Eyes that do not Open

by Claudio Hernández

  The precinct was in the middle of Castle Lake Hill and it was ten minutes away from him. He didn’t make it so fast.

  20

  The sicko was still lying on the floor, copiously sweating, breathing more easily now. A whistle that escaped his throat could tell he had been panting and crying for over an hour, under the red plague that those painted light bulbs propagated. The sun couldn’t get in that room through any hole and somewhere, behind the wall, a rat squeaked as a trap caught it. That furtive squeak got mixed with the spongy banging on the wall along with the scratching that could be vaguely heard at the same time that his yells climbed up through those cushioned walls.

  His eyes were wet and his eyelashes with mascara. The color of his eyes could not be discerned under the red veil, but they were pretty. He tilted his head until his cheek was pressed against the rough cement floor and paid attention to all the noises in the room.

  He waited a few more minutes, with his arms lying lifeless on the sides of his body.

  21

  The ’78 Chevrolet double parked in front of the precinct sputtering like a firecracker, spitting blue smoke through its shortened and rusty exhaust. The thick and dense cloud got tangled with the air as if a fire had been propagated and the sunlight devoured it until it disappeared.

  The engine grumbled and muted after giving the last spasm that sounded like scrap metal. Tom twisted the contact key and removed it as it squeaked. The driver’s seat protested. A minute later, the door made some noise as it opened and just a few seconds later a metallic and dry sound indicated that Tom’s driving was over as his feet were on the asphalt.

  He didn’t leave the indicators on.

  Tom had thought about it, but he decided it was better not to waste, that’s the word he always used, the little battery he had left. There was kind of a heavy box that exuded an earthy-like foam from its platforms and smelled something, he couldn’t relate the smell, though.

  What, in fact, intoxicated his lungs was a burned rubber-like smell. He then remembered that it had been almost ten years since he hadn’t changed the tires. They looked like balls since they were so plain. If there had ever been a pattern drawn in those tires, it was history now.

  He passed by his Chevy dragging his feet and walked between two cars that were properly parked by the sidewalk. The sun delimited the space between his Chevy and the other vehicles and he was now standing out of the sun. With his body curved and spitting, Tom headed to the automatic precinct’s door. Above it, there were some huge letters which he didn’t bother to read.

  With wrinkly eyes and with his sweaty forehead, as a mechanic that comes from underneath a car, he stood by the sliding door. He was so thin that the sensor hadn’t detected him, and the door remained still until his nose practically touched the crystal-clear glass.

  Tom threw an expletive.

  The air inside was as suffocating as outside. The only difference is that the sun didn’t get anywhere in the precinct. The lights, pristine, were stapled to the white ceiling, as white as snow. There was some bustling by the tables on the right where some soulless, ordinary criminals were talking with a challenging face. The agents, all of them, seemed to be bad-tempered, including the sheriff’s assistant: Kevin Smith. He was writing on a paper on his desk, like a kid on his school desk: frowning and with his eyes fixed on the pen.

  “I want to file a claim,” Tom said, coughing.

  It had been so fortuitous that Kevin seemed as if he were jumping on his cushy chair. Tom hadn’t even smiled.

  “What?”

  “You’ve heard me!”

  “If this is about your dog, this is not the right place,” Kevin explained looking back at the paper he was writing.

  “I want to see that little faggot you call ‘sheriff’!” His voice was so loud that everyone else seemed to be quiet for a moment.

  A black woman, dressed in a red short skirt, as red as that poor dead bastard’s lips, winked at the same as she raised her thumb. Tom stretched his lips attempting to smile, but he didn’t do so.

  The ball in his mouth moved from one cheek to the other. On his way to the precinct, he had prepared a good dose of tobacco to chew idly and slowly and to spit it every two minutes.

  “You know I can arrest you for altering the law and order and for insulting, don’t you?” Kevin explained rising his head. Tom looked as if about to burst out laughing, but he was in no mood.

