by John Levitt
As I gazed out over the water, the scene began to lose focus, like a film dissolve. Taking its place, growing more substantial every second, a blue water tower squatted beneath gray skies and green trees swayed in the wind. I was back on a hill in San Francisco. Eli ran toward me and enveloped me in a smothering hug. Victor was leaning against a tree, looking pale, holding his head. When Eli finally let go and stepped back, I shivered in the chill wind. Victor nodded approvingly as I stood there, naked and cold, hair matted and covered in mud and slime, still bleeding from a hole in my neck and the rat bites that stippled my legs.
“Well, okay then,” he said, giving me the ghost of a smile. “Just so long as you didn’t have any trouble.”
Eighteen
It’s been almost four months since I came back, muddy yet triumphant. But no victory comes without cost, and a malaise has sunk in, gnawing at my heart and infecting my life. Everything is gray. Even music, once my saving grace, fails to please.
Each night, I’m visited by nightmares. Sometimes, it’s Christoph who gets the upper hand and holds me down under the muddy water with the sky and the sweet precious air just inches out of reach. Louie sits on a grass hummock, tail wrapped neatly around his feet, sedately watching. Mostly though it’s an endless replay: Christoph struggling under my merciless hands, the salt smell of rotting vegetation, me squeezing harder and harder, until I wake up sweating with hands clenched tightly in tangled sheets.
Worse still are the ones of Sherwood. I never dream of that final moment as she held out an imploring hand. Instead, we’re together again, sitting at a café, happy, laughing, relieved that her death was only a dream, or just some terrible misunderstanding. Then I wake, and for a moment that feeling of massive relief bleeds over into my waking self. A split second later, I realize it was no dream at all. She really is dead. And each time I relive the sorrow and loss all over again.
Eli dropped by a couple of times but didn’t try to lift my mood. He just talked about everyday things, giving me time to pull myself out of my funk in my own way. Grief over Sherwood was a given, but surprisingly I was disturbed by Christoph’s death as well. I discovered that killing another human being with your bare hands, even one who so richly deserved it, will eat at you. Eli listened gravely, then simply said, “I’d be worried about you if it didn’t.”
We spent some time discussing the crystalline creatures I had seen in the makeshift tunnel lab. The day after my duel with Christoph, Eli and Victor had traveled to Point Bonita looking for answers, but there was nothing left there. Some magical residue where the door in the tunnel had been, but that was it.
“How do you suppose Christoph hooked up with those things in the first place?” I asked him.
“I don’t know that he did,” he said. “Christoph wasn’t much of a practitioner, when you come right down to it. He did manage to acquire an impressive amount of power, but like a second-rate athlete pumped up on steroids, when it came to crunch time he didn’t quite know what to do with it all.”
“Lucky for me.”
Eli smiled. “Not all luck, I suspect. Anyway, I think maybe he didn’t find them—I think maybe he created them in some way, as helpers. He certainly wouldn’t have wanted another practitioner to know what he was up to.”
“I don’t believe it. He wasn’t that good.”
“No, but if they weren’t truly alive, if they were just constructs, he could have pulled it off with nothing but raw power. I just hope they don’t resurface one of these days.”
We left it at that. I’m ashamed to say I didn’t much care. As long as they were gone, that was fine with me. Left alone is well enough.
Things with Campbell were not going well. I hadn’t spoken much to her about the fight with Christoph, but I know she got the entire story in detail from the ever helpful Victor. She knew all the things Christoph had done. She had seen poor Moxie firsthand. She knew full well Christoph had left me no choice. She didn’t blame me in any way for doing what clearly had to be done and was never anything but supportive.
But still, she looked at me differently. There was a hesitancy in her skin whenever I touched her. No matter what intellect has to say, emotions often speak a different story. Campbell was a healer. I was a killer. Of course, her feelings about it weren’t that simple; feelings never are. Maybe if we’d had a longer history together I could have talked to her about it, but we didn’t. I’ve never been good at opening up to women anyway.
