Blind Rage

by Michael W. Sherer

“Well, you definitely have one there,” another voice said.

  “Are you spying on us, Uncle Travis?” Tess said.

  “Whoa, calm down. I know you’re angry, but there’s no reason to take that tone with me. I just came to tell you that Alice has dinner ready. We’d like you to join us if you’re at a stopping point.”

  “We’ll be there in a minute,” Oliver said quietly.

  Tess bit her tongue to keep from making some smart remark, though she couldn’t think of anything that didn’t sound lame. She waited for the sound of her uncle’s departure, but heard footfalls approaching them instead.

  “Is that a new phone?” Travis said.

  Tess’s heart caught in her throat until she realized she’d done nothing wrong. “No, it’s Dad’s. I found it in his office. I wanted to show Oliver some photos on it, but they aren’t here.”

  She hadn’t told him the truth, but it wasn’t exactly a lie, either. And she was tired of letting her uncle know everything about her. She deserved to be able to keep a few things to herself, especially where her parents were concerned.

  Travis may be a war hero, but he can’t hold a candle to either of my parents. He just doesn’t understand.

  “Sorry to hear it,” Travis said, bringing her thoughts back. “I hope you find them somewhere. See you in a few minutes?”

  She nodded. “We’ll be right there.”

  This time he left, and she breathed an inward sigh of relief.

  Tess fidgeted uncomfortably throughout dinner. Neither Uncle Travis or Alice were very good at conversation, though Oliver made attempts to engage them—and her—by asking about their family and other topics he thought might be of interest to at least someone. But she found it too painful to talk much about her absent parents, didn’t care about sports, wasn’t up on the latest current events, and didn’t feel much like talking. He managed to elicit a series of monosyllabic answers to most of his questions, and the only other sound was that of chewing. She was relieved when the sound of forks clattering on china signaled the end of dinner, and she asked to be excused to finish her homework.

  Oliver stayed to help clear the table and wash dishes, so she made her own way back to the library and settled in to work. He joined her about half an hour later and sat quietly while she listened to the rest of her English assignment. Then he helped her with the history portion of her American studies and literature block. After an hour of going over the material with him, she yawned widely.

  “I can’t study anymore,” she said. “I’m fried.

  “You’re essentially finished anyway. I’ll pack up your books.”

  “Aren’t you tired?”

  “Yeah, I guess I am. Too much excitement.”

  She shivered. “Not exactly what I had in mind when I woke up this morning.”

  “Yeah, well, me neither. But a good night’s sleep should help.”

  She yawned again. “I hope so. Goodnight, Oliver.”

  “Goodnight. See you in the morning.”

  She made her way upstairs to her room and stumbled through her bedtime ritual on autopilot, washing her face and brushing her teeth without really being aware of it. She found some comfy flannel pajama bottoms and a fleece sweatshirt and tumbled into bed. She was asleep in seconds.

  Sometime during the night, the familiar dream came back to her. Everything about it was the same—her last snowboarding run with her parents, their decision regarding prom, her hissy fit on the way to the car, getting on the road . . . But this time, for the first time, it changed. Instead of closing her eyes and dozing off, she continued the argument with her dad about what music to play. His gentle teasing turned to annoyance when Tess’s insistence on something other than Kenny G turned strident. He told her to wait a moment until he could take his eyes off the road, but she leaned forward between the seats and grabbed for his iPod. Her mother flinched in surprise, and her father turned to see what was wrong. Distracted, he swatted Tess’s hand away. She flounced back into her seat, and that was when she saw the moving wall of snow outside.

  Her mother gripped her father’s arm, and Tess felt the tension in her fingers and heard the susurrant roar of the avalanche as it descended the mountain above them. With growing horror, Tess watched the wall of snow ripple down the mountain like a tsunami, snapping trees on its way like toothpicks.

  “Hang on!” her father yelled.

  Tess clutched the door handle and heard herself scream . . .

