Nocturnal

by Nathan Field

  I closed my eyes, hoping to ride it out.

  “Peter, are you okay?” the duty nurse said, appearing as a shadow on my eyelids.

  “No,” I mumbled. “I feel really sick.”

  I felt her hand on my forehead, then her fingers on the side of my neck. She can’t have liked what she found, because the next thing she said was: “Don’t move, I’m getting the doctor.”

  I was too nauseous to nod. The back of my head began to pulse, and I could feel pressure building in my brain. It was a new kind of pain – different to the flesh wounds on my face. This felt deeper, and more frightening, because the throbbing seemed to have a life of its own. I had no idea where it was going.

  Then suddenly the pain was sharp. Something snapped inside my head, like a loud thunderclap. And it kept snapping; intensifying.

  Hurried footsteps approached, and my eyelids darkened again.

  “Mr Carney, can you hear me?” a doctor with a British accent asked.

  “Yes.” The effort of speaking made the pain worse, like a metal bar being pushed through the roof of my mouth.

  “Can you describe your symptoms, Mr Carney? Have you had a sore neck recently? Is there a sharp pain at the back of your head?

  Yes, I thought.

  The doctor whispered something to the nurse, and I heard her scurry away.

  “I can see you’re in distress, but I need you to open your eyes. Can you do that for me?”

  No.

  “This is important, Mr Carney,” he said. “I think you might be having a stroke, and it’s absolutely imperative that I check your pupils.”

  Hearing the word stroke was like a shot of adrenaline. I forgot my pain, and did as I was told, opening my eyes wide.

  The sudden flood of light was like staring directly into the sun. I howled in agony, jamming my eyes shut, but the light was already inside my head. I felt it burning deeper into my skull, searing every nerve-end. The doctor was yelling at me to keep still, but I was in a world of hurt, clawing around the bed for a pillow to bury my head in. That’s when my body started shaking uncontrollably, and I felt my brain shut down.

  I’d suffered a subarachnoid hemorrhage. Blood vessels had ruptured in the space between my brain and its surrounding tissue, the steady leakage eventually triggering a stroke. The doctors moved quickly, opening up my head to remove large collections of blood in the subarachnoid area, and relieving the intense pressure on my brain. By all accounts it was a successful operation, and once again, everyone made a big deal about how lucky I was, claiming the hemorrhage would’ve killed me if they hadn’t caught it early. But while I was grateful for the doctors’ efforts, I wasn’t in the mood to celebrate. I knew something was still wrong.

  My vision remained hyper-sensitive. It was as though the protective membrane on my eyes had been removed, and any sharp light cut straight through to the pain sensors in my brain. I craved darkness and shadows – even thinking about bright light made my head hurt. To ease the pain, I spent the first few days after surgery with my eyes closed, imagining myself sleeping in a deep, soothing cave.

  A nurse bought me a pair of sunglasses to wear, which helped stave off the glare from the fluorescent tubes, but whenever the morning sun streamed into the ward, I would still pull the sheets over my head and pray for clouds. The doctors told me I was experiencing photophobia, a not uncommon complaint from patients who’d suffered a subarachnoid hemorrhage. They dismissed my symptoms as temporary, still basking in the glory of their successful operation. When a week had passed and my eyes were no better, they even tried to suggest my problem was psychological.

  As soon as my strength returned, the doctors wasted no time in discharging me. Since they weren’t helping my photophobia anyway, I didn’t hang around to make a fuss. By that stage, I was sporting a pair of aviator shades with polarized lenses that cut the glare of the day dramatically, allowing me to venture outside without falling to my knees in agony. It wasn’t ideal, and I still kept my head low and my eyes trained to the ground, but at least I was able to walk around like a semi-normal person.

  On the day I left hospital, I didn’t have any hopes or aspirations for the future, just a primal instinct survive. I went back to my apartment, packed a few boxes worth of possessions into my Corolla, and drove two hours straight to San Francisco. It was the nearest big city I could think of, and the perfect place to lay low and contemplate the next stage of my life.

