Orpheus and the Pearl & Nevermore

by Kim Paffenroth;David Dunwoody

  Malcolm had known then, and had said, "Tell me now or I'm hanging up. Tell me now, or I won't talk to you again."

  "Malcolm, please!"

  "Tell me!"

  And he had. And Malcolm had hung up.

  "Listen," Jean said softly. "I'm not going to mess around in Leo's head. But you deserve to know. There are things I can do to help you---"

  "For Christ's sake, don't," Malcolm snapped. "Treat me with some goddamn respect."

  Jean flinched away. "I mean it. I can help you see."

  Jean was only making him angrier at Leo. That it had come to this! The thought of overtures and mea culpas was heading right out the window. Still the man persisted. "You know I mean it!"

  "I don't think I know anything about you."

  "How will you find out the name, then? Your lawyer brother? Or maybe Bonnie? She's a cop, right? She can look into it." He snorted. "Do you get what I'm saying? I have the tools for this work, and I'm willing to use them. As a friend, Malcolm."

  He just couldn't stand being told no. He preyed on desperate hope. Malcolm walked past him and out of the restaurant.

  "Where are you going?"

  "Smoke," he said, probably too low for Jean to hear, but he didn't care.

  It was dark, but the rain hadn't yet come. As Malcolm crossed the parking lot, pulling out a near-empty pack of Marlboros, he heard a voice call: "You said you were quitting."

  Saul smiled in the halo of light from his Bic. "Same to you," Malcolm said, and went over.

  "Well, it was true when I said it." Saul offered the flame to him. "Jean followed me out to wait for you...did you talk?"

  "Yeah. I guess he's trying to help, in his way. I'd prefer he didn't." Malcolm shoved his hands into his pockets and stared at the blacktop. "I was actually starting to appreciate how oblivious he can be."

  Saul coughed and leaned against his Taurus. Some wit had printed WASH ME on the dusty door, and he struck the words out with his fingertips. "Well, I'm no greater a sage than he."

  "I know," Malcolm said. "Still thought I'd ask - why are we here?"

  "Nature abhors a vacuum." Headlights panned over Saul's smile and vanished into the night.

  Malcolm wished he could ask a real question, but he knew Saul didn't like playing the role of wise King Solomon. Saul loathed stereotypes as much as he did---and Jean was bad enough for both of them---but Malcolm had always looked up to him in some way, and had envied that mentor relationship with Jean. He tried to emulate it with his students. Most of them didn't need it, though. They had dads and all the rest of it.

  Didn't I promise myself one more drink? Malcolm stubbed his cigarette out on the asphalt and picked up the crumpled butt. "Want to head back in?"

  "Sounds good." Saul pinched his cigarette between his thumb and forefinger. Malcolm stopped. Saul winked at him. Then the cigarette was gone.

  Jean was back in the booth with Ray and Bonnie, and pointed sideways at the tumbler by Malcolm's plate. "Got you another."

  "Thanks." Malcolm sat down beside him. "Really."

  "Least I could do."

  Ray and Bonnie were on their second round, and had moved closer to one another. Malcolm reached for his drink, but Jean turned and dropped a finger into it.

  "What are you...?"

  Jean placed his wet finger against Malcolm's forehead and swirled it. It felt like he was writing something. "What are you doing?" Malcolm murmured.

  "Lensing your third eye. For sight."

  Malcolm swatted his hand away angrily. "You're fucking impossible."

  Jean didn't react to his glower, merely pushed the glass toward him and said, "Have at it then."

  Just for that, Malcolm took a thick gulp. It tasted slightly sweet. He looked into the glass. "What's with this?"

  "It's scotch." Jean looked at him. "What do you see?"

  "I see you," Malcolm muttered.

  "Hmm." Jean sat back and yawned. "I am very drunk."

  "You good to drive?" Malcolm asked Ray.

  "Sure. You ready to call it a night, then?"

  "I think so." Malcolm got up and fished for his wallet. "I had a nice time. I did. It's fine."

  "I'm going to come by tomorrow," Bonnie said, but Malcolm knew she was coming for Ray, and offered only a sullen nod in response.

