Night Shadows

by Greg Herren

Faye said she prayed a lot for her parents to come back, but that she knew that couldn’t happen. She said she wasn’t sad as much, now that she was at St. Cecelia’s. Then she said she knew she should be sad about not being at her grandparents’ house anymore, but that she really didn’t like it there, that at first it was okay, because of the darkroom and the people who came to get their pictures taken, and painting with her grandfather in the kitchen. But then there had been the ladies in the photographs and the things on the plates and the head in the basement and she didn’t want to eat meat anymore and it just got harder and harder to be there and easier and easier to be here, at St. Cecelia’s, and that since she was really an orphan anyway, she should be here, it’s what her parents would have wanted, she was sure of that, really sure, because there was never anything but wood in the vise at her parents’ house and there was that lady’s head with the sewn-up lips and no eyes in the vise at her grandparents’ house and Faye just knew, she really just knew, that wasn’t at all right.

  Detective Tom had been writing things down on a little notepad. Sister Mary Margaret had been holding Faye’s hand while she talked, but after Faye started to talk about the photographs, she had squeezed Faye’s hand really hard and then let it go. Detective Tom was leaning against Mother Superior’s desk and Faye couldn’t really see Mother’s face. But Detective Tom had stopped writing after a while and had just looked right at Faye while she talked.

  “I never looked at the jar on the table,” Faye said, at the end. “I just really didn’t want to see any more. Sister Anne Marie said she would get to the bottom of things. She said it would all work out.”

  Detective Tom had turned and looked at Mother Superior then and tilted his head toward Faye as he said, “We need to talk now, without the child.”

  24.

  After Faye had called the suicide hotline, she had gotten out of bed, gotten dressed, pulled on her coat, and left the apartment. It was nearly two in the morning, but it was New York on a Thursday and even though it was biting cold, there was always somewhere to go, places where there would be people. Faye needed people. Faye needed noise and music and even though she hated it, maybe even cigarette smoke. Faye thought if she just had a drink in a bar with a lot of loud music and people shouting and laughing and dancing and smoking and drinking, she wouldn’t kill herself.

  At least not tonight.

  She wouldn’t go to the river and drown herself, which was how she had decided to die. She already knew from a myriad of stories she’d covered what wouldn’t work—she couldn’t throw herself in front of a car or a subway. She couldn’t take pills or hang herself. She couldn’t jump from her apartment window. She didn’t want to take anyone else with her, anyway, not now, not tonight. She had enough blood on her hands. Faye just wanted a drink and some inane conversation and someone to give her a reason not to die, even if it was just temporary. She needed to stop seeing the slide show that wouldn’t stop running in her head. She needed someone else’s story or pictures to run for a while. She was prepared to be the best listener ever. If only for this one night.

  *

  When Faye woke up, it was nearly dark again. She looked at the clock—quarter to five. How had she slept so long—ten, twelve hours? She didn’t remember coming home, but she also didn’t remember dreaming, so she didn’t care if she’d gotten plastered or even with whom. She hadn’t slept without nightmares since that night in Bukavu nearly two weeks ago with Martine. She lay in her bed, trying to think. She vaguely remembered being in one of the Irish bars near Penn Station. She’d liked those bars when she had first been working at the paper. A lot of retired cops hung out there, along with a few errant IRA types, and some low-level criminals and mobsters. It was as good a place as any to get a drink, or get drunk, and she got to listen, because she was always looking for a new story then, or even an old story that could be brought to life in a new form—replete with photographs.

  Faye knew she’d been in a cab, though going to or from the bar or even what bar, she couldn’t recall. Faye sat up slowly—she felt slightly dizzy, as if she’d had way too much to drink. She had an awful taste in her mouth and what felt like pieces of food. Ugh—had she gone to sleep with food in her mouth? Or had she vomited from drinking? Her lips felt dry and cracked. She walked—staggered was more like it—to the bathroom, turned on the light, and looked in the mirror.