  She flung her arm out and pulled herself toward wakefulness, scrabbling away from the nightmare. When she finally heard her own ragged breathing and felt the thumping of her heart in her chest, she knew she was back in the present despite the blackness and silence of a house asleep. Why she still thought that she would open her eyes one day and be able to see, she didn’t know. She shook off the tendrils of the dream and wiped her damp forehead with the sleeve of her sweatshirt. Strands of hair stuck to her neck and cheeks. She pulled it back out of her face.

  Her heart continued to race as she thought about the nightmare.

  Was that what had really happened? Was I partly to blame for my parents’ death? Have I blocked it out until now?

  Pangs of guilt stabbed at her—a thousand tiny knives pricking her soul, and it bled sorrow and pain. For a moment, she wondered if she could die from that feeling, from this death of a thousand cuts. She shook herself and slipped out of bed. She knew she was being foolish, but she couldn’t rid herself of the feelings.

  She found her backpack and rummaged through it until her fingers found the smooth, cool surface of the two stones that Yoshi had given to her. Clutching one in each hand, she climbed back into bed and pulled the covers up to her chin. She set one of the stones next to her hip. With both hands, she slowly explored the contours of the other. Cool to the touch, it seemed to send a small electric charge coursing up her arms. The faint stirrings of an idea formed in the back of her mind, but she couldn’t quite grasp it and pull it out where she could see it.

  She sighed, set the stone down on the nightstand, and picked up the other one. This stone felt warm compared to the first, and as her fingers gently stroked its surface, that warmth spread through her limbs and into her chest. She relaxed and snuggled farther under the covers, the dream almost completely forgotten. Her eyelids fluttered closed and she drifted back into sleep.

  CHAPTER 35

  I couldn’t sleep. The security team had staked out all the beds in the three-bedroom guest “cottage,” and I’d been relegated to a pullout couch in the living room. The main house probably had six bedrooms or more, but I imagined that, in addition to reminding me I was an employee and not a guest, Travis didn’t want me any nearer to his niece than I already was. But it wasn’t just the thin, uncomfortable mattress that kept me awake. I kept seeing the blood welling out of Helen’s chest like a time-lapse photo of a blooming rose. A three-shot burst, military style.

  I didn’t know why I hadn’t just walked away from the whole mess. It was obviously above my pay grade, and the stakes were entirely too high. But Tess intrigued me, and apparently she still had something the bad guys, whoever they were, wanted. I had nowhere else to go, no other job prospects, and no other means of support if I quit. So I accepted the fact that I was all in, whether I liked bullets flying around me or not.

  I got up, retrieved my laptop, and took it into the kitchen. I poured myself a glass of juice from the refrigerator and took it to the table while the laptop booted up, and got online. I couldn’t understand what it was like to be blind, but I could learn more about Tess’s blindness. She’d said that physically there was nothing wrong with her eyes. Her pupils still reacted to light, dilating or constricting as conditions changed, due to reflex. She tracked sounds with her eyes, which gave the uncanny impression that she could still see. The only thing her eyes couldn’t do, since no image registered in her brain, was focus. Eventually, the muscles that controlled the thickening and thinning of the lens would atrophy.

  Her vision
loss, called “cortical blindness” had been caused not by damage to her eyes, but to the occipital lobe in her brain, the visual processing center. The more I learned, though, the more I questions I had. The research I turned up suggested that loss of eyesight due to traumatic brain injury, in the occipital lobe anyway, should also result in loss of visual memory and visual dreams as well. But Tess had said that, for a time at least, her memories had become more vivid than ever, and she was still haunted by intense dreams. I wondered if her blindness might be only temporary. I found information on “transient cortical blindness,” but the cases I found were typically caused by temporary lack of oxygen in the occipital region of the brain, such as during a medical procedure.

  If her blindness was truly caused by lesions in her brain, I wondered whether she might be able to regain her sight if those injuries healed over time. Or perhaps surgery at some point might be able to repair the lesions. It didn’t seem likely. But, unless she had a rare case of cortical blindness, she shouldn’t be able to “see” memories or dreams. Which led to one other possible conclusion: she had “hysterical” blindness. The clinical literature now called it a “conversion disorder,” but hysterical blindness was often brought on by trauma, and had psychological, not physical, roots.

