Fade to Black - Proof

by Jeffrey Wilson

  He smiled. Pam had been asking him to balance that damn fan for weeks.

  He felt himself change also. The burning pain in his chest and throat dissipated and then disappeared, and the raspy gurgling of his breathing was replaced with a soft and comfortable sighing of near sleep. He felt Pam stir beside him.

  Jack’s wife lay in their bed, the sheet pulled up to her bare shoulders, her hair spread out on the pillow beneath her. Jack rolled over stiffly and put his arm around his sleeping wife. He breathed deeply of her scent and hugged her gently. She squeezed his arm and sighed, then rolled over to face him, her eyes opening and a smile spreading across her sleepy, angelic face.

  “Hey, you,” she said.

  Jack kissed her forehead gently.

  “Hey, baby,” he said.

  Pam reached her hand up from under the sheets and caressed his face with her warm hand.

  “You okay, honey?” she asked, “You look like you’ve been crying.” Pam ran a finger lightly over his cheek then kissed her fingertip gently. “Jack, you’ve been crying. What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing, baby,” he said and pulled her against him. Pam sighed and hugged him back.

  “Nightmare?” she asked.

  “No,” he said. He closed his eyes and held her tightly. He was home. “I just love you so much, Pam.” He pulled his head back from their embrace and looked her deeply in the eyes. “Do you know that, baby?”

  Pam closed her eyes and smiled, then kissed him lightly on his lips.

  “I know,” she said. “I love you too, Casey. I’m so proud of you.”

  “I’m home,” Jack said.

  “Yes, baby,” Pam said, hugging him tighter. “You’re home.”

  Jack held her like that, feeling her breathing slow and her arms relax as she drifted off to sleep. He felt like there were so many questions he should be asking himself. So many things he needed to sort out. But he was so tired—so goddamn exhausted. He let himself slip softly and comfortably into a deep and dreamless sleep, his arms wrapped around his wife.

  * * *

  Jack woke feeling relaxed and content at first. The room was warm from the morning sun, and he kicked the sheet and blanket off of his legs. He stretched out his arms and back, feeling stiff, then reached for his wife, but she was gone. Her side of the bed was still warm though. Jack yawned.

  Then he sat up, his mind suddenly racing. His initial thoughts were not about Fallujah, or Hoag, or falling through a black hole in the sidewalk downtown in the middle of the day. Instead, he tried desperately to remember how in the hell he got home. He remembered every detail of his afternoon, of his trip (nightmare?) to Iraq, and his conversation with Hoag. He remembered lying in the street of Fallujah again, as Casey Stillman. What he couldn’t remember was anything after that. How had he ended up in their bed? His next memory was of lying in bed with Pam late last night. Where was the rest of the time? Where had he awoken from his nightmare? It had to have been downtown, so how did he get home and what happened after that?

  The memories of his nightmare terrified him, but not half as much as the huge gap in his memory. He had no idea what had happened in the seventeen or eighteen hours since the horrible hallucination downtown. He also realized that he no longer believed that his trips to Fallujah or his conversations with Hoag and the others were really hallucinations. Not anymore.

  Jack looked over at the clock on his nightstand. Eight thirty—still early.

  He needed to talk to Pam.

  Jack pulled on some sweat pants and a T-shirt and padded barefoot out of the room. Before heading down the stairs he gave into the urge to look at Claire in her crib, maybe give her a kiss. He headed down the hall and peered in, but her crib was empty.

  Huh. Must be up already.

  Jack realized it would be a lot more comfortable to talk to his wife about the missing time if Claire were still in bed. He wasn’t sure why that was, she was only a toddler and certainly didn’t understand enough to realize Dad was crazy as a shithouse wall. It didn’t matter. He needed desperately to talk to his wife. Jack turned and headed downstairs.

  “There’s Daddy!” Pam said to the smiling little girl in her lap as Jack came down the stairs and into the living room. She sat cross‐legged on the floor, her arms around their little girl as they worked together on an Elmo puzzle. “Good morning, sunshine,” she said and reached out a hand to him. Jack took her hand and then Pam turned to Claire. “Daddy can help us, Claire Bear.”

