Bloodeye

by Craig Saunders

Is he your shadow?

  The truth was, Keane didn’t know. Something within his shadow, a demon? A haunting? Maybe he’d never know. But he couldn’t let it out again. Wouldn’t.

  For her.

  She muttered something in her sleep, unintelligible yet curiously endearing, like a kid who laughs in her sleep.

  Keane pulled away from the main road onto a smaller road. Still tarmac, but potholed. The car jolted with each dip and bump, even though he’d dropped his speed below 20mph. He slowed even further as he turned from the road onto a shingle track through a canopy of trees. Some hung low enough to scrape the roof of the car, some weeds on the track below high enough to scratch at the undercarriage.

  It felt cooler already, from under the gaze of the sun. For an instant, coming into the sun again before a chained gate, it burned and the sudden switch from shade to sun made Keane’s head swim with bright, starry lights. He blinked it away, aware that he’d bitten his tongue.

  Nothing serious. Nothing he couldn’t handle.

  The gate didn’t present much of a challenge. The gate itself was sound, the chain thick. But the fence was rotten and down in places. He drove off the shingle and onto the bone-dry grass, over the fallen fence and back onto the shingle again. It would be maybe a degree cooler here, because of the slight elevation above sea level. Only a small range of hills, but enough.

  And he knew the way. He didn’t know why he knew the way, but it seemed hardwired into him. When he’d thought this through, planned it out after seeing the note (Tuesday, it ends) on the back of his own photograph, he’d known exactly where to go.

  He didn’t remember ever coming here…and yet here he was. Here they were.

  At the mouth of a cave in the side of a modest hill. Maybe a prehistoric mine of some kind, or just a natural formation. He wasn’t a geologist or historian, or even a spelunker. Just a photographer with a deep black shadow calling him back to the dark.

  Still Teresa slept. He longed, once more, as he had so often, to kiss her.

  But he didn’t. Instead, he switched off the engine and opened the door. The heat hit him like a blast and he was aware of blood in his mouth.

  Bit your tongue again, Keane, he thought. Careful now.

  He remembered packing his medication with the rest of the supplies for this trip.

  No. No you don’t, he thought. And he knew it was true, because he couldn’t remember packing half of the things he saw as he unloaded the trunk of the car. Rope, yes. That made sense. But the rest of it? Not so much, no. Not so much.

  Don’t remember, do you?

  His shade’s voice? His?

  He didn’t, but then, that’s what this trip was for, wasn’t it? To deal. To get his life back. To see his shadow in the grave, dead in the deep dark with no hope of return. To end this second life.

  Keane stood out in the sun for a second. This time, his face felt numb. But it wasn’t a stroke, but an aura. A precursor to the seizure he’d felt coming on, driving along with that bastard sun beating down into his eyes.

  You’re getting what you wanted, he thought, ferrying the last of the supplies to the darkness.

  Be careful, brother, said his shade. Tread light.

  “Fuck you,” said Keane, this time aloud.

  But he smiled as he picked his sleeping wife from the car and carried her (light…so light) into the cave.

  21

  What do you do when you’ve got one day to live? Jump from a plane? Skate naked in parliament? Piss on a police car, tell someone you love them, give all your money away, take your library books back, fuck your wife, fuck someone else’s wife, eat a thousand sausages, watch that one movie you’ve always wanted to see, invent a decent can opener, blow all your money you’ve got and all the money you haven’t got on a Ferrari, hide toy soldiers in your arse and go for an X-ray, pretend to be a lollipop man and help old people cross the road, fight a tiger, learn to juggle, dive from the high board at the swimming pool…?

  Just live? Be alive, and fuck everything else, all the shiny, showy, shit.

  That’s what Keane figured. It wasn’t about the last day, because it wasn’t his last day (maybe, Keane, maybe, for fuck’s sake) but hers. It wasn’t about celebrating or commemorating life, but about getting through it. Get through just one day, 24 hours. Do that, and live on. Live to fight another day.