  In other words, being blind might be all in Tess’s head. That didn’t mean she was faking it—she really couldn’t see—but it meant that she could easily regain her sight if she got over whatever head trip had caused her to blot out reality.

  The upshot was a lot of ten-cent words that didn’t tell me much of anything except that Tess might have this condition or that disorder, may or may not be blind, and might or might not be curable. I yawned mightily, pushed back from the table, and knuckled my eyes, dry and gritty from staring at the screen. If I kept this up I might go blind, too.

  The back door of the cottage opened quietly and one of the two Bedrock residents—the big guy, Fred—let himself in. Dressed in black slacks and a black windbreaker, he was nearly invisible against the dark doorway, except for his face. A large semiautomatic pistol was holstered prominently on his hip. He shut the door quietly and nodded when he saw me.

  “Can’t sleep?” he said in a stage whisper.

  I shook my head.

  “Happens,” he said. “Been a few times I was too scared to close my eyes because of what I might see. You’ll get over it. Like watching a horror movie, you know? After a while you put it behind you and forget about it.”

  “I hope so,” I said.

  He stood there awkwardly for a moment. “Well, I’m going to try to catch some shut-eye. Back on shift in four hours.”

  “Goodnight,” I said.

  He disappeared down the hall. I got up and turned out the kitchen light, then crawled back under the blanket on the couch and settled in for a restless night.

  The windows had lightened when I woke again for the last time, but the sky outside was still the color of ash. Somewhere close by, drops of water steadily plonked into a metal downspout. I laid still for a while, letting random thoughts ping-pong through my head, but finally swung my legs out from under the covers and got up. Trying not to wake anyone, I padded to the bathroom and stepped into the shower. After getting clean, I quickly rinsed off and got dressed.

  Outside, the clouds had sunk of their own weight almost to the ground, leaving the treetops and roof of the house wreathed in mist. The heavy air was laden with so much moisture I wished I had gills to breathe. As I headed down to the main house for breakfast, I noticed an open garage bay door and changed direction. Cutting through the garage would be the fastest way to the kitchen. I stepped through the opening into the gloom and heard a scraping sound in the far bay. Curious, I skirted around the back of Yoshi’s truck, sneakers making no sound on the smooth concrete floor.

  A pair of legs stuck out from beneath the wrecked Range Rover parked in the last bay. I was about to call out and ask if the person needed help when I noticed that the legs were encased in a nicely tailored pair of slacks, the feet shod with expensive-looking loafers—Marcus. Good thing Yoshi kept the garage floor immaculately clean. Whether because I was reminded of how unpleasant he’d been to Tess the previous afternoon or because some other instinct warned me away, I closed my mouth and turned away. I didn’t want my day to start off in a conversation with Marcus.

  The kitchen greeted me with bright cheeriness and the smells of bacon and coffee, which made my stomach growl. Alice must have cooked earlier and gone on to other tasks because Tess was alone, seated at the table in the nook, sleepily pouring milk into a bowl of cereal. The tip of her finger was hooked over the lip of the bowl, and when the milk in the bowl rose high enough to touch it, she tipped the milk carton upright on the table. Clever girl. She stuck her finger in her mouth and sucked the milk off, pulling it out between pursed lips with a pop.

  “Good morning, sunshine. You’re up early. Sleep well?”

  She turned toward the sound of my voice and made a halfhearted attempt at a smile.

  “I feel like a zombie,” she said. “I hardly got any sleep.”

  “Me neither. We’ll be a real pair at school today.”

  She groaned, bent over her bowl, and shoveled a spoonful of cereal into her mouth.

  “Hey,” I said, shifting my weight. I remembered she couldn’t see the color creep into my cheeks, but that didn’t seem to settle the butterflies in my stomach. “I wanted to apologize for being such a dick yesterday. I mean, seeing Helen get shot like that really got to me, but that’s no excuse for bad manners.”