Without really meaning to, we started seeing less of each other. The reasons weren’t clear. Maybe my guilt about Sherwood’s death had something to do with it. Maybe what I’d done to Christoph had changed me more than I wanted to admit. Or maybe it was just that I wasn’t the easiest person to be around these days.
Even Lou, usually so constant, was spending more time away from me. Other than that, he went about life as if nothing had ever happened. Just like a real dog, he has the enviable ability to live completely in the present. I wasn’t that lucky—every time he was gone longer than expected, I worried. I’m not sure if I was worried something else would happen to him or if I still feared that one day he’d simply up and leave. But if he left, he left. It’s not like I owned him.
I was still playing gigs, but only because I had to. Victor would have lent me enough money to tide me over, but I’d live out of my van before I put myself in debt to him.
Then, slowly, almost imperceptibly, my mood started to lift. The weather improved; the winter rains finally ended and the summer fog hadn’t yet started. It even seemed possible I might someday resume at least the semblance of a life.
On a whim, I decided to drive up to see Campbell. Maybe it was time to straighten things out, for better or worse. A surprise visit to a quasi-girlfriend is seldom the most brilliant of ideas, especially when there’s been some relationship trouble. You’re liable to find more than you’d bargained for. But occasionally, it’s not such a bad idea. At least you find out where you stand.
The trip up to Soda Springs was beautiful, a far cry from the first time I had driven there. Lou stuck his head out the open window despite the chill mountain air of early April. A layer of snow still covered the ground as we neared the summit, but the sky was a sparkling blue and random patches of brown and green peeked out from under slowly melting snowbanks. It was midafternoon before I pulled up the driveway leading to her cabin and saw her Land Cruiser sitting in the driveway. That was a relief—I would have felt foolish if I’d driven all the way up there only to find she was out for the day.
When I knocked on the front door, it opened almost immediately, as if Campbell had been expecting me. Or someone. The welcoming smile never left her face, but it slowly morphed into something subtly different—a fondness mixed with sad resignation. Well, I’d wanted an honest reaction. That’s when I finally understood that it was beyond repair. I can’t say I was surprised.
We talked for a while over tea, mostly about inconsequential things. Lou curled up in her lap, oblivious. She poked him gently in the ribs.
“He’s gained a pound or two,” she said.
I looked at him with a critical eye. It was true, but it had happened so gradually that I hadn’t noticed.
“Not enough exercise. No more monsters to fight.”
“Thank God.”
“You mean Goddess, don’t you?”
The joke fell flat. It always had. I smiled ruefully and she smiled back, a bit sadly.
“So,” she said.
“So,” I agreed. We both drank our tea.
Nothing more explicit was ever said; there were no sad good-byes or teary accusations. I think both of us still hung on to a vague “maybe someday” hope, but we knew that for now it was over.
On the way back to the city, Lou curled up on the passenger seat and slept, one paw over his muzzle. By the time I reached the Bay Bridge, it was full dark and the buildings along the San Francisco skyline glowed brightly, etched with glittering lines of twinkling light.
I felt sad, naturally, but not with that sick feeling of devastation I had feared. I still had my music. I still had my friends. I had the city. I glanced down at the small figure blithely dreaming away on the front seat. Campbell might be gone, but I still had Lou. Of course, he’s just a dog. Sort of.
About the Author
John Levitt grew up in New York City. After a stint at the University of Chicago, he traveled around the country and ended up running light shows for bands in San Francisco. Eventually, he moved to the Wasatch Mountains and worked at a ski lodge in Alta, Utah. After a number of years as a ski bum, he joined the Salt Lake City Police Department, where for seven years he worked as a patrol officer and later as an investigator. His experiences on the job formed the background for two mystery novels, Carnivores and Ten of Swords. For the last few years, he has split his time between Alta, where he helps manage the Alta Lodge, and San Francisco. When he’s not working or writing, he plays guitar with the SF rock band the Procrastinistas and also plays the occasional jazz gig. He owns one cat and no dogs, although his girlfriend has three.
He is currently at work on the sequel to Dog Days.
