the calm of the past years, he hadn’t seen anything like this.

  The silhouette was now a body floating on the water, except for the head that rested on the sand as if this were a pillow. Tangled in her hair, there were dozens of flowers. However, he found more flowers on the body of what looked like a woman. Flowers as if someone had said their last goodbye in her funeral. Vivid colors that wrote poetry on her body and her face.

  Tom’s boot stepped on one of those flowers: orchids, daisies, roses, tulips, chrysanthemum, buttercups, rhododendrons, violets, or even gerbera daisies. Coniferous trees, balsam firs, tsuga or spruce seemed to walk towards the shore. Really beautiful colors for a beautiful woman.

  “Oh my God!” Tom exclaimed to the wind and his heartbeat accelerated when he saw his nipple exposed.

  16

  He looked at her again and the fluctuating headache came back like a hammer blow. His gifts were lately giving him more serious headaches than any other thing. Andrew pursed his lips as if in pain.

  Now, he had seen again, after several times, Ava Cox’s body covered in multicolor flowers and he could see himself staring at her. In the middle of this spontaneous vision, he heard a whistle in his ears and he found dozens of combinations of smells in the closed air of his office.

  Sometimes it was hard for him to determine whether it was a precognition or a Remote Vision, but in this case, he was certain of what he was seeing: it was a precognition. All his senses were awake, and he had seen the image as if projected on those photographs, with a certain clarity.

  He was bothered, though, by those strong headaches that repeated in an unusual way lately. In fact, it bothered him. As soon as he had seen that glorious picture that lasted since he had woken up, it vanished from his eyes, from his mind, and from his senses. It was all silent and nearly dark now.

  However, Andrew knew what was going to happen.

  17

  He was staring at her for a while with his wrinkly eyes darkened by the passing of time. He kept chewing tobacco as calmly as if he were seeing a frog croak. The same that he was screwing up with back in the bridge. The sun was traveling through her body and the water, crystal clear and still, shone like a million diamonds. The woman in blue hair widespread like a carpet on the weed and flowers looked like resting.

  “What the fuck? What crazy man could have possibly thought of this?” Tom was speaking alone, just like he always did. To discover that woman was the least of it. What caught his attention the most, was the way he had found her.

  He knew she was dead. In Vietnam, he had seen many dead men, women, old people and children and he knew when one of them pretended to be dead. Then, his finger didn’t shake when pressing the trigger. Anyone could be the enemy in that hell. Even your sergeant.

  However, now he wasn’t in Vietnam, he was in a peaceful lake plated with gold by the sun rays and in front of a beauty nearly covered in flowers. He would have said buried as if those flowers had grown from her body’s skin, but they were not flowers per se, they were their petals.

  He cleared his throat with thick and blackish saliva and spit on some buttercups. Dozens of dark pellets splashed the floor darkening the beautiful colors. She didn’t move.

  She was dead, without a doubt.

  Tom bent over complaining a bit, raising his eyebrows as that nipple grew bigger and those closed eyes shone because of something that couldn’t be defined. He didn’t understand anything about facial make-up. His skin was dry and with a sun-toasted color. He only had just seen the water a few times since he lived his life dedicated to war and overcoming it. That woman’s face, her skin, and eyebrows shone like glitter. She wasn’t whitish, and he recognized very well a dead body that got paler after expiring and would progressively become purple within a few hours.

  Squatting and feeling how his knees were complaining by making some cracking sounds, he extended his hand towards the face of that woman. No voice warned him “don’t touch her, you could leave fingerprints” and that’s why the end of his right-hand fingers brushed the thin skin that looked as if it were still warm. Tom looked at those pressed powders that she had on her face, the lipstick covering her lips and her eyelids with eye shadow and he thought she was beautiful. His curiosity made him wonder about the color of her eyes and his fingers tried to open one of them.

  But he couldn’t.

  The eyelid was stuck, her eyelashes were tangled with mascara. They were thick. Tom tried again to open the eyelid by pushing it upwards with his fingertip, but he discovered something.

  Those eyes were glued like when someone presses his lips in an attempt to harm himself. Some crazy man, someone worse than him, had glued her eyes. He looked for a staple, but he didn’t see it. He then thought he had used glue to keep them closed.

  The tobacco ball traveled from one cheek to the other and he spat another phlegm, this time to the water. It was as if he had thrown a stone that generated waves on the surface.

  Now, his fingers separated a rhododendron petal that was on a side of the exposed nipple to see her chest. The sadist Tom would have removed all the petals that covered her pussy, only to see it. He hadn’t seen one in the last thirty years.

  He didn’t smile, he just felt a kind of desire that wasn’t sexual. After all, it was a corpse, he thought. In a way, he had thought eloquently for once. Yes, sometimes he thought rationally. He removed his fingers from that woman.

  And he got up without taking the eyes off of her and then something happened.

  18

  “I have real reasons to ask you something,” Andrew said with his eyes on his ear. The minute needle heavily marked downwards again. It was half past three and the sun was right under his house, bombing it with ultraviolet rays and turning that office into an oven. No, it wasn’t a two-story house. Funny, but it only had a basement and the main ground floor. The basement was a forgotten place for him.

  Landon had a new toothpick between his teeth and that day everything looked as if repeating over and over. His whitish eyes looked at the ceiling in search of some strange shade, but he didn’t see anything. Between his right-hand fingers, a black pencil was dancing between his fingers.

  “You’ve called me twice already. What’s happening, Andrew? Do you have colitis?”

  That had been a misfortune.

  Andrew complained on the other side of the line.

  “Yes, of course, I have it. Right now, my ass is trapped in a hole in the toilet and I was thinking about you when the turd was coming out and the water splashed all over my ass. Does that description sound right?”

  Landon closed his lips pressing them strongly. His eyes fixed in a cold look that seemed to cross the phone line. He had stopped putting his eyes white and now they were set on the messy table.


  “Well, it’s just that...

  But Andrew had already hung up.

  A sharp and continuous sound was piercing the eardrum of the fanciest sheriff in Maine.

  19

  He took his hand to his pocket, but he only found his old Chevrolet truck keys, also known as Chevy for his strength and greatness. He had traveled with her through the entire United States during the last thirty years. No sooner had he returned from Vietnam, and after getting a pension from the State for two years due to a bullet that got in the right side of one of his vertebra, than he bought the red truck, a 1978 model.

  He got the keychain with several keys. Some of them, he didn’t remember what they were for as they jingled in the air with a particular metallic sound, while he remembered that he hadn’t had a cellphone for about a year. It had fallen to the ground and after sitting on his Chevy, he knew that he had run over it with at least one of the wheels. However, he had the ability to not remember things accordingly; in fact, he had another cellphone in a box, an old phone with buttons that he would find later. A complete contradiction, but now, he was thinking about only one thing. He couldn’t process two things at the same time.

  His lips draw grimace that didn’t completely become a smile and his eyes fixed in his cabin, tilting his head as if doing it on a complex and noisy gear. A baseball-sized ball appeared on one of his cheeks.

  Looking back on the keychain, he picked one of the rusty keys. His heart was beating slowly. He was neither upset nor thrilled after such discovery. He wasn’t scared. He wasn’t afraid of death and least of all, a dead body.

  He just found it curious.

  He knew where Sheriff Landon’s office was, and he had decided to go there to inform his discovery. Cold as ice and with nerves of steel, Tom headed to his truck that was hot by the sun of that afternoon, six feet away from the bridge. He didn’t hurry up to get closer to it even though he was pressing the contact key tightly between his thumb and index. He walked dragging his feet as if he were tired of walking in the woods.