See Jack Die (Part 1 in the Paranormal Series) (See Jack Die Series)

by Nicholas Black

  Two minutes later, this lady doctor comes in, and if the room was darker and I didn't know any better, I would mistake her for him. They were like freaky twins. This could be an episode of Twilight Zone, for sure.

  “Hi,” Dr. Culligan says politely, and then she went about opening a folder and pulling out several pieces of white cardboard. She laid them in her lap, while Dr. Smith scooted his chair forward, his stomach squishing up against the desk. He looks like a child pretending to be an adult. She looks like a child pretending to be a doctor. I felt like the only adult in the room.

  Dr. Culligan turns over this sheet of cardboard and she says, “What do you see?”

  I see a bunch of black nonsense. Like a bug smashed on a windshield. Like thick paint pouring on glass. Like a page full of vomit. Like somebody took a chainsaw to a birthday party and made the headlines.

  But out loud I say, “I kind of see a butterfly. Wait . . . maybe, maybe he has a picnic basket with him. Yeah,” I say as I squint, nodding. “A butterfly on her way to a picnic.”

  And that Dr. Smith, he never misses a beat, he studies me very carefully. He says, “Is this butterfly in a hurry? Is he rushing to the picnic?”

  And I can't help but to glance back and forth at the both of them. These oddball doctor twins with their ink and their nonsensical questions. “No,” I say, lying back proudly. “This butterfly has all the time in the world.”

  “Where do you see the butterfly,” Dr. Culligan asks, “ . . . where in the picture?”

  So I point to the center left.

  Dr. Culligan, winks at me, and flips to the next picture. Dr. Smith scratches his forehead as he scribbles down something in my folder.

  “So was I right?” I ask.

  Dr. Culligan looks up at me, “ . . . what?”

  I ask, About the picture? Was 'butterfly on the way to a picnic' the correct response?

  They both giggled, like twins do, and the female twin replies, “No, no. There is no right or wrong answer for these. This is the part of the Rorschach Test.”

  Anyway, we go through nine more of these. Some of them have small patches of color. Most of them are black and shades of grey. They all look like car accidents, but I answer them correctly. And with every answer they seem more and more satisfied that I am adjusting quite nicely.

  What I failed to mention to Humpty and Dumpty during their lengthy interrogation, is that Ricky gave me a book that helps people successfully navigate and answer these types of tests.

  I don't tell the twins that I know all about the Swiss psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach, and the test he created in 1921. I had actually planned on the 45-card version of the test, designed by the American psychologist W. H. Holtzman, but what the hell.

  They felt good about my responses. I saw trees and birds. Trees with plenty of leaves, and birds with vibrant, full feathers. I even saw a lantern; shining brightly, of course.

  And as stupid as this is going to sound, even though I was making all of this crap up, I actually felt better. I guess pretending to be happy and together, actually makes you feel that way. Besides, I hadn't seen a spook all day.

  Well . . . not a live one, anyway.

  My version of a good day.

  That whole thing at the library was still stagnating in the back of my thoughts. We had taken the book with us, but Rupert had taken Ricky's cell phone number and promised to call him as soon as he heard anything from Washington. It was kind of cool. I have this motley crew of investigators, and we're all working the same case. But, the only one who has actually seen the things we are researching . . . is probably going insane.

  Sure, I'm not a full-on, nut-bag psycho . . . but I'm not feeling too grounded right now, either. If I have some complications from the head trauma—which is entirely possible given the circumstances that were explained to me—then there is a chance that they might have missed something. Something big!

  See, with a tumor in the brain, sometimes you think things are fine. The tumor might actually stimulate parts of your brain. But remember, it's still cancer. Tiny little mutant cells convincing all the other cells to commit suicide.

  Cellular al Qaeda.

  Jim Jones at the microbiological level.

  So while I think I am feeling fine and seeing these unbelievable events, it could just be cancer fucking me up slowly and progressively. And I don't want to even think about the possibility that my brain is swelling or something horrible like that. Because if I have the choice of going crazy slowly, or dying quickly . . . I'll take crazy.

  Think about it: mad scientists do some of their best work right before they go completely mad. So if I am losing my grey matter, I hope it's at a pace that I can't recognize. That way I can at least be productive before I start painting the walls with my own feces.

  I left the twins with smiles and handshakes, like they were just so gosh-darn proud of old Jackie boy. I might even be one of their success stories.

  As I walked through the waiting room, and out into the hallway, something ran by me so fast I thought it had to be on wheels. No noise, no wind in its wake. Just a dark flash . . . and then nothing. And my wonderful, completely artificial mood, it melts away like ice on lava.

  Poof, and I'm loco again.

  I used to only see things as I was falling asleep or waking-up. And even then, only for a few fleeting seconds. Then, in the morgue I saw the spooks when I was just really tired. And today, I'm not even all that tired. I was actually kind of relaxed, feeling a bit lazy and lethargic.

  So, whatever I have stirring up my cortex . . . it's most likely degenerative.

  Barely four-and-a-half months old, and I'm already sliding down the spiral.

  This is my decaying perfect success.

  I need McDonald's.