  Her mouth was crusted with blood and there was blood on her left cheek and blood on her neck and ear. She spat into the sink and bits of what looked like meat splattered the porcelain. Faye hadn’t eaten meat since she was seven and living at her grandparents house. She felt like she was going to vomit. Faye turned on the faucet and as she did, she saw she had blood on both hands. Her nails had blood under them and as her heart began to pound, she saw she had blood on her shirt and blood on her thighs. She turned off the faucet and got into the shower, still in her shirt and underwear. But as she reached for the faucet there, she saw blood on her feet, blood pooled on the floor of the tub, blood leaking from somewhere behind her.

  Faye felt hot and dizzy and she could feel the air pressing up out of her lungs, but she didn’t scream, couldn’t scream. She turned and pulled back the shower curtain.

  There, behind the shower curtain, up against the edge of the tub, lay the crumpled body of Sister Anne Marie. Her throat was slit and gaping, the blood thick and gelatinous around the wound. Her habit was cut apart in different places—one of her breasts had been cut clean off. Her side was open, just like the pictures of Jesus, and her liver had been cut out. Her habit was pushed up to her waist and blood was congealed on her thighs and between them. Her face had not been cut, but her eyes were open wide and had the blue fish-eye film of death over them. Her mouth was open and askew and there was blood on her teeth and lips, but Faye did not see a wound. As she leaned closer, though, she saw that Sister Anne Marie’s tongue had been cut out. Inside her mouth was filled with clotted, pudding-like gore.

  Faye stood there, her feet covered in the pooling blood, staring at Sister Anne Marie’s body, at what had been done to her. She reached over to pull down her habit, to cover her up, automatically crossing herself as she did so, but as she moved forward, making the sign of the cross, she slipped in the blood and fell into Sister Anne Marie, Faye’s face up against hers, her lips almost on the dead nun’s.

  *

  It was Faye’s own screaming that finally woke her.

  25.

  Sister Mary Margaret had taken Faye out of the office in the dormitory and led her back to the living room. Theresa had gotten up and come over and asked if she was okay and Faye had just nodded, but hadn’t said anything. Faye knew something was wrong, she knew that something had happened to Sister Anne Marie and she was afraid—afraid it was her fault and that she would never see Sister Anne Marie again.

  After a while, Detective Tom had come out of the room with Mother Superior and they had walked to the front door together and walked out onto the enclosed porch. They were talking very low and both of them looked serious. Faye couldn’t hear anything they said. From where she was sitting, Faye could see Mother Superior put her head down and put her hands on her face and shake her head. Detective Tom put his hand on her shoulder and said something. Then he left. Mother came back in, motioned to Sister Mary Margaret, and they went into the office together and shut the door.

  *

  Sister Anne Marie never came back to St. Cecelia’s. There was an assembly and Mother Superior spoke to everyone and said there had been an accident and Sister Anne Marie was not coming back to St. Cecelia’s. Mother told them that they might hear things, other things, but that was what had happened. There had been an accident. She said it was very sad and it was all right for them to feel sad and they could cry if they wanted to, but they should remember that Jesus was taking care of Sister Anne Marie now and that she was safe and loved and in Heaven.

  There was a big rustling in the room and murmurs and Faye could hear the sounds of some of the
girls starting to cry and there were whispers among the older girls.

  Mother looked very pale and tired as she stood on the little stage where Sister Anne Marie had put on the recitals and musical events. She knew that people weren’t supposed to lie, but she knew Mother Superior was lying. She knew that there hadn’t been an accident. She knew that Sister Anne Marie had gone to her grandparents’ house to make sure that Faye never had to go back there and now she was gone. Faye thought about Sister Anne Marie praying with her in the dormitory, sitting on her bed with her and hugging her and she wished she had never told her about her grandfather and the photographs and the lady’s head. Faye didn’t want to cry, but she did anyway. She wanted to see Sister Anne Marie. She didn’t want to think about what had happened to her. She couldn’t think about what had happened to her.