  “That’s okay,” Tess said. “I guess I was probably kind of a witch myself.”

  “Nah, you were fine. Considering I tackled you and all.”

  She spooned more cereal into her mouth instead of replying, so I figured the subject was closed. I grabbed a plate from a cupboard and served myself bacon and toast from the serving platters next to the stove. I poured myself a cup of coffee and sat down at the table across from Tess with my breakfast.

  “I was thinking.” I swallowed a bite of toast. “Maybe the clue we got yesterday was designed to throw us off. I mean, finding that phone was too easy, you know?”

  She raised her head and chewed slowly.

  “Remember what the first couple of e-mails said?” I went on. “‘Seeing is believing’ and ‘Don’t believe everything you hear.’ Maybe that’s the point. We’re not supposed to believe the ringing phone in your dad’s office is the answer to the clue.”

  She took another bite and ruminated.

  “He used another phone for work,” she said at last. “He made me promise not to call him at that number unless it was an emergency.”

  “Do you remember it?”

  Her face screwed up as she tried to recall. The muscles in her face suddenly relaxed, and her hand groped the table instead, eventually landing on her own phone.

  “I have it programmed,” she said. “I never called it. I always left him texts or voicemails on his personal phone. He always got back to me eventually.”

  She activated the speakerphone feature and spoke a command. The line connected and the phone on the other end rang three times before a male voice answered.

  “Hello?”

  Tess turned her face toward me in shock. I motioned her to say something and realized she couldn’t see me. I reached for the hand holding the phone and lifted it toward her mouth. She resisted, then snapped out of her trance.

  “Who’s this?” she demanded.

  “Who’s calling, please?” the voice said.

  “I asked you first,” Tess said. “Who is this? Why do you have my father’s phone?”

  After a moment of hesitation the voice said, “I think you must have the wrong number,” and hung up.

  Tess held the phone out. “Do you believe that? Someone stole my dad’s phone.”

  “Come on, Tess. He hasn’t used it for more than a year. His account was probably canceled and the number assigned to someone else.”

 
Her nose wrinkled. “Why would they cancel his phone? They didn’t cancel his personal number.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe the company wanted to save some money. It’s no big deal. We’ll figure out what the clue meant some other way.”

  She put a finger in the corner of her mouth and nibbled the nail. “I know that voice, Oliver.” Her eyes widened. “Tad. It was Tad.”

  I frowned. “How did he get your dad’s phone?”

  “I don’t know.” She bit her lip and blinked. “But that was Tad’s voice, I’m telling you.”

  “Okay,” I said softly, “we’ll check it out.” I thought for a moment, munching on a strip of bacon. “We need to figure out some way to get him alone. He’ll never say anything if he’s with his posse. Any ideas?”

  Tess fell silent, but I could see the wheels turning in her head.

  “Last year,” she said, “when Tad got his license, his parents gave him a car—a nice one. He trashed it. Got drunk one night and totaled it. His dad was so mad, he told Tad he could walk until he earned enough money to buy his own car. So he walked or got rides from guys like Carl. I bet he hasn’t bought a car yet, and with Carl . . . well, you know, Tad’s probably walking again.”

  I glanced at my watch. “You know where he lives?”

  She nodded. “I can tell you how to get there.”

  I wolfed down the last strip of bacon and bite of toast, and washed it down with a gulp of coffee. Rising from the table I said, “Are you ready?”

  She’d already picked up her bag from the floor next to her chair and put her phone in it. She stood.

  “We need to get my books,” she said.

  She put out her hand. I took it and placed it on my arm. She walked faster and with more confidence when I escorted her, I noticed, though she knew the house well enough to navigate on her own. As soon as we were in the hallway outside the kitchen, she turned her head and called over her shoulder.

  “Alice, we’re on our way to school. I want to be early. Could you please tell Marcus? I don’t want to have to go find him.”