Shade City

by Domino Finn

  I nodded grimly and wondered what an entire life in an institution like this would have been like.

  "Is she violent?" I asked.

  "No, no, not at all. She had a history of harming herself but that was decades ago. She is mostly just withdrawn and distrustful of reality. She needs to adhere to a strict routine every day simply to function. To tell you the truth, I have some worries about what a visit might do to her, but we need to consider the possible benefits as well. Friendship and warmth can be efficacious."

  I started to have second thoughts about my purpose here. It was awkward enough in Alexander's loft to meet a complete stranger with little reason. Here, with a sick, old woman, was I justified? I decided that employing tact was paramount.

  My escort unlocked a gate leading into a cafeteria area. The emptiness of the halls finally gave way to sparse groups of senior citizens. He walked me through another door to a smaller, more intimate, lounge area. Here, an ancient woman sat with her back turned to the few other occupants. She was staring out of the only window, enraptured by the gray sky. The orderly pulled up a chair.

  "Good afternoon, Cat." The woman made a faint noise, like a grunt, but remained still. "You have a visitor." The man motioned for me to sit and I did. "I'll be right next door," he said, "if you need me."

  Catriona was ninety-six years old. The wrinkles on her face spoke of much suffering. Her long hair was thin and ghostly white. Her head swayed back and forth ever so slightly on her neck. She looked to be a woman near death, worn out—but not in ill-health. Her eyes, their green-gray color, were a comforting mix of piercing and assuring, and they slowly looked me over.

  "Catriona," I started, unsure how to proceed.

  "Pure," she barked out. "Pure. No one calls me that." She jutted her head one way, and then the other, before facing me again.

  "I'd like to introduce myself. I'm a friend of the family."

  "We're no friends," she answered. "The wicked have no friends. The wicked are not pure." Her eyes narrowed. "Are you Finlay's little boy?"

  She was confused. Did she even know what horrors had befallen the rest of her family? I leaned forward to calm her.

  "Are you Finlay's boy?" she asked again, drawing back. "Are you cursed? You stay away from me!"

  "It's all right, Catriona" I said, sliding my seat backwards to reassure her. I looked around the room and saw a man sleeping in an old chair and another old woman glancing at me. She had an unsettling stare.

  "Cursed!" screamed the other woman.

  There were some whispers in the other room, then the administrator appeared and pulled her away. I took a breath and turned my head back to the man. He was now awake, silently watching me.

  "No," I said to Catriona, "I'm not Alexander." The old woman didn't panic or make any rash actions—she just stared at me distrustfully. I sat and smiled, trying to appear patient. Friendly. "I'm not Alexander."

  Catriona seemed content after a few moments and resumed her vigil of the sky. I thought she mumbled something but couldn't tell for sure. I checked the door again to see if I had caused any trouble. Everything was quiet. The man on the seat had his eyes closed again.

  "Is Alexander cursed, Catriona?"

  She answered without her gaze leaving the window. "My mother always said she would give me her pearls one day. When we found her body, they were missing. Years later, my brother gave them to his wife as a wedding present. She died giving birth to that boy. Those were my pearls."

  I sighed inwardly. She was rambling but wasn't exactly incoherent.

  Suddenly, I felt fingers on my shoulder. I spun around and saw a deathly thin black man standing behind me. His cheeks were sunken in and his eyes looked like large white globes suspended in the air.

  "Do you have a square?" he asked.

  I brushed his hand off my shoulder. "What?"

  The man sleeping on the chair woke up. "Who's smoking?"

  "No—" I uttered, watching him try to stand up. "Sit down," I instructed, then turned to the skinny man. "And you, leave me alone." He stepped away from me. "Get out of here."

  I waited until he left the room and the other man had closed his eyes again. Catriona hadn't reacted to any of it. When I turned to her, she was still admiring the sky.

  "We like cigarettes here," she said. "We trade them for pills."