  Chapter 10

  Valley View Shopping Mall.

  Food Court . . .

  I found myself almost in a daze. I don't remember if I rode a bus here, walked, or hitchhiked. I'm sitting in a white plastic chair that is designed to only be comfortable for seven minutes—so that you get up and make space for somebody else who just paid way too much for fast-food.

  The chair groans when I lean in on my Chinese food. I ordered Beef-n-broccoli, two egg rolls, and a Double Quarter-pounder with cheese. The people at the Hang-Wong China looked a little confused when I ordered the burger, but a younger kid pointed me towards the McDonald's that was two counters to the left.

  I made the mistake of ordering food when I was hungry. The result is that I purchased way more than can possibly be consumed. So, I'm basically surrounded by food. Enough for at least two good-sized adults . . . or 17 supermodels. And in the middle of my linoleum covered table is the book.

  My mouth full of cheeseburger, bits of rice and cabbage still hiding among my teeth, I take a deep breath, my eyes closed, and place my hand on the cover. With a delicate and deliberate motion I open the book, feeling for the first page. If people are watching me, the words, lunatic, retard, and moron, are probably being thrown around.

  Slowly exhaling, trying to relax as much as I can in this chair that wants to cripple my lower back, I open my eyes. And guess what?

  Nothing.

  Because the damn book was upside down. I'm looking at the last page. Upside down.

  With a flip of my wrist I spin the book around and close the other flap, sending all the pages flopping to the other side. There is an audible 'thud' sound and some yuppie couple is staring at me like I'm a serial killer. And I can't be sure I wasn't.

  I shrug them off and glance down at the book, which is now open to the first page. My eyes lazily find themselves at the bottom right side of the page. And what do I see?

  Big, fat, nothing . . . again.

  Shit.

  I close the book, reach for what's left of my cheeseburger, and out of the corner of my eyes I see something on the cover that looks like a mustard stain. Oh, I'm a real dunce, now.

  I reach for a napkin, to clean up my desecration of a priceles
s antique, and notice that it's not mustard. It's an inscription of some sort. And something behind my chest starts to pound. Like a drummer. Like those rap songs.

  Bump, bump, bump!

  And I slide the book in front of me, knocking off a small carton of rice onto the floor. And, squinting, there seems to be more to the inscription than at first glance.

  Bump, bump, bump!

  Now, I can't explain exactly how it happened, but I felt the words. I didn't read them. I didn't hear them. I just felt them. Like they were tapped, beat, into me. Into my chest. Right along the huge invisible gash that those gatherers ripped into my body.

  And I felt it clearly.

  “ . . . The Book . . . of Sighs . . . ”

  I realized I was shaking again, and colder than I can ever remember being.

  Chapter 11

  Jack's Apartment.

  Later that night . . .

  First thing I did was race home. Or, more accurately, to my hospital financed apartment. I laid the book carefully down on a wooden chair near my bed and I got on the phone. I had to dial the number several times because I kept glancing back at the book, waiting for something to happen.

  “Yeah,” Ricky answered, seeming as if he was engaged in something.

  “Hey, it's Jack, I've got the title of the book.”

  That seemed to get his attention. In the background I heard him say, “ . . . I'm out, dudes, I got some important shit to do . . .” and then his voice got louder, “Okay, Jack. What is it? No . . . wait. I'll be over in a few minutes.”

  Click.

  That Ricky's a strange one alright. It wasn't a full 10 minutes and he was walking through the door, “So what happened? You fall and hit your head or something?”

  I was in the kitchen, eating a stack of Oreo cookies. I had designs on a glass of cold milk, but Ricky seemed impatient. Cookie bits in my mouth, my fingers a dark brown, almost black, I walked over to the chair and joined my young friend.

  “It was the weirdest thing,” I told him. “I was sitting there, at the mall.”

  He turned, “Galleria, or Valley View?”

  “Valley View,” I answered.

  He nodded his head a few times.

  “ . . . anyway, I was just sitting there and the book was in front of me. And I had food all over the place and I thought I spilled some mustard on the cover.”

  “Shit dude! You need to be more careful—”

  “No,” I explained, “I didn't spill anything on it. I thought I did. And there was a symbol on the cover, the one Rupert had been looking at under the magnifying glass. And I just felt it.”

  “Felt it like . . . how?” Ricky said, kneeling down so that he could study the dark-skinned cover of the book. “Like music? Like emotionally? Like fake tits?”

  I told him that I felt it like a beating in my chest. As if loud drums were being played in my body.

  “Oun-togi!” he said as he leered at the book.

  Huh?

  “Oun-togi, the spiritual drummers. Remember?”

  I tried to convey to him that I didn't think there were invisible drummers stalking around in my body, sounding out the names of religious books, but he wasn't trying to hear it. I think Ricky had more faith in all of this Voodoo stuff than I did.

  My money was still on brain tumor.

  “So, then . . .” Ricky said as he reached out his hand and gently played his fingers across the cover of the book, “ . . . what's it called?”

  “The Book of Sighs.”

  He cocked his head to the side, considering something. “That's got to be something we can find on the Internet.”

