“You’re in luck,” said Tuyen. She pulled the tape out and turned to Evan.
“You gonna put a new one back in?”
“Why bother?” She nodded at the monitor, which still showed a spliced mess of the world.
She handed the tape to Evan and he reached to take it. Their fingers brushed for just a second.
The tiny office was closeted, and it was a dry night. Static must have built up in their bodies, because when he touched her there was a sharp jolt at his fingers. Unusually strong for a static shock, but still the sort of thing you just ignored in polite company.
Tuyen apparently missed the “How To Ignore Shocks, Farts, and Burps” class at her finishing school. She gasped and stepped back so fast she almost collided with the desk. Evan reached out to steady her and she did a sort of epileptic limbo to avoid his hand.
“What?” he said. He was worried, but also annoyed. It was a shock, he’d felt it, too. So he knew it wasn’t worth this kind of response. “You okay?” he said, and hoped he sounded sincere instead of just irritated.
Tuyen didn’t answer. She looked at the monitor, and straightened without ever taking her eyes off it. Evan didn’t look at it, telling himself it was because she was acting weird and he didn’t want to take his eyes off her, though he knew that was only partly true.
He didn’t want to look at that screen again. And realized that he was less afraid of seeing the strangely beautiful distortions than he was of seeing what they might reveal if they suddenly disappeared.
What is reality tonight?
“You need to throw that tape away,” said Tuyen.
“What?”
“Forget whatever you’re doing.”
“I’m a cop, Tuyen. I can’t just ‘forget’ stuff.”
“Sure you can. Cops do it all the time. I’ve seen it.”
She was still holding the tape. She hadn’t let go when she pulled away from him, she had yanked it out of his hand. Evan reached for it. Took it gingerly by a corner, being careful not to touch her again so she wouldn’t go crazy and tell him –
(what she saw)
– a bunch of crazy hooey about Vietnamese smoke monsters or something.
He tried to take the tape. She didn’t release it.
“Let go of what you’re doing,” she said. “Whatever you find, it won’t bring happiness.”
Evan yanked the tape out of her fingers. He dug a card out of his pocket and handed it to her. She took it like it was a venomous slug – something dangerous and disgusting.
“Call me if you think of anything you want to talk to me about,” he said.
She didn’t answer.
He was glad. He told himself it was because he’d had enough of her particular brand of crazy for the night.
But deep inside, in that place where we cannot lie – not even to the one person most likely to believe our lies, which is to say ourselves – he knew that he didn’t want to hear her speak because she knew more than she had let on. And the things she hadn’t said might very well destroy him.
Shadows
Tuyen was a child of more than one world.
She wasn’t one of those who remained hide-bound to the “old ways,” as if it would be a good thing to someday return to rice farming and a mortality rate that hadn’t changed much for hundreds of years. But neither was she one of her many friends who had completely divested themselves of what it meant to be Vietnamese and seemed bent on proving they could kill themselves with cheeseburgers and porn as fast as any other “real” American.
She liked to dress in jeans and t-shirts because they were cute. She dyed her hair and had piercings because she thought they looked good, even though her mother and grandmother had both muttered about them until the day they died.
But she was Vietnamese. She loved the stories her grandmother had told, loved the food her mother had taught her to cook. She was a bit of both – old and new – and she figured that was the best way to be.
One of the things she didn’t like about the old ways was the almost manic superstition that some people brought with them; the clinging, cringing terror of ghosts and demons and devils and spirits.
But she liked even less the attitude of so many Americans – the attitude that only what they saw was real, and then only if it could be poked, prodded, destroyed, and then reproduced for further testing. Tuyen wouldn’t allow herself to be dominated in every moment by a terror of unknown forces, but she did know that some things existed beyond the pale of human control, some situations resisted “rational” understanding.
And she felt like she was in one of those situations now.
She could tell that Detective Evan White according to the card he had left behind was one of the people who demanded proof. Who wouldn’t believe in a demon if it came and possessed his own mother – not unless that demon returned at a predetermined time and place to possess a second person as proof that the first time hadn’t been a fluke.
But Tuyen did believe. She had to. She saw things. She saw the truth of things. Not always, thank God. Truth was something that so many people claimed to want, but really truth was something that almost no one could handle. Too much truth would damage anyone. Too much truth could kill. Or worse.
She had sensed evil clinging to White when she touched his hand. Sensed darkness clutching at him, pulling him toward her.
Some of that darkness she knew. Some of it she understood. Some of it was unfamiliar to her, and she did not understand it. She did not want to, either.
She had seen White before, of course – at least in pictures. But it had been a shock to see him in here, in the shop. Not a picture but a living, breathing person.
She had thought she was past that. She had thought that part of her life had ended.
She looked at the monitor that still showed the security feed. It writhed in and around and over itself like a serpent, or like worms through the rotted flesh of life.