  How?

  By the dark. By hiding from the light.

  “We’re here,” he said.

  Teresa opened her eyes…to nothing.

  22

  “Keane…I can’t…”

  “You’re not blind, baby. It’s dark.”

  “I can’t see you.”

  “Don’t panic, okay?”

  “I am panicking.”

  “It’s just for a little while, honey. Just a little while.”

  “Keane…what’s going on?”

  “I’ve…”

  Keane hadn’t really thought about what to tell her. He’d kind of figured that he’d just tell her the truth, but now, faced with that truth here in the darkest place he knew, he faltered. The words—the right words—just wouldn’t come. He listened to that internal voice trying out various scenarios, and nothing sounded right.

  He reached out and touched her, gentle. She was startled, but he hushed and whispered and held on.

  “Teresa…honestly, I’ve thought of so many ways to say what I need to…I just don’t know where to start. How to break in.”

  He heard her take a steady breath. As always, he cared for her physical needs, she for his mental needs.

  Was he mental?

  He didn’t know. Simple and honest and painful, as answers went.

  One way to find out. Turn a light on. Turn it on.

  No.

  Just get through this one day, and he’d know. He’d know for sure. He had to lay it bare for her. He owed her. She was his wife. He could trust her. Of course he could.

  “Keane? Talk to me. I’m scared.”

  “I’m sorry. I know. I don’t mean to scare you. But listen, there’s something going on, and we’re just…camping…okay? Just camping.”

  “In the pitch black? In a cave? Are we in a cave?”

  “Yes. We’re in a cave. And it’s got to be dark. Just for a little while. Then it’ll be okay. Trust me, please. Just…give it a little while. We’ll hold each other, rest…wait.”

  She fell quiet. Keane listened to the sound of her breathing. Every sound in the cave seemed amplified.

  Teresa was quiet for a long time. He wondered if she’d fallen asleep again, but eventually she spoke.

  “Hold me, then.”

  He couldn’t have loved her more. He knew she’d ask no more questions, just as he knew he’d have to tell her. Tell her everything.

  “Honey, listen…there’s something in me. Not me…don’t quite know how to say it without sounding like a lunatic. Might be a lunatic. I’m not sure.”

  That sounded a little more frightening than he’d hoped.

  “Fuck it. I’m just going to say it, all right? Don’t freak, that’s all I ask?”

  “Are we hiding?”

  “Yes. We’re hiding from the light.”

  “What?”

  He took a breath and told her the last thing he’d ever wished to tell anyone.

  “My shadow. There. Nuts, right?”

  He thought about forcing a laugh out, something, anything, to soften it, aware that here in the dark such thoughts had more power than out in the bright sunlight.

  “Keane…”

  “I know. I know.”

  “You…baby…you need to…you need to get…speak to someone…the doctor?”

  He knew she’d go with that, but he was a little disappointed, nonetheless.

  But really, what else could she have said?

  It was the only sane response, so he did his best to respond in kind.

  “Can we make a deal? If we stay here one day, here in the dark, no lights, I promise I’ll go to the do
ctor, with you. So I can’t weasel out of it. We’ll tell him, tell him everything, and I’ll even ask to see a psychiatrist. I promise, for you. Anything for you. But give me this? Please? I don’t want to beg, but I will. If I have to, I’ll beg.”

  Teresa went quiet again. He could almost hear her mind ticking over the sound of her breathing.

  “We’ll try it. For you.”

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “What are we going to do?”

  “Rest, I guess. Cuddle up, keep warm. Drink soup. But there’s another…condition…”

  “Don’t push it,” she said, and he almost did laugh, because that was so much like her.

  “Tie me up.”

  “You do need help.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe. But just to be safe. Safer.”

  23

  The cave was cold, out of the light, but Keane had planned on that. Between their body heat and the blankets he’d brought with them, they’d be warm enough.