  I spun my chair to face the entrance and took a deep breath. "What curse, Catriona?"

  "The wickedness," she answered, "in our family. We hurt people."

  "How?"

  "I'm not crazy," she insisted. "I'm not well. My thoughts get jumbled sometimes. But I know things. I've seen things."

  She had a conviction that made me believe.

  "What do you see?" I asked.

  Catriona moved her eyes to me again. "A familiar face."

  I scratched my head in frustration. "We've never met before," I said slowly, to make sure she understood.

  "I see an old watch," she said. "A vile thing."

  I jerked back. I usually managed to keep a cool head, but her insight was penetrating. I pulled the Hamilton from my pocket. "This watch?"

  "Yes. Why must you keep such an old thing?" The gaunt woman turned her head to the window once more. "I've left it all behind, don't you see, and I am alive."

  She was mad, jumping between bouts of fear and disinterest, but her mind was still intact. She seemed to have powerful memories, however disjointed. Through patience and roundabout conversation, I was determined to get what knowledge of her family I could.

  "Tell me about it," I said.

  * * *

  Catriona McAllister was the eldest of two siblings, already eight when her brother Finlay was born. She always said she was her parents' favorite and enjoyed a wonderful childhood with them.

  Her father, Fingal McAllister, was a very successful mortician. He had an array of funeral homes peppered across the booming city of early Los Angeles. As his business grew, so did the family's wealth, and they moved to bigger grounds. Their ranch estate was built on a hill, and little Catriona loved to play on the paths that wound through the trees and opened into dazzling views.

  As Catriona got older, her father became more of a stranger to her. Fingal always paraded around clutching a pocket watch and talking to himself. He ignored his family completely except when he asked Catriona a lot of strange questions. He put a lot of pressure on her to be the obedient daughter, especially when her little brother was born.

  That's when she started sleepwalking. Catriona would suddenly find herself in the middle of the yard, or in the study looking at pictures. One time, she found herself all alone in the nearby cemetery. Her dad yelled at her. Her mom cried for her. Everything was changing, and she didn't understand why.

  One day, her mother went missing. After the police were called, they found the woman at the bottom of a steep expanse of tangled brush. Fingal said she had left the bedroom that night and never returned. Her death, people said, was caused by a misstep during a midnight walk. Without her around, Fingal added more staff to the house, and then everybody became a stranger.

  Catriona tried to shut everything out. She tried to be alone. But she kept finding herself acting out. Sometimes she was the happiest child imaginable. Other times she wondered what it would feel like to jump from the hill. She started daydreaming, and hearing things, and sometimes she pretended she was somebody else so she wouldn't have to deal with her problems.

  As much as she began to despise her life and her father, Catriona loved her baby brother, Finlay. She had deep feelings about raising him right and took too much of his upbringing upon herself. She always preached about the importance of family to him. In the times when she felt most normal, they shared many secrets.

  But there was another side to Catriona. Her name meant "pure" but she was anything but. She felt evil inside. Twisted. Sometimes she hid from her brother for fear that she would hurt him. She began to speak of a curse, and her father struggled mightily with her episodes.

/>   Fingal McAllister was a different man after the years passed. His business became more urgent and he surrounded himself with scary characters. He offloaded his work to others and seemed to take less pride in the craft. He preferred to read or study in confinement, always talking to himself. In his late life, he was increasingly paranoid and isolated himself even more.

  Catriona blamed herself. She suffered a quiet breakdown and became dependent on others to function. Although she was an adult when her father died, she had already undergone many procedures and taken many drugs to try to ease herself of the creeping fears. Her condition led others to believe she was unable to process that Fingal was dead, but she knew. She was secretly happy about it.

  In some ways, it was fitting that Fingal had stripped his children of all rights to their inheritance. His secret business dealings took priority over love, and she cared little for anything that came from the man.

  What absolutely crushed her, however, was that her brother stopped taking care of her. Finlay struggled to support himself and saw her as a burden. He associated with a bad crowd and eventually went to prison.