  “Can you, now? Well, arrest me, then.”

  Kevin, as cute as he was, moved his hand with which he held his pen and scratched his forehead with the pen cap.

  “Well, I think I’ll do it...”

  “What’s happening?” a hoarse voice interrupted. It was Landon wearing his badge on his chest.

  His hand was swinging through the air.

  Tom, with a visible yellow stain on his trousers, started heading towards the sheriff, who was leaning on the glass door. He observed he had his sunglasses on. He frowned in a serious face. He really disliked that kind of guys and even more so if they were the authority.

  He helped himself and started talking about something else when he was finally crossing the doorway. The murmur and bustling got left behind as he slammed the door which chimed and looked as if the crystal were tumbling down.

  Landon was taking a seat when he glanced with a grim drawn in his lips. Behind those dark shades, there was an unmistakable look: stupid.

  “What’s happening, good man?” Landon’s voice was strained. However, he was used to modulating his voice when he was in front of guys as miserable as Tom because he knew that if they didn’t listen to him, they could make a lot of trouble. He knew him well enough to think of him that way. However, he barely knew him. Almost nothing.

  “I want to report something,” Tom replied as he sat in the chair that creaked as soon as he dragged it through the floor. Its rubber pads were worn out.

  “Have some kids bothered you?”

  “No. Not even the fucking Vietnamese.” Tom’s eyes had become those of a lunatic as he stared at Landon. “I’ve discovered something.”

  Landon took off his sunglasses.

  “What have you discovered?” And while he was asking he saw that he had a cap instead of a fisherman’s hat, just what he was trying to tell Andrew that same morning. He thought about life’s coincidences.

  If there’s something weird...

  Tom sprawled in his chair. His dark eyes and his cracked eyelids marked an entire life of suffering and disturbance all together. Landon stared at him as he waited for an answer.

  “I’ve found the body of a dead woman,” Tom explained without altering a sing word. He spoke in a whiny way while he chewed his tobacco and the ball entangled with the sound of his words.

  Landon was getting nervous.

  But something else happened.

  Landon opened his eyes wider and his fingers tapped the table over and over again.

  Was it the first time that someone had told him something like that?

  No, without a doubt.

  He thought about Andrew without knowing why.

  “Where have you found her?” Landon asked with a concerned voice. He knew something odd was about to happen.

  Tom at him in the eye with his brow up high.

  “Where do you think I have found her?”

  Landon seemed to shrug.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Right next to my cabin, for fuck’s sake,” Tom said. He felt the urge to spit on the floor. His mouth was filling with blackish saliva.

  “And where is your cabin supposed to be located?” Landon was testing him, and he didn’t know why.

  “In your house’s backyard,” Tom replied.

  “I don’t have a backyard.”

  “You know perfectly well where I live. Don’t fool me around.” Tom scolded. He was about to spit on the floor when suddenly Landon rose his hand.

  “Yes, I remember you, now. The guy by the lake.”

  “What?�
�

  “Do me a favor and spit in the glass.” Landon was holding in his hand a paper glass with something dark in it; it was coffee.

  Tom spread his arm and grabbed the glass. After that, he spat blackish phlegm that made a weird noise in the almost empty glass.

  “Now you remember me, don’t you? Of the six lakes that are here, you hit the right one.”

  “All of them have cabins, I wouldn’t know.”

  “The only cabin is mine.” Tom was obsessed about that. A while back he had said the same thing, even though there was a cabin by each lake, he refused to admit it.

  A bit later, Tom put the glass with the spit in it on the table. Silence ruled for almost a minute. It was spooky. Finally, Landon threw himself to the abyss.

  “In what condition is the body of the woman?” He had a pen dancing between his fingers, just like he had a toothpick between his teeth. Tom was still chewing tobacco and the sour smell filled the sheriff’s office. It stank.

  “She looks as if she’s sleeping...”

  “What exactly do you mean?” Landon interrupted leaving the pen on a pile of papers.