  Mother Superior told them they should all pray for Sister Anne Marie. Right now, they were going to pray for Sister Anne Marie, “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou among women…”

  26.

  Faye hadn’t quit the newspaper and now she knew she wouldn’t. She’d intended to when she got back from the DRC and Afghanistan, but she’d never gone on to Afghanistan as planned—it had been too much. That story was still waiting for her and she still wanted it. She’d learned that ordinary mayhem was her metier and she knew she had to follow it, no matter what.

  It had taken nearly all the pre-production time they’d had for Faye and her editor to lay out the Congo story. He had looked at the photos—she’d culled just under a hundred for him to look at—and he had looked at them for about fifteen minutes and then had abruptly gotten up and left the room.

  When he came back, he hadn’t looked directly at Faye, but had gone back to the light table and said, “Powerful stuff, Faye. More powerful than I expected. I have to think about what we’re going to use here. Give me some time—go do more work on the copy. It needs to be pristine for this one. I don’t want rewrite involved. This is all you here. All you. I want to showcase this. People remember the other stories—that girl in the subway and the kids being poisoned. They want to hear from you. And you were there—rewrite wasn’t there. So just tell it. Lay it out for us. The part that’s not here, whatever that is. You know, I don’t.”

  Faye had gone home to write, but had ended up crawling into bed and trying not to dream.

  *

  The day after she’d had the nightmare about Sister Anne Marie, Faye had finalized the date with the Tribeca gallery owner she’d signed the contract with for her show and had begun to put it together. Now she had a clear picture of the show in her head. She was ready. She went down to the gallery and met with Nick Allingham, the owner, and his assistant, a young woman with fluffy, white-blond hair and dramatic tattoos who went by the unlikely name of Persia, just Persia.

  Nick was clear: He wanted a gag order on the show until the opening. Only he and Persia were to see the photos and what Faye was calling “mixed media” pieces. There was also a video installation piece that Persia had put together of Faye’s previous work. It was going to be fantastic. For the first time since she’d returned from the DRC, Faye felt okay. More than okay, actually. Maybe the nightmares were over for good. Maybe that was what the work was for—to keep the nightmares at bay.

  Nick and Faye both knew the show was going to generate the kind of attention that Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ and AIDS artist David Wojnarowicz had garnered. Nick was calling Faye “the new Mapplethorpe” in press releases and on the gallery’s website, which made Faye cringe. She didn’t want to be derivative of anyone else. Faye reminded Nick that Mapplethorpe never developed his own photographs and that they were all staged, whereas hers were real—cinema verité of the most visceral sort. She knew she sounded petulant when she said it—a diva artist of a type she’d never aspired to be. But it was out there.

  Nick shrugged. But Persia, who despite her studied vacant look was clearly brilliant, the video installation was spectacular, said that they—Faye, Nick, the gallery—needed to be prepared for backlash. And also to expect it.

  “Sure, this mayor isn’t going to go all Giuliani on everyone and try and shut the place down, but this is intense. People always think they really want to know,” Persia said, her unnaturally green eyes sparkling with something Faye thought was pure rage. “Oh yeah—they all think they want to see what’s hiding underneath the rocks or what’s hidden behind those blue drapes at the scene of an accident or behind the yellow police tape at a crime. They think it will broaden them and expand them and put them more in touch with humanity, but they really don’t want to know because they really can’t, you know, process it. They’re really just voyeurs and can’t admit to it. They just want to get off on the sickness of what’s in the darkest recesses of everyone’s twisted psyche. I mean think about how many people buy the art work and memorabilia of serial killers. Serial killers. Imagine.”

  Faye had begun looking at something in one of her portfolios while Persia was talking, but when she said serial killers, Faye had snapped to attention and looked directly at her. But Persia was just spewing—she hated the insincerity of the majority of what she called New York’s “art predators” and just kept ranting.