  I crossed my arms, unsure how much the Internet was going to help. “That's just for pornography isn't it?”

  Ricky turned to me as if I'd just called his mother a filthy prostitute. “Jack, if you're ever going to survive in this new world, then you're going to have to start shedding that fear of computers.”

  He stood, pulling out his phone, “While the Internet may, factually, be a good place to find all kinds of porn, that is not the only thing there is to be had. Our entire human history is accessible through the World Wide Web. It is the one thing that breaks down all barriers, passes every border, and cannot be stopped. No man, no group, no government can control it. It is a living thing, now.

  “The Internet,” he said, putting his hand on my shoulder, “is the thing that humans will look back on, generations from now, and say, 'that right there was when it all changed.' It is man's greatest contribution to a global awareness.”

  “And it's a good place for porn,” I added.

  A dirty little smile briefly crossed his face, “ . . . and it's a good place for porn.”

  12 minutes later . . .

  Did you know that you can find a coffee shop with wireless Internet access every two-minutes if you drive in any direction in Dallas? That is one of the many fun facts that Ricky enlightened me to as we were skidding around in his SUV. He drove through traffic the way I imagine he would if the vehicle was stolen.

  When I asked him why we were in such a hurry, he looked at me like I was an idiot and replied, “You know how much of our lives is wasted away in traffic?”

  No.

  “A shitload!”

  I pulled on the shoulder strap of my seatbelt, just to make sure I would be safely inside the vehicle when it rolled. I figure it's only a matter of time.

  When we skidded to a stop at the Starbucks, Ricky grabbed a small leather case, a bit thinner and wider than the quasi-mystical book I was holding. We sauntered across the parking lot and made our way inside. It was pretty busy for the early evening. We found a table in the left corner, near the condiments, and sat down.

  He unzipped the bag and pulled out a thin laptop computer. It was sleek and silver, and looked like it belonged on an alien spaceship. Thin grey men with big black eyes and anal probes were probably turning their saucer upside down looking for that thing.

  We were going to Google the name of the book. That, he explained anxiously, would get us close. If that didn't work, we'd Ask Jeeves, do some Yahoo!, and then Lycos the title. I've never felt so illiterate in all my days. This was a new language I was just going to have to figure out.

  Once he got his computer purring, he headed over to the counter and got us a couple of double mochas. “These are the coffee equivalent of crack rock.”

  He entered the words:

  the Book of Sighs

  And as quick as he clicked on the 'find' button, there were several hundred results. He read off the first few as our eyes scanned the top 12 search results. None of them mentioned the 'Book of Sighs'.

  “Sighs, Bridge of . . . ”

  “The Doges' Palace (from Venice) . . . ”

  “Minor poets of the later period (from English literature) . . . ”

  First one, we decided. And seconds later we were looking at this,

  Sighs, Bridge of

  Italian Ponte Dei Sospiri, Bridge in Venice, Italy spanning the narrow canal of the Rio di Palazzo, between the Doge's Palace and the prisons.

  It was built about 1600 by the architect Antonio Contino. The enclosed passageway was so called from the “sighs” of the prisoners who were lead across the bridge. They were to endure unspeakable acts of torture, violence, and molestation.

  We both read the text to ourselves, wondering how it might apply.

  “I guess it could be Italian,” Ricky pondered under his breath. “What do you think?”

  “I'm still an infant, what the hell do I know about old books?”

  Ricky took a sip of his liquid crack, “ . . . kind of scary, huh? Torture, violence, and molestation. So basically, when you marched across that bridge . . . that was it. You were done for. That would suck, big-time!”

  “And I'm guessing people didn't ever make it out of old Italian prisons,” I said, taking a glance around the coffee shop. There were a few older couples, but mostly the crowd was young and fresh. People with their whole life in
front of them.

  These kids, they all learned more by the time they were in the third-grade than I probably got in all of my schooling—well, if I went to school, anyway. This generation, they have access to so much information, and I wonder if they have any idea what to do with it.

  “This is something Rupert would know more about,” he said, sitting back in his chair, eying the book in my lap. “Let's look at the next one.”

  Click-click.

  The Doges' Palace. This should be interesting.

  The Doges' Palace

  The core of political life in Venice was the Doges' Palace (Palazzo Ducale), whose crenellated mass appears to float upon the waters of the lagoon.

  Erected over many years after the burning of the original 9th century structure in 976, most of the present building dates from the 14th to the 16th century. It was not only the residence of the elected doge, but also the meeting place of the republic's governing councils and ministries.

  On the east side of the palace runs a narrow canal spanned by the Bridge of Sighs, which led to the state prisons and is immortalized in Lord Byron's Childe Harold.

  “What do you think?” I asked, having read the modest text.

  “Not sure if this is the right angle. Maybe we're off on a tangent.” He took a frustrated breath and then sipped at his mocha.

  He set his brown cardboard cup down carefully and turned towards me, “All you got so far is the title of the book?”

  Yup.

  “Nothing else?”

  Nope.

  He folded his hands behind his head. “So, what now? Do we just wait until the drummer starts pounding away at your chest?”