A shadow passed over the monitor. A momentary darkening that passed from left to right, then disappeared. Tuyen gasped, turned her head to see if anyone had come into the room.
No. She was alone. And even if someone had entered, there was no way that anyone could have thrown a shadow like that. The lighting in here was wrong for it.
She looked back at the monitor. Leaned in close, closer, peering into the dissolution that rampaged across the screen, trying to understand, to see.
Why was White here? He had asked if she had seen anyone, but was that really what he meant?
Was this about his wife?
White’s card crumpled in Tuyen’s hands as she leaned closer to the monitor.
She had always been able to see truth. Her grandmother and mother both had the gift of true-seeing. They had been fortune-tellers, revered and sought after for advice and for wisdom.
No one came to Tuyen – that was another reason she dressed and acted like she did. She loved much of her past, much of where she came from, but she did not want to live her life as a servant of people coming with the same grasping, greedy questions. Will I be rich? Will he love me? Is she cheating on me? Over and over, forever the same, always repeating and never changing.
She wanted her sight for herself, not for everyone else.
But of late her abilities had waned. The fortunes she cast were vague, barely better than the crap in the astrology section of a magazine. Her readings were murky, and the few things she did see… always dark.
She turned off the security monitor. The screen blanked, and now she was staring only at herself, the blurry outlines of a Tuyen who lived in the wraithlands on the other side of the glass.
She went back into the section of the store that was dedicated to darkness. She hated it, and the owner of the store – a wizened old man named Pham Duong – assured her he did, too. He only kept such things because the people demanded it, because the community needed darkness so that it would understand how bright the light.
That was what he said. But he had a g
litter in his eyes sometimes. The things in the dark arts were costly. He made much money in the back half of the store – and money was something that both Americans and people rooted in the old ways seemed to agree on. So Pham Duong sighed, and shook his head. He whispered how much he would prefer not to have these “awful things” in his store. But then he stocked more of them, and increased the prices when he could.
The lights flickered. On, off. On, off.
Then just off.
Tuyen wrapped her arms around herself. She hurried to the curtain. She needed to leave. Needed to –
A sound stopped her. It was low. Not even a whisper. Not even a breath, almost a feeling. But it was enough. Enough to stop her, to anchor her feet to the floor.
She turned her head. Looked behind her.
The monstrosity on the back wall was dimly visible. Blood python, Tonkin snub-nose monkey, a jackal born too soon. All eating each other.
Their eyes were open.
The muscles in Tuyen’s face started rippling. Her heart beat sledgehammer blows against the inside of her chest. Terror held her so tightly she couldn’t breathe.
Is this real?
Is this my sight?
Is this real?
The eyes had never been opened, the things’ eyes had come sewn shut. That was part of the things’ magic, to know it was forever eating in ignorance, for all darkness was ignorant; all destruction was blind.
But now… each beast stared into space. Their eyes seemed to glow, and Tuyen’s heart skipped as she saw that each creature had one black eye and one white. Another sign. Darkness and light, chaos in sight.
She cried out, and managed to coax her feet into movement. She ran through the curtain, into the front of the store.
The eclectic mix of magic and religion, of West and East that the store presented, usually comforted her. She had been born in the U.S., but she had been suckled on stories of Vietnam. She knew the old country as a place that had been invaded many different times by many different powers. It had always survived, not by conquering but by adapting. Catholics and Buddhists and Cao Dài could all be found, and many Vietnamese practiced bits of each religion, as well as parts of the tribal beliefs they had grown up with while cultivating rice since time untold.
But the usual comfort she found in this strange mix of belief was not here. Not now. The lights had flickered out in this part of the store as well. And again, Tuyen couldn’t tell if that was what was really happening, or merely what she was seeing. Sometimes she saw truth, but truth did not always mirror reality. Reality was just a mask the universe wore. To teach us to see a bit at a time. To prepare us for a day when we might understand everything, and in so doing be allowed to stand with our ancestors in holy places. That was what Tuyen’s grandmother had always said, and not until now had Tuyen understood what it meant.
She felt something writhe inside her. Terror.
What if she was about to see – really see? What if the mask was about to be ripped away, and the truth revealed?
Tuyen didn’t think she could handle that.
She had been moving, pushing her way through the dark store, operating by muscle-memory, avoiding the piles of plant cuttings and relics and other paraphernalia as she moved. Now she stopped, her feet seeming to glue themselves to the floor.
Someone was here.
Someone was watching her.
She saw the form – a dark figure at the front of the store. For a moment she thought it was someone inside with her, then realized that whoever it was was just outside. Standing in the darkness beyond the window.
She couldn’t make out the person’s features – the window was smeared with grime and soot from the city air – but she could see what looked like the shape of a man. Not a hulk or a leviathan, nothing overtly superhuman about his form. But still, her heart began racing even faster, to the point she worried about becoming the youngest heart attack victim ever recorded.
The man just stared. His face a blur beyond the glass.
Tuyen had a sudden realization. A sudden sense of wonder and dread.