  Despite the chill that seeped from the dirt beneath, Keane was comfortable enough. More than comfortable, he supposed. After the heat and the sun and the dry, still air, it was a relief. Like the winter, when it came. Keane liked the winter. Liked the dark skies and the early sunsets. The cold, even. He liked the dull and dead brightness of snow clouding the horizon, slantwise rain and biting hard winds.

  Thinking these things, longing for the winter, Keane drifted in and out of sleep for a time.

  Teresa snuggled against him. He couldn’t hold her but she could hold him. She held tight. Maybe she was afraid to let go. Maybe she was just cold. He could ask her, but he didn’t.

  They lay together, huddled, deep within the blankets and the darkness. The air smelled faintly of dirt and minerals. Musty, but clean and uncluttered unlike the city air with its pollution—cars and factories and artificial air, deodorant and perfumes on people walking beside you. Urine in car park lifts, dog shit on the pavement.

  Clean and uncluttered. Keane liked it. It reminded him of snow. He dreamed, jumped. Perhaps he dreamed of falling, and woke up, or perhaps he dreamed of snow. He didn’t know, but Teresa was there, still, when he woke. Holding him tighter than the ropes that bound his arms to his sides and his feet together.

  He slept, she slept. Sometimes they were together, sometimes they slept apart. When she fell asleep and he was awake, he lay in the dark and concentrated on listening to her breathe, feeling the soft rise and fall of her chest and her faintly tainted breath tickling his cheek, the odor of breakfast (how long ago?) and the soup they’d drunk (until it had gone cold, despite the thermos).

  A day unlike any other he’d ever spent.

  Once, when he’d been a younger man and lived alone, he’d been sick with the flu. Then, he’d slept so much he’d wondered if he had died and not noticed passing over. Slept for eighteen or twenty hours at a time, waking with a full bladder to piss, only to go back under the sheets, hot and cold.

  Outside the sheets, hot. Under the duvet, cold.

  He caught himself with a snort and realized he’d drifted off again and dreamed the cave was his duvet, coddling his twentysomething self with the flu.

  He sniffed, aware of his own odors in the crisp cave air.

  Still black.

  Was it still Monday? Had it slipped away while he and Teresa had dozed and held tight?

  Was it Tuesday?

  For an instant panic hit him. Had he slept while she died? Was she dead next to him, in his arms…still…a corpse…?

  She snuffled a breath and his heart slowed again.

  Didn’t plan on everything, did you? he thought.

  He had no idea if the day or night had passed. No idea if the danger was gone.

  Idiot. Just look at your watch.

  He almost laughed at the simplicity of the answer. He was bound, but if he just twisted his wrist, he could get the rope to press on the button for the LED.

  And, as the light came on, as he read 12:01, the light shone out, weak and dim but like nuclear fire in the ancient dark.

  “Fuck,” he said.

  For a second, there was light. There was shadow.

  24

  In that second, in that artificial light, Keane’s shadow took form.

  Against the jagged cave wall, a man’s image wavered in the light. And, unseen by Keane (but felt, yes, felt) the shimmering dark stepped away from the wall. Stepped out from within Keane’s shadow. Escaped from the shade.

  That the watch was no longer lit didn’t matter. The damage was done.

  Keane’s shade, free, placed both hands (cold, corpselike, slick and thin) around Keane’s neck and squeezed hard enough to cut off his wind. The best he could manage was a panicked gargle, and not quite loud enough to wake Teresa.

  Spots of light erupted in Keane’s vision along with the pain in his neck, his burning chest and brain.

  It’s just in my mind, he thought. He tried to hold the thought, but his mind swam in circles as his oxygen fled. I’m hallucinating I’m strangling myself I’m going insane I am INSANE…

  “You’re insane, brother,” whispered the shade in slathered tones of dark things curled within the coddling damp and dark.

  “You are. You are. But here I am.”