  Catriona was permanently put under observation. She tried to kill herself several times. Slowly, she abandoned those inclinations. She found the will to get out of bed. She found comfort in imagining what the next day would bring. She learned how to survive.

  Time passed. People lived, families sprouted, elders passed on, and still, Catriona persevered. She was free from her family and her horror. In Bakersfield, of all places.

  * * *

  Her story was muddled with wild observations and horrid expositions of her treatment. She focused on inane memories and glossed over key events. Eventually, however, I thought I had a thorough understanding of her life.

  I removed my palm from Catriona's skeletal hand. I was sitting close to her now. Any fears she had of me had long since dissipated. The woman seemed to have inklings of the Dead Side and shades but held little true understanding. She wasn't taken now, but in all likelihood, she'd had brushes with ghosts in her difficult past.

  "You are strong," said Catriona, showing a mouth devoid of many teeth. "I can see that much. But do you know what makes that so?"

  I thought about her question. The obvious answer was Violet. She had given me the insight to do what I did. She had instructed me. But even before I'd found her, back in Miami, I had the dreams. Violet had given me the knowledge. But did she give me the strength?

  "Does it matter?" I asked, brushing off her point.

  "It does. Even if you don't realize it, it does."

  I looked down at the pocket watch and thought about Aster, clutching her father's possession. I thought about the violence she'd seen and wondered how far all of this had gone, and for what?

  "I don't know if you know what happened to your brother's son," I started.

  "Killed," she said. "That feisty wife of his went on a rampage."

  I was surprised she had heard that much. The woman spoke of it with such a lack of remorse that it threw me. "Alexander didn't die," I corrected. "He's awake, and I think he's in trouble." I drilled into her eyes and saw a recognition there. "You said he was cursed. What did you mean by that? What's after him?"

  The woman contemplated me severely. Her eyes shifted to a coldness I hadn't seen yet, and she laughed. It was a labored display but she enjoyed it. When she had enough, she leaned forward in her chair.

  "They said I was wicked," she whispered in a scolding tone. "I heard the same about Livia. But that's not the truth. Livia did what I couldn't do. She did what I should have done!" I pulled away from the woman but she grabbed me with a hellish grip.

  "Catriona," I said, "she killed a poor little girl."

  "She saved the girl from my life," she insisted. "Don't you see, young man? Don't you understand what the curse is? Are you prepared to face the evil?"

  I gritted my teeth and sat firm against her spitting voice. She was just an old lady.

  "The women of the family were poor souls. They were always the victims, daughter and mother alike. It was my father Fingal who murdered my mother. It was he who spurned us by destroying our inheritance. My brother Finlay was a criminal yet my sentence was far worse. And Livia, she wasn't an evil woman. She was troubled, but she killed her girl to save her from Alexander. She tried to finish him off to end the tyranny of the men!"

  I was affixed to my chair throughout her diatribe. Catriona was a lunatic, broken from years of institutionalization and tragedy, but her madness was not without merit. Of all people, I knew that well. What if what she said was true?

  "Alexander's the evil?"

  The old woman released me and leaned back in her chair. "Now you see," she said, a sense of fulfillment returning to her.

  I had always assumed that Livia was the one that was taken. That she had slowly degenerated until she turned on her family. But... what if...

  I stood up in an instant, knocking the plastic chair backwards. "He was fine when I saw him," I insisted. "Normal."

  Catriona smiled. "The McAllisters are many things, young man, but never normal. The world will be a better place when we retire from it."

  I shuddered at her words. "I'll get to the bottom of it."

  "The bottom is a scary place. I have been there many times." Catriona shook her head. "I fear your visit is a sign that I might soon be there again." The woman lowered her gaze to the pocket watch in my hand. "It's been so many years..."

  "No, Catriona." I knelt down and put my hand in hers. "You'll be fine." I left the pack of sage cigarettes in her palm and patted her on the back. "You'll be fine."