  Tom leered, willing to tell him something else but he refrained.

  “She wasn’t swollen or anything like that. She didn’t stink. It seemed as if she had one of those expensive fragrances as if she had just used it on her neck and face. She is covered in flowers. By the shore, with that fucking blue hair...”

  “Blue?” Landon interrupted again leaning forward. His eyes opened up like plates as if suddenly he had remembered or discovered something. A burning sensation took over his face and neck. A fire that came up after a pinch in his stomach because he thought he knew who it was.

  The blue hair gave her away.

  “Are you going to keep interrupting me all the time?” He spat again in the glass.

  Landon made a grimace in disgust.

  “No. What I will do is to get going. Let’s go see that woman.” Landon rose from his comfy chair as if being pushed by someone who was kicking his ass. The chair flew to the wall where it banged, making a snapping sound.

  “She has her eyes glued. You can’t open her eyes.” Tom explained and spat again, this time outside the glass.

  “What?”

  Landon froze.

  “Have you touched her?”

  Tom shrugged like a demountable skeleton as if his bones were falling after a soft blow.

  “And I’ve seen her nipple.”

  “I don’t believe this.” Landon was walking by the table while trying to put on his sunglasses. “That’s gross!”

  Old Tom smiled disdainfully, still sitting on his chair.

  22

  He had had a hunch and that’s why he was about to disconnect his phone and call the police precinct. When hadn’t he had hunches? He could see things that would happen in the immediate future and he had the gift of receiving information from objects and people that were far away from him. He could now be in two places at the same time. That was extremely bizarre. However, he had a few hunches and zero intuition.

  His tiny hand left the phone in its place with a clicking sound. He was still submerged in the dark with that fucking headache and his bladder was starting to hurt since he hadn’t peed ever since he sprang out of bed. At that age, to hold the urge to pee was not one of the best choices.

  His eyes that were used to the dark were wider than ever and even though the gloomy light bulb tried to enlighten those pictures, there were some details impossible to see at a first glance. And no, he didn’t wear glasses. His sight was okay but there were times when he had to look closely.

  He rolled with his chair on the linoleum floor and his heavy body made the wheels protest on the floor. He went back to the wall. His tiny hand started to shake. That was something that had never happened to him before. He sensed something that he had already seen that morning.

  The heavy minute needle marked quarter past five.

  It was the third time he had picked up the phone to call Landon. He didn’t call him, though.

  23

  “Come on guys! We have to leave!” Landon exclaimed at the same time as he ran through the open hallway, between two rows of desks with agents studying. While he taped as he walked, he put on his brown jacket. He had complained several times about it, saying that it was two sizes bigger and it made him look like a balloon.

  Kevin turned around as soon as he heard both his voice and the sound of the jacket’s zipper going up.

  “Sir, what’s happening?” Kevin’s voice sounded whimpering and high-pitched, like a broken whistle.

  Landon looked at him from over his shoulder.

  “A dead woman appeared. We have work to do.” Landon’s deep voice rose higher than Kevin’s. “Jacob, Luke, Henry, and Owen! I want all of you ready, guys! We have a field trip!”

  The mentioned agents left their chairs almost at the same time, puzzled. They had never seen their boss like that. It was as if he had drunk an entire jar of coffee in a single sip.

  “There always appear dead women. What got into you?” Kevin asked him with eyes wide open.

  “One with the blue hair!” Landon scolded as he walked fast, and a wave of air moved the papers on Kevin’s table.

  Tom’s steps could be barely heard, he was stuck to Landon’s ass and spat right next to Kevin. His eyes shone for the first time with a joking smile.

  “Motherfucker.” Kevin murmured as he got up from the chair grabbing his jacket.

  All the mentioned agents followed Landon’s steps and the remaining officers looked at them, stunned. A couple of drunkards were still humming an old Rock song while they were still staggering on their chairs. The hooker started to disdainfully smile. She was sitting, with all the insensitivity of the world, letting the events pass by and waiting for her turn to be questioned. In the meantime, she was showing her panties as she furtively opened her legs.