  The next stage came a lot sooner than I anticipated. My scant savings were gone within a week, and after selling my car, and chewing through that money, too, I was forced to look for work. My eyes didn’t make things easy. Brightly lit offices were out, as were any jobs that required me to step outside during the day. I quickly narrowed down my search to bars and clubs that kept the lights down low.

  My appearance put a lot of potential employers off. Nobody said anything to my face, but I could tell from their forced smiles and squirming body language that they were worried about me frightening the customers. It was a harsh introduction to life with my new face. But after a week of rejection, I managed to land a bartending job at a comedy club in North Beach. The manager was in a wheelchair, and I think he took pity on me, recognizing me as a fellow hard-luck story.

  By then I was going by my middle name, Sam. It wasn’t just a symbolic nod to my new life. I didn’t want anyone from Sacramento tracking me down, and I figured a simple name change would thwart most attempts to find me online.

  The North Beach job suited me fine. I had some bar experience from my college days, and I was largely kept hidden from customers, staying behind the bar and making drinks for the waiters to deliver. I also got to see a lot of live comedy. Stand-up was something that had always intrigued me, and after three months of watching audience reactions and getting an idea of the types of jokes that worked, I started thinking about having a go myself. My scars, I reasoned, could even work in my favor if I acknowledged them in a light-hearted way, like comics with weight problems or ginger hair.

  After many hours practicing and perfecting a three-minute routine, I booked a spot on the club’s open-mike night, ready to launch my new career.

  It wasn’t meant to be. When I opened with a joke about losing an audition to play Seal, the audience was silent. Things only went downhill from there. Joke after joke fell flat, and a few loudmouths started heckling me. One guy in particular got under my skin. When he shouted, “Taxi to the burns unit,” I lost it, jumping off stage to confront him. Security had to hold me back.

  The club manager fired me on the spot, but he offered some parting advice. He said my material wasn’t too awful – original, edgy, even quite funny in patches. But I suffered from what he called a “negative stage presence.” I was cold rather than deadpan, and my cynical observations came across as hostile. My looks didn’t help things, either. People came to comedy clubs to be entertained, not unnerved.

  I thanked the club manager for his honesty, and took his considered advice on board. I hadn’t especially liked being on stage, anyway. Having a crowd of strangers gawping up at me, waiting to pounce on the slightest mistake. It brought out a nasty side of me, a side that was becoming difficult to control.

  It didn’t help that my eyes were bothering me more than ever, to the point I was wearing my shades twenty-four-seven. My faint hopes of blending into everyday society were gone. I was an outcast, and the longer I had to brush shoulders with regular people, the worse I would get.

  That’s when I decided to flip the day on its head.

  I took a bartending job at a jazz club that didn’t open till 8pm, meaning I could get up after sundown and avoid the madness of rush hour. I rented a single room with a bath down the hall in the Mission, so I no longer had to suffer a crowded, brightly lit train into the city. And I started writing comedy again, making use of the dead hours before sunrise when I was winding down from the jazz bar. Eventually I found the nerve to submit a few pages of material to my old boss at the comedy club, who in tu
rn offered the gags to one of his regulars – a Rodney Dangerfield type in the twilight of his career. He immediately incorporated some of the material into his act, almost verbatim. On the first night I watched him perform, the new jokes easily got the biggest laughs of his routine.

  The comedian paid me a pittance, but the club manager made sure everybody knew who’d written his best lines. My reputation spread, and pretty soon I was writing for comedians all over the West Coast. My biggest break came when an ex-client landed a part in a sitcom pilot, and after some negative buzz on the table read, he persuaded the producers to bring me in to sharpen up the dialogue. On a whim, they sent me the script with a forty-eight hour deadline, clearly not expecting too much. But when I delivered my edits with twelve hours to spare, the producers were suitably impressed.

  The sitcom was never picked up, but it didn’t matter – I suddenly had reputation in tinsel town as a fast-working script doctor. More screenplays fell my way, and before long I’d accumulated more work than I could handle. That’s when I quit my bartending job and officially turned my part-time gig as a comedy writer into a full-time profession.