  * * *

  The walk back to the car was not a pleasant one. It had started drizzling, which only happens a few times a year in LA. Everybody in the city panics at the first sign of water. Nobody knows how to deal with it. Without exaggeration, I would likely see at least two accidents on the highway on the drive back.

  My mood may have mirrored the weather, but it wasn't caused by it. Violet had been lying to me. I finally uncovered enough of her family history to understand what had gone wrong in her life. For some reason, she'd refused to tell me herself.

  It wasn't until we were well on our way that I broke the silence.

  "You should have said something."

  I clicked the wiper lever to trigger a single manual swipe. The rain was slow enough that even the lowest intermittent setting was too often, and I hated the sound of the rubber blades squeaking against a dry windshield.

  He's my father.

  I sighed. "I know it must have been very tough for you, Violet. Just thinking about what must have been going through your head as your mother bashed open the closet door..."

  I stopped talking. It was coming out wrong. I wanted to show her that I understood—that I was trying to understand—but recalling vivid imagery wasn't going to help things.

  She began crying.

  It's all my fault. I drove Livia crazy with my behavior.

  "Don't say that. She attacked your father first. She saw what was in him."

  It's too hard. There's too much death.

  I just nodded. She was overwhelmed. I couldn't blame her. Catriona's testimony was tragic and heartfelt. It was a firsthand account of why I sacrificed my personal life to do what I did. What we did. Even if I had never thought about it like that before.

  "It's okay, Violet. But you should have told me." I tried to sound as comforting as I could while also being instructive. The poor girl had probably never been taught right from wrong. "Livia wasn't taken. It was your father. She tried to kill all of you to keep you from the shade."

  What do you want me to say? That my father's a bad man?

  "I just need to know that you understand."

  I get it, Dante. Don't you see that I'm alone by choice? I was never lost down here. I've been doing my best to stay away from him.

  The patter of the raindrops on the glass picked up in intensity. I couldn't imagine what the girl thought of hers
elf. Was she a victim, abandoned by her loved ones? Was she a runaway, striking out on her own? And where did that leave me? Was she afraid that I would leave her too?

  "You and me, we should trust each other."

  Violet didn't answer. We drove in silence and the traffic picked up. I was back in Los Angeles County, nearing the city. Most of the end-of-day congestion was headed north, but the weather was slowing the inbound lanes as well. I was just going to need to wait this out.

  One day, Violet would come around.

  Dream

  It was day yet it was dark. The world a lucid blur. I was walking but, at the same time, floating. Everywhere, the softness of the world surrounded and prevented me from affixing a grip.

  I was alone on the streets of Los Angeles again. Stone behemoths lined up like soldiers at attention, and I walked between their ranks as if I were a one-man parade. But there was no frivolity here; no applause or recognition would follow. These streets were mine alone, and I passed through the desolation without fanfare.

  I knew where I was headed. There was only one place—one person—that I cared about saving. The muffled nothingness attempted to stifle me so I pressed harder against the ether and made my way to Bunker Hill.

  Grand Avenue. I stood across the street from the St. Angelo Hotel, its arched tower pointed at the black above. The entire building almost appeared to shift on its sloped foundation.

  The play of the dream was especially strong now. It was resilient as I was tenacious, and the world blended between sharp and soft, black and white. It was a struggle—there was no one here to help me this time—but somewhere in the gray I caught a handhold and forced my will upon this hell.

  In an instant, as if it had been effortless, the Dead Side obeyed. It came into focus. Sounds separated from each other. Shadows solidified.

  And there I was, standing in front of the hotel with a clear path up the steps and inside. Smiling, I wasted no time.

  * * *

  Violet was standing on the marble tile, her foot sliding in place on its polished surface. The girl's head hung down as she stared at the idle action. She was distraught. She didn't want to see me. She had probably thought that I didn't want to see her. But I was here.