What if this was about Detective White’s wife? In more ways than he knew?
“Please don’t hurt me.” She whispered the words, so low that there was no way the man/beast/demon/thing on the other side of the glass could hear her.
The figure laughed. Low, quiet. The laugh of a man. But it chilled her to the bone, made her feel like someone was yanking her soul right out of her body.
The figure moved. Tuyen shrank back, terrified he was going to come into the store. There was nothing to stop him – the door was wide open, the bamboo hanging would not keep him away if he wanted in.
And she didn’t know if iron bars or a steel door would have sufficed to keep him out.
But he turned the opposite way. His form seemed to flow, and she wondered if she was seeing a vision again. Wondered if what had happened to her grandmother at the end – she had died a wreck of a woman, drooling and screaming about spirits everywhere – would happen now to her.
She stared at the empty window a long time. The lights came back on, though she did not touch them. She did not know – and likely never would – if the darkness had been real, if it had been true, or if it had been vision.
She went to the stool with the cash register. She realized she was still holding the business card Detective White had given her, and shoved it absently in her purse.
Did this have to do with him?
With his wife?
What did the man – or spirit, or demon – at the window have to do with all this? And why had he seemed to melt?
Then she realized the man wasn’t really melting or becoming something impossible.
He was just wearing a coat. A long, black coat.
It should have been a comfort. It should have made her feel better, to know she hadn’t witnessed wings sprouting from the back of an animal spirit, or from an evil demon.
But it didn’t. Whoever was watching her had worn a long black coat. A man, most certainly.
But some men could be demons.
Captain
The clock read 3:36 A.M.
Evan knew that, because he kept looking at it. Wondering how much longer it would be before he could sleep, knowing it was going to be far too long.
He was always tired.
Life had turned into a series of night-day-night-days that blended together. That was what death did, what grief and mourning did. He had always heard about that effect, but never experienced it. Not until Val.
Still, shouldn’t it have ended by now? Shouldn’t he have started healing?
Maybe not. Maybe he never would.
He supposed he should be grateful; he had known longer nights. The fact that he had run into a murderer at a bar, that a fatality had occurred, that shots had been fired – all of them added hours to his night. At least he wasn’t the forensics team. They’d probably be at the bar for the better part of twenty-four hours.
And, he already knew, they’d find nothing. Or maybe too much. At a certain point, the difference between a dearth of information and a wealth of it was meaningless. If there was no evidence their hands were tied, but if there was so much information they couldn’t make sense of it, that wasn’t any better. And at a place like a bar in a seedy part of town, Evan doubted they’d be able to parse out the meaningful from the meaningless.
So he couldn’t count on them finding anything. Couldn’t count on anyone else getting this done.
If anyone was going to find out who the killer had been, it was him. He had to find out. Had to know.
“What’s important is the look on your wife’s face when she died.” That was what the guy had said.
What did he mean? What was he trying to tell Evan? What game was he playing?
Kr-chunk.
A paper cup slipped down onto the metal grate of the vending machine. A moment later, boiling brown piss-water that was not coffee in any but the strictest technical sense started spewi
ng out of the off-white spout above it. A few drops even landed in the cup.
Then the spout seemed to fly into a rage. Boiling, spurting flashes of coffee went everywhere. The cup fell over and long swaths of coffee dripped down the side of the machine and onto the well-stained carpet below.
Evan just stared at it for a moment. “Well, screw you very much as well,” he finally managed.
He wasn’t really mad. The coffee machine was old, just like everything else at the precinct building. LAPD was severely underfunded, the victim of opposing demands for greater budgetary restraint without impacting police activity levels. An impossible task, which meant that half the people in charge of the purse strings threw up their hands a long time ago and decided to let everything go to hell.
The other half – the good ones – tried to hold onto police officers and support staff. But that meant “nonessentials” – things like cars and computers and coffee machines – got older and older and fell into disrepair. And the cops still got laid off or retired.
Still, Evan had really wanted that coffee.
He stood there another moment, as though by doing so time might turn back and return the little bits of coffee to the cup. It didn’t happen, so he went to the nearest door in the precinct basement. The basement was where they kept the evidence locker, some storage lockers, a (nonworking) coffee machine, and the object of his interest: the A/V room.
Through the open door, he felt like he was in high school again, going to the school library to check out a video player for Ms. Romy’s history class. It was mostly dark in the room, with banks of machinery lined up haphazardly throughout the space. Along one wall was a line of library-style carrels, each with a television monitor, a DVD player, and a VCR. The televisions had headsets hanging off them for private listening, so detectives could come in and watch or listen to videos when the conference rooms weren’t available or when they didn’t want to watch something at their desks.
More often than not, they got used to watch rented movies by cops who were looking for an hour or two of peace after their shifts ended, some decompression time before they went home from murder and mayhem to deal with domestic chaos. Evan had never done that. He had always rushed home.
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