  It didn’t take long for the studio assignments to taper off, but I kept the wolves at bay by starting a web-site and accepting work from outside the Hollywood system. After a couple of years, thanks to a desperately frugal lifestyle, I even managed to scrape together a deposit for an apartment.

  By that stage, I’d grown accustomed to my nocturnal existence. My peculiar routine might’ve been a hindrance if I’d desired a corporate career, or a regular girlfriend, or a house at the beach – but I cared for none of those things.

  I only wanted to be left alone.

  For almost eight years, my existence was tolerable. Some days I cried for the love I’d lost, and the life I never had, but for the most part, I managed to forget the horrors of my twenty-fifth year.

  Until a late-night phone call brought everything back. The guilt. The heartbreak. And a cold realization that no matter how much time passed, I would never leave the past behind.

  21. “Is this going to spell trouble for me?”

  Lucy and Ralph Emerson. Lovers and co-conspirators.

  I’d been such a fucking idiot.

  Following the bombshell at Wendy’s café, I caught a taxi back to the Park Royal and sat on the edge of my hotel bed, wringing my hands in the dark. The more I thought, the more I understood, and the sicker I felt. Events from the past took on a disturbing new light.

  The parents’ animosity towards Lucy at the school chili cook-off, before we’d started anything. Her claims she couldn’t see me more than twice a week, even though she had no job, no children, and no hobbies. The friends and neighbors who told reporters they knew about an extra-marital affair, despite our careful discretion. With the benefit of hindsight, it all made perfect sense.

  The plot to kill Sterling was hatched long before I arrived on the scene. Ralph and Lucy had been scheming together for months, possibly years. But since the whole of Granite Bay seemed to know about their affair, they needed iron-clad alibis to escape suspicion. A third party had to pull the trigger.

  They must’ve laughed their heads off when I fell into their laps. Peter Carney, the deluded kid who thought a knockout like Lucy could fall hopelessly in love with him. And they’d been smart, resisting the temptation to fast-track me onto murder. They’d taken their time, playing me like a violin.

  I’d always presumed I was the aggressor with Lucy: coercing her into dates, demanding second chances, refusing to take no for an answer. Plenty of times I’d thought she genuinely wanted rid of me. But of course, it was all just part of the long con. Lucy had been patiently reeling me in, making sure the line didn’t break. Determined to land the big dumb fish that would set her and Ralph free.

  But then I’d screwed things up for everybody.

  They’d underestimated my cowardice, or my scruples, or both. They hadn’t expected me to show Sterling the letter, rubbing his nose in his wife’s infidelity, and pushing an intensely proud man over the edge. But while Lucy paid the ultimate price for her sins, her two lovers escaped unharmed.

  Until now.

  The killer, almost certainly Sterling’s eldest son, had taken bloody revenge on Ralph Emerson for his part in his father’s death. I was next on his hit list, but not before he’d dragged me on a painful trip down memory lane, forcing me to confront the painful truth about Lucy Piper. Making a mockery of the past eight years of my life.

  I’d been torturing myself over a love that never existed.

  “Oh fuck,” I groaned, flopping back onto the bed, the full extent of Lucy’s lies hitting home.

  Sterling had never abused her. Her bruises were real, but they were made to order. I imagined her screaming at Ralph to hit her harder, to make it hurt. She needed to convince me that Sterling was a monster, and that killing him would be a noble act. Then, when she believed the deed was done, she’d dispatched her lover to run me down.

  Ralph fucking Emerson was the driver in the baseball cap, the man responsible for my scars and photophobia. But I couldn’t see him as the ultimate enemy. Lucy had used him, just like she’d used me. If they’d managed to escape with Sterling’s money, Lucy might have had him killed, too.

  I could understand Sterling Junior’s desire for revenge. Lucy’s greed had killed his father, virtually orphaned his family, and driven his younger brother to suicide. For his part in events, Ralph Emerson probably got what was coming to him. And for my own stupidity, perhaps I deserved the same.