  The sky split the moment they walked outside. Malcolm was soaked to the bone before he made it to the car.

  "Are you really okay?" Ray asked.

  "As good as it gets." Malcolm fell onto his bed and pressed his palms to his temples. "You sure about taking the couch?"

  "I sleep on the couch in my office most nights," Ray said. "Do you drink that much very often?"

  "Never again," was all Malcolm said. "Never again."

  The door closed. "Never again," he whispered, and slipped into a sea of black clouds.

  11:07 PM

  His first awareness was of the fact that he was dead.

  It was a simple truth, and he could not articulate in his thoughts how he knew, except that he knew he was nothing but thought. There was no sensation. The darkness of sleep had given way to a storm of white light, light he wasn't really seeing so much as he was being permeated by it. What substance he had was less than a mote, and the light had absorbed him.

  He knew he was dead, but he didn't know where he was, or if here was even a place. There was no point of reference, no sense of orientation. Maybe he didn't exist in places anymore. Maybe he was reduced to something that had no fixture in any dimension. Maybe he had joined a great nothing.

  But the light was there, and it was real, and then there came a dull sense of something behind the light, a rising cacophony that unsettled his awareness. He couldn't concentrate on whatever it was, couldn't discern its nature or source. All was chaos. If he could have, Malcolm would have screamed.

  No senses. No body. He was suddenly keenly aware of the lack of Malcolm. No prickling flesh, no tired bones, no pulsing veins or swelling lungs. There was no pounding heart or surging adrenaline. He supposed that was why he felt so still despite his utter confusion.

  But that thrumming chaos was building around him, and unease was growing in his being. It was a discordant sea of sound---sound! It was sound he perceived, vibrations bombarding him from every direction, as with the light. The sound of the living world. He had it now: a ticking clock. The settling building. The changing pressure in the walls. Mites scrabbling through carpet fibers. And falling rain.

  He focused on the rain, giving him a point of reference. Rain on the roof overhead. Slowly but surely, those less significant noises retreated into the background. It felt like he was really hearing the rain now. And the particles of light about him began to fade.

  His mental focus was giving him sight now. He recognized the outlines of his bedroom. His perspective was at eye level, as if he still had eyes in a head on a body. And, though his focus was narrowing, he sensed that he had a full 360-degree view of the room, if he wanted it. Malcolm wondered at it all. If he'd been screaming, the scream would have died, and been replaced by a gentle, disbelieving laugh.

  He was at the foot of his bed, and there before him lay his dead body.

  The clock read nine past eleven. He wondered how long he had been dead. Time seemed as alien to him now as gravity or temperature. As alien as the sack of flesh lying prone on the bed. For the first time he saw himself as others must have. His still-clothed body lay atop the covers, and he was able to appraise its form without relating it to himself.

  There were jowls, which formed with his head propped up on the pillows, and settled against a neck that he'd thought was thick but seemed slight and frail beneath that bloated head. His hair was big and messy and sat on his scalp like a toupee. He'd had beautiful eyelashes, at least, and nice hands. One lay to the left of his head, palm turned upward, fingers half-closed.

  Malcolm studied his dead face. It was pale, waxy. Reminded him of something, or someone. His former skin glistened with shrinking beads of sweat. He couldn
't have been gone long.

  At 11:11 his body sat up.

  Malcolm was frozen in place. He wanted to leap back, to push himself away from the staring face that had once been his own, but he couldn't. There was no way to move, no physiology---he was trapped! Fear swelled in him, pure emotional terror---and unfiltered light and sound began encroaching on him once more as he lost focus. He could still see the body, rising now to stand beside the bed, limbs stiff, eyes unblinking. How? Everything else seemed to make sense, but this was wrong, he knew it with absolute certainty. How?

  The body walked to the door and fumbled awkwardly with the knob. The door opened just wide enough for it to push through. Malcolm lost sight of it, as he was losing sight of everything...

  Ray!

  He tore through the distortion and was back in the room. And, distantly, he felt something like feet planted on the floor beneath him. It was another dull impression, but it was certain. He was standing on the floor, and though he saw no feet there, nor were any of the carpet's threads flattened by any sort of weight, he did see something. Two somethings. Dark, glistening stains, like footprints.