  Their shadows flew close to the floor while they were speeding away towards the exit. The fluorescent lights witnessed the stampede with their blind eyes. Outside, the sun that was setting, by the end of the afternoon, hitting the overheated patrols in perpendicular parking spaces parked in front of the precinct.

  “Damn, it’s cold this year,” Tom complained as he held the key between his fingers. The eternal sun licked his hand’s skin, dry as a lizard. “We still have four hours of light ahead of us.”

  The four agents bordered their two vehicles under the copious sun shining on their serious faces. Kevin, as usual, was Landon’s shadow. In a moment, the doors chimed as they closed one after the other. It was like a handful of marbles was rolling down the stairs.

  “Where to, Sir?” Henry Ford asked.

  “Just follow me!” Landon yelled with the sun shining on his dark sunglasses.

  Tom was the last one to leave, spitting smoke and shaking through the streets of Castle Lake Hill.

  Landon knew who that woman was.

  He knew, of course.

  24

  He was still on the floor, bathing with that red light: exciting and intriguing. He was waiting, thinking, with his eyes wide open while he heard them, and he seemed to know what was going on right then in the Lake Hill Lake.

  Once again, he wished that, again, his favorite song “Life in Mono” would rumble on the damaged speakers.

  25

  “He found her.” He whispered to Ava Cox’s picture. His right-hand fingers were on the smooth picture that showed a woman’s happy face with long hair that stood out from everybody else’s because it was blue. If there was something he remembered in this case, was her fucking blue hair

  Blue.

  Andrew saw the tips of his shoes almost touching her arm, and those flowers invading all his senses, invading everything until you felt as if everything was floating around you. But there was more: in the image, there were some agents hustling and looking at her with wiry faces. He also saw Tom staring at her boobs when a soft breeze blew some petals away as dry leave
s fly during fall.

  Andrew had just had a new vision, much wider than the one he had had that morning. He looked at the needles of the clock and saw that the minute needle was still, like a hangman, in the middle, pointing to the floor.

  It was twenty past five.

  He knew something appalling had started again.

  And that Parker Atkinson had taken it to the incinerator.

  Or... Maybe not.

  Suddenly, the cellphone in his pocket started ringing. It was hot, and he had taken the trench coat off. He had done an exception; he had taken his gray trench coat off. Hallelujah! He had to twist his hand to get the phone out. It was vibrating restlessly next to the keys. The howling explosive ringtone penetrated Andrew’s eardrums when he put it right in before his eyes. The incoming call was identified as “The Pansy”, it was the name that he had saved in his contact list; it was Landon.

  “What is it, Landon?” Truth be told, his voice sounded quavering. He was anxious, very not like him.

  “Old Fox, you were right.”

  “I knew you had to call me to piss me off this morning.”

  “Look who’s talking, let me guess... You were with the phone in your hand the entire morning. I bet my balls it has been that way.” Landon’s voice was mixing with the engine’s roar. Unfortunately, it had started moving more than usual when stepping on the accelerator.

  Andrew drew a cynical smile on the wall with notes.

  “I had it in my pocket, as usual. Come on, say whatever you have to say. I have a lot of work to do this morning.”

  “Ok! Grab your balls. They must be huge. How the hell do you know so many things?”

  Kevin’s stupid laugh could be heard in the copilot’s seat. Landon looked at him over the shoulder and at that moment the tires ran over a lizard that exploded like a bag of water. A small red stain was left behind, on the uninteresting asphalt. The poor lizards started to come out the quarries with their mouth open and their pink tongue exposed to the sun and no one would pay attention to them.

  “What things?”

  “I just remembered about that kid, around five years, maybe four ago, I can’t quite remember. No one knew where the hell he got lost and then you came along and put a finger on the map and there he was.”