  But Sterling Junior crossed a line when he involved an innocent party. Killing Bruno was not only inhumane, it was completely unnecessary. It proved his twisted games had moved beyond an attempt to redress the wrongs against his family. Somewhere along the line, Sterling Junior had developed a blood lust. And the sick fuck needed to be stopped.

  I drifted in and out of sleep through the day, dipping into a persistent nightmare about Ralph and Lucy. They were fucking like wild animals on Sterling’s king-sized bed, Lucy’s long legs in the air while Ralph pounded her hard. She was writhing and groaning in ways I’d never seen before. Every so often they’d turn to laugh at me, knowing I was watching from the corner of the room, my dick limp in my hand. My eyes kept popping open in horror, but the nightmare waited patiently for my return, like my subconscious had an automatic pause button. By the time sunset reddened the curtains in my hotel room, I was drenched in sweat.

  Relieved to get out of bed, I showered with urgency and busied my mind with the present day. My first task was to track down Sterling’s kids – in particular, the surviving son. My own resources were limited to Google searches, but I knew someone in Sacramento who could dig a little deeper.

  I hadn’t spoken to Izzy in eight years, and I didn’t feel great about asking for a favor, especially after I’d left town without saying goodbye. But he was my best chance of finding the Piper kids, and I owed it to Bruno to make the call.

  For the second time in forty-eight hours, I dialed the Tribune’s general enquiry line. I was relieved, but not overly surprised, when the operator put me straight through. Guys like Izzy liked to stay put.

  The years came rushing back when Izzy’s voice came on the line. He sounded as frantic as ever, like he was late for a meeting.

  “Hi Izzy. It’s Peter Carney.”

  A long pause was filled by the familiar hum of a busy newsroom. “Peter?” he eventually said. “Is that really you?”

  “Yeah, it really is.”

  “Holy shit! Peter Carney! My God, this is like…..fuck.!”

  “Fuck in a good way?” I laughed.

  “A great way. Man oh man oh man oh man oh man! Pete! What the hell have you been up to?”

  “Not much, to be perfectly honest. Laying low.”

  “No shit. Below ground, I thought.”

  “Not quite. Listen, Izzy. I know this is asking a lot, but would you be able to meet me tonight? I really need a favor.”

 
His voice lowered. “Why, you in trouble?”

  “Yeah. I am.”

  Izzy exhaled heavily, his breath rustling in my ear. “Is this going to spell trouble for me?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “You doubt it,” he said warily. I imagined him weighing up old loyalties against his natural risk aversion.

  “I understand if you’re uneasy,” I said, offering him an easy out.

  “Yeah, but fuck it. If you need help, I’ll be there. Besides, if I miss this opportunity, I might never learn what happened to you.”

  “It’s not much of a story,” I warned.

  “I’ll be the judge of that. I’m expecting big things, Pete. Sex, drugs, witness relocation programs – the works. And don’t even think about leaving out the juicy bits.”

  “It’s a promise.”

  “And you’re bullshitting me already. Never mind, I’ll get the truth out of you. I’m a senior investigative reporter these days. Digging up the past is my specialty.”

  “That’s what I’m counting on.”

  “Oh man, this is going to be a big favor, isn’t it? Okay Pete, you mysterious sonofabitch. When and where?”

  We agreed to meet at the dive bar on J Street where we’d last met up. My heart sank as I neared the address. It was a dive bar no more. The building was painted a cheerful yellow, and the front had been opened up by two enormous bay windows. The patrons were now visible from the street – sipping white wine and spread out over blonde wood furniture.

  I hung back from the entrance and put on my shades. I’d hoped to meet Izzy eye-to-eye, but the bar was far too bright for me. I couldn’t even look in the window without wincing. I was about to call Izzy and suggest another venue when I saw him crossing the road towards me. He was wearing a papery grey suit and big-buttoned khaki trench coat, the same work clothes he’d worn eight years ago. He looked great – the only clues to the passing years were a slightly higher hairline and a hint of a paunch on his otherwise trim frame. He was grinning like a lunatic, but as he stuck out his hand in greeting, his face dropped.