  He heard his brother murmur his name. It sounded as if he'd just been roused from sleep.

  And then Ray screamed.

  Malcolm tried to move but there was nothing to move. He'd reconnected to the physical, now how was he supposed to pull himself across its plane? Ray! RAY!

  Ray let out a terrible, wounded yell, a sound Malcolm had never heard from his older brother. And whatever was happening, that walking corpse was doing it---did Ray think it was Malcolm himself? Of course he did! Meanwhile Malcolm was frozen in space mere feet away! RAY!

  He looked at the floor again. In the air between his point of view and the stains on the floor, he saw other dark splotches simply hovering. He realized he was looking at the backs of two dangling hands. How was he giving form to himself? How did he use it? Ray sputtered and cried, "Mal---"

  A wet, heavy sound. Then silence.

  He didn't know what this dark matter on his surface was---didn't know what his surface was---but it was eroding before his sight and he felt as if he were coming un-tethered from the world. Light swelled around him again. Focus!

  He focused on Ray, and the shadows of the room returned. He thought about Ray, not about what state he might be in, but getting to him, and he sensed feet on carpet again. He saw dark syrup pooling in the air beneath him. He saw strange, thin limbs taking shape as the syrup spread---legs, not fully realized, but enough to give him confidence. He tried to take a step. Nothing happened.

  No. You can't walk. That's not how it works.

  His focus had generated this weird substance where he imagined his legs and feet to be, so he focused himself forward. And he was fifteen inches closer to the door.

  All right. Don't let emotion overcome you. Just focus. Forward.

  He came right up to the door. There was no sound from the next room; he heard only the driving rain. Malcolm looked at the doorknob. Could he take hold of it, or even just push against the wood?

  He focused on the door. Dark stains appeared there. They looked vaguely green in the light from the street. But nothing else happened. God damn you...again he cast his focus upon the door, and fresh stains appeared, only to evaporate. He couldn't seem to affect any movement at all. And why should he have expected otherwise? He couldn't apply any real force to it, could he? He searched his memory. He taught---had taught---social studies, not science. Like it really made a difference, he was a ghost trying to go through a door.

  I'm a ghost.

  He focused himself through the wood and into the living room.

  Ray lay on the couch, arms above his head, one foot on the floor. His eyes were open. His mouth was a gaping, bloody hole, his shattered jaw hanging slack. He was dead. Murdered. The front door lay open.

  Malcolm lost the world again. He recoiled into the light so that it blinded him, and the cacophonous sounds that enveloped him were as his screams.

  The wall clock by the window said it was almost 11:30, but it felt as if only a few minutes had passed since Malcolm's own death, or his awareness of it. It seemed he was losing time whenever he became disoriented. He had no idea how long it had taken Ray to die while he was in the bedroom.

  There was blood everywhere. Parts of Ray were missing. His right leg ended at the knee. Malcolm could only react with silent grief, unable to turn away or retch or weep.

  My brother is dead. But so am I.

  He scanned the room. Ray? Are you here?

  He wasn't. One way or another, Ray was just gone.

  Why am I still here? It had to have something to do with the state of his body. The cadaver's eyes had been blank, but had seen right through Malcolm to the door. To Ray. And it had gone to him, and killed him. WHY?

  The idea struck Malcolm that his body was now an unmanned vessel: soulless, feral. That this might be the natural state of a human organism, deprived of its spiritual host, didn't quell his confusion. Perhaps that was an explanation for the cadaver's behavior, but it still didn't explain why it was walking around to begin with. Ray's remains were dead as could be, and Ray's spirit was absent. It had to be that Malcolm was somehow still tied to his body, allowing it to run on fumes, so to speak, while he could only watch.

  An out-of-body experience gone too far? Could we be rejoined?

  No. He didn't want that, not now. But he wanted to remedy whatever nightmarish error had been committed by the universe. He sensed he was alone in this, and so he focused on the front door and moved into the dark hallway.