  Keane bobbed below the surface of unconsciousness for a second, only to be dragged back as the pressure eased. Pain exploded in his head with the sudden rush of blood. He gasped through his crushed throat, impulsive but impossible to resist, despite the agony.

  “No you don’t, buddy. No…not yet…in a little while. First up, a little chat.”

  The hands held tight again before Keane could even think straight, let alone try to fight, throw the shadow off (or your own self, Keane? Are you that crazy?).

  Keane could barely think again with those thin, powerful hands around his throat. He couldn’t speak at all, couldn’t breathe.

  When the shade began to speak again, the best he could do was thrash, and buck.

  He drifted down and up, in and out, conscious thought flitting from his grasp and back for seconds only.

  “Dead from the waist down…

  “…cut her. Bleed her. She won’t feel…

  “…might cut you, too. Not sure, though. Not sure if I need you.”

  Keane drifted for a while. Heard the snipping sound and knew, just knew, that it was a blade breaking through the bone in his wife’s little toe. She didn’t cry out. Didn’t scream.

  Because she’s asleep and doesn’t feel a thing.

  His last thought, then out in the darkness. No sound, thought, breath. Just dark dreams of blood. In his dreams a woman cried and screamed and blood dripped unseen in black pools. Shadows came from the walls with long, sharp nails like blades and cut and sliced. Teeth within those shadow-cave mouths bit down hard on tits and balls and gnawed flesh free. Dreams of shades. Dreams of death.

  Down in the abyss. Nowhere lower, no way to scale the walls. In the black maw of the giant dog without hope or light and held tight in the embrace of the living shadows that lurked in the deep.

  25

  Tuesday

  Click.

  A shutter still makes a sound in the dark. No light to take a photograph, the mechanics still work.

  Click.

  Keane rolled to one side, unsure for a moment why he hurt so much, or why he could not move his arms or legs. In rolling, he put his face into something wet. Slightly tacky.

  What?

  Had he puked? Drank too much? Passed out somewhere?

  So dark. So fucking dark.

  His neck burned and his throat was raw. Felt like he’d been gargling glass. A strep infection, maybe. His head pounded.

  Why can’t I move, and why is it so dark?

  Blind?

  No.

  He tried to shake his head a little, tried to clear his thinking, but it hurt so much he rested his head right there in whatever that tacky substance was.

  Slowly, thought began to return. First, he remembered the pho
tograph.

  Click.

  Toes.

  Three and two.

  Some small part of Keane broke, then, and he tried to close his eyes, but he was in absolute darkness and the things he saw, the things he remembered, lived in him, in his mind and his memory. They did not need the light for him to see them.

  Going to cut…

  Won’t feel a thing…

  You can’t move because you tied yourself up.

  How did you tie yourself up?

  You didn’t. Teresa helped.

  Teresa’s here?

  And, another part snapped.

  Shades and shadows, he thought. The shadow came to life. Came to fucking life.

  Won’t feel a thing.

  Click.

  What are you lying in, Keane? What’s that smell you’re breathing in? What is that clotting on your cheek?

  Click.

  Keane screamed. His throat burned but he did not notice. He screamed and imagined what he was laying in. Who was next to him, here, in the dark.

  Bound next to her.

  Did she know? Had she known? Had she suffered?

  And, like that, Keane broke. Simple as a man taking photographs.

  Clickclickclick…images flashed in his mind, thought slowed until it finally switched off, ran down.

  There in the darkness, the small light on his watch utterly forgotten, Keane gnawed at his ropes. He had no idea how long it took because Keane wasn’t strictly sane while he chewed through his bonds. Not entirely insane, either, because if he’d been cold, uncaring…that would have been insane.

  Shutting down in the face of your dead wife, bound in the blackness of a cold, hard cave…that’s the utmost sanity.

  But maybe Keane was somewhere in between. Not in the abyss, not in the void. Just in the dark, with his memories and his fear and the knowledge that somehow his shadow, something he should own, something that belonged to him surely as his receding hair or his weak ankles, that something from inside him was out and free.