  The rest of what she said, Faye had always known. She’d known it since the very first time she’d actually looked at the photographs of the women hanging on the clothesline in her grandfather’s darkroom. She’d known it when she had been unflinching on the subway tracks with Esperanza. She’d started to feel it, really feel it, when Shihong had shown her everything in the little shop in Chinatown. That still made her shudder. But Faye had never felt it as deeply as she had when she had been in the DRC. That feeling, which she’d had every day and night since, was the feeling that Persia was talking about. Once you knew for sure what other people were capable of, once you knew the horror was more than nightmare, once you knew what true horror was and that there was nothing supernatural about it—no vampires, no werewolves, no things that went bump in the night—but that it was as real as it gets, that it was what Vandana meant when she said “monsters,” then you could never look away again.

  Ever.

  All three of them—Faye, Nick, Persia—wanted to be prepared for whatever the response was, but they also wanted the initial shock to be dramatic. Persia said she wanted people to feel like they’d been hit hard when they first came into the gallery. Nick knew the kind of reviews Faye’s other work had received and he was hoping for an even more dramatic response to this show. He was hoping for a sellout opening where all Faye’s work was sold and people put in orders for more.

  Faye was exhibiting the most brutal of the DRC photos—ones that the paper said they simply couldn’t run, even in the magazine. And then there was everything she had gotten from Shihong when she’d been in Chinatown, and the contents of her apothecary cabinet at home. There were the photographs she had taken years before, of the jars at St. Cecelia’s and of St. Cecelia herself, lying on her alabaster slab, with her neck sliced open. Those were the photographs she had taken with her first camera and developed herself, they were her own private retrospective, she realized now.

  But there were also the other photographs, the ones that no one had ever seen, that even Nick hadn’t seen yet and which would be in the show as a surprise. A stunning surprise, Faye thought.

  *

  The nightmares had stopped after that last dream about Sister Anne Marie, the one that had been so intense, so real Faye had actually tasted blood in her mouth, but then realized she had bitten the inside of her cheek from fear in her sleep. When she woke up there was fresh blood on her pillow.

  Faye had called Martine a few days later. They had talked for a while and Faye had felt better. She realized that getting back to work was the best thing. She was already planning her trip to Afghanistan. A soldier had just gone nuts over there and killed over a dozen civilians, some of them children. He was decorated, but on his fifth tour of duty. He’d already ha
d a traumatic brain injury in an IED attack. The day before he went out at night and shot up a series of homes in the village near the base, he’d watched a friend get blown up in front of him. Body parts had landed in his lap. If he’d been a foot closer, it would have been his body parts strewn across the roadway.

  Faye had called a friend, a reporter, over in Kabul and asked what else there was to know. He’d told her that there had been some “unpleasant stuff” at the base where the soldier had been—another soldier had gone home on leave and lit his wife on fire and killed himself. A few other suicides, really grisly ones. Another couple murders. “It’s a bad situation—you just can’t keep sending these guys out to kill every day for years and years and think they’re going to stay anything like normal, you know? They become killing machines. Put them back in their own society and they can’t cope. They need to kill. If you want stories, I’ve got stories. Let me know when you’re coming.”

  And Faye, who had been so sure before she’d gone to the DRC that she was leaving the paper, leaving the images behind, had felt the lure again. This time she would be prepared, though. She knew that. This time she’d be safe from the carousel of images. The gallery show would take care of all that—it would be cathartic, an exorcism. It would lay it all out. The ordinary mayhem she’d lived with since the night her parents burned alive in their car in the snow on New Year’s Eve. Faye thought she was okay now. Faye thought she was safe.

  27.

  Faye had stayed on at St. Cecelia’s until she graduated. A decade of moving between the floors of the dormitory. A decade of leaving talismans for the Virgin Mary in the grotto. A decade of being friends with Rosario and Carmen, Alicia and the three Theresas. A decade of prayers. A decade of photographs. A decade of running her fingers through the slices on St. Cecelia’s neck every morning on her way to Mass. A decade of knowing she was Mother Superior’s special project, because Mother Superior knew what no one else had known.