  The corridor connecting the apartments was always dimly-lit, and he could see splashes of blood on the floor and the walls---those on the walls prominently displaying the details of his fingers. He focused ahead, and now could see that the substance he was casting---ectoplasm?---was indeed green in color. The amorphous prints of his pseudo-feet were stamped into the bloodstains, only to erode seconds later. He proceeded down the hall and into the stairwell.

  How to do this, then, without gravity? He focused on each step in turn, casting the ectoplasm down, and found himself being pulled along with it. It was getting easier. As long as he kept himself calm, he was in control.

  He entered the narrow lobby of the building and stared through its glass entryway into the storm. There was a red handprint on the outer door. On the floor, just inside the building, lay the rest of Ray's leg. It looked as if the meat had been peeled from the bone in strips. Malcolm, realizing where the meat had gone, nearly lost it again.

  Focus! He went to the door. The rain was still coming down hard, the vibrations were overwhelming. It might be difficult to move out there. But he knew it was possible; he went through the glass.

  The light from the streetlamps danced through each drop of rain as it slashed downward, lancing through him and slapping against the side of the building. Looking at the steps, he slowly made his way down. He'd thought the sound might make it harder to focus and move, but it was the rain itself that was the problem---, washing away the ectoplasm almost as soon as he cast it, forcing him to cast more and more to cover the short distance. Once on the sidewalk, he looked in either direction. No cars, no people. No cadaver.

  Wait---there it is, standing in the middle of the intersection at 16th and Westmore. Its back was to him, and it stared up at the traffic light as the caution signal blinked. Clap, clap, clap.

  Malcolm stayed on the sidewalk as he advanced toward the cadaver. He knew he didn't need to, but concentrating was difficult enough without the possibility of a car ripping through him. If a car plowed into the corpse, would it die? Would it be injured at all?

  He stopped at the corner of the intersection. The thing turned slightly, and Malcolm watched as blood was washed from its gaping mouth. It didn't seem to be looking directly at him, but he feared it might sense his presence. No way of knowing.

  Then it staggered toward him. Malcolm was fixed in place. He didn't know what to do. He didn't know if
it could hurt him---

  The cadaver stepped through Malcolm, without trauma or sensation, and it headed down Westmore. The ghost-Malcolm reversed himself and followed after it. He supposed he couldn't be hurt anymore.

  Besides his father, Leo was the only one who'd done it to him. He'd told Leo that he could---he'd revealed his vulnerability sometime early in their four-year relationship, in three words. Leo had said the words back, and Malcolm believed he'd meant them. So why end things they way he had---why destroy any chance of salvaging the friendship they'd built upon?

  Leo was six years younger than Malcolm. He'd been twenty-five when they met, brilliant and angry and defying anyone to try to slow him on his reckless path. Malcolm supposed he'd wanted to guide Leo at first, but there was nothing doing. Leo had been Jean Haniver's friend, and shared his appetite for chaos. Still Malcolm had persisted. It had resulted in some fiery arguments, and that at last had opened Leo's heart.

  He'd had a cancer scare as a child. At the age when most kids were learning the truth about Santa or trying to make sense of a grandparent's passing, Leo had lived in Death's shadow. He knew that was the source of his anger and his fuck-it attitude, but knowing didn't change anything. In the end, neither had Malcolm.

  No, ending things civilly wasn't Leo's style. He'd driven them into a wall. Malcolm, up until the moment of his death, had not known just how they could rebuild any sort of friendship---it was what he wanted, what he hoped Leo wanted, but he couldn't write off the betrayal. So, five weeks of silence. Of course he'd had many a tearful revelation, and rehearsed countless grim summations alone in his room. But, he had hung up on Leo that night, had shut him out, and he'd kept it that way. At any rate, he could have extracted no amount of suffering from Leo that would have tempered his own.

  The cadaver stopped halfway down the block. More colored lights---the strobing red and blue of a police cruiser---were approaching. The dead thing stood and waited as the car pulled over to the curb. Malcolm didn't feel hope, only dread, as he watched the two officers get out from either side. The driver, a female, called to the cadaver. "You okay there?" To them, Malcolm's former body must have looked like that of a strung-out addict, soaked and staring dumbly ahead.