  Jack smiled a pensive smile and squeezed her hand. He saw her face cloud a bit.

  “What’s wrong, Jack? Did you have a nightmare?” Her voice sounded anxious.

  Jack thought a moment, unsure how to start. He looked down and picked up a puzzle piece, part of Elmo’s arm holding a rubber ducky, and turned it over in his hands.

  “Honey, what happened last night?” he asked.

  “What do you mean, Jack? After we went to bed?”

  Jack swallowed hard. Might as well jump right in.

  “No,” he said. “Before…I…”

  I what? I don’t remember a single goddamn thing after I got to my car? Except for the desert in Iraq, of course, and a street in Fallujah. My reality now.

  He sighed heavily. “I had kind of a blackout, Pam,” he looked up and held her troubled gaze.

  “A blackout? Jack, what do you mean?”

  Claire was looking at them with a pout on her face now, not at all happy about the change in mood.

  He blurted it out.

  “Pam, I don’t remember driving home after lunch. In fact I don’t remember anything until you woke up and looked at me last night.” There he had said it. No going back.

  “Oh my God, Jack,” Pam said. She covered her mouth with her free hand. “What do you remember?”

  Jack thought about telling her about Hoag and the others in Iraq. He would, he decided, but first he needed desperately to fill the gaps in his night.

  “Honey, first can you tell me what we did last night?” His voice was pleading and his eyes were wet.

  “You got home a little after me,” she started. She handed Claire, fussy now at not being the center of attention, to Jack and loaded a DVD into the machine. Mickey and friends grabbed Claire’s attention and started talking about colors. “We put Claire down for a nap, and then we lay together on the couch with the TV on. Then I, well…” She blushed. “I helped you relax.”

  Shame not to have that memory.

  Pam sat on the couch now, her legs pulled under her, and Jack joined her. She took both of his hands in hers.

  “Jack, maybe we should call Dr. Lewellyn,” she said. There were tears in her eyes. Jack hugged her. “I’m sorry, Jack. I’m not trying to be an emotional mess.” She pulled out of his hug, wiped the tears from her eyes and looked at him. “This is not something we can do just the two of us. You know that right?” She waited expectantly, but Jack looked down. Pam lifted his eyes back to hers gently by his chin. “We need to call Dr. Lewellyn.”

  “No, baby. Not right now. Not yet,” he kissed her cheek. “Tell me the rest first.”

  Pam looked off in the distance, reconstructing the day in her mind.

  “When Claire got up, we went to the playground, but it was chilly so we didn’t stay long…”

  Hearing his wife fill in the gaps of the day and evening gave Jack a sense of comfort. He held her hand and listened as she told him of their walk back to the house, how they played upstairs in Claire’s room. She told him of their dinner (chicken and green beans with salad and au gratin potatoes) and of giving Claire a bath together. She told him how he had put her to bed while she had cleaned up, and that he had watched some TV while she talked to her mother on the phone.

  “The news?” Jack asked, hoping maybe something from the news would explain what had happened to him.

  “No,” she answered. “I think you watched a Frasier rerun.” Then she told him how they had opened a bottle of wine and watched a movie together, an old movie with H
umphrey Bogart (she couldn’t remember the name) on AMC.

  “Then we took a shower together and went to bed,” she said. “I must have worn you out ’relaxing‘ you in the afternoon because you were asleep when I got into bed.” She thought hard for a moment. “I think you forgot to take your medicine,” she said with hope in her voice, like maybe that explained everything.

  Jack knew better. He sat quietly for a moment when she finished. She had described a wonderful evening, a typical Friday night at home (except for him falling asleep after being naked in the shower with her. That was hard to believe, his pride and libido told him). He remembered none of it. Even hearing it failed to make it real for him as he had hoped.

  “What do you remember?” Pam asked. She slid closer to him and wrapped her arms around his arm. Claire bounced up and down and laughed at Mickey and Minnie as they flew around in his open‐cockpit airplane, looking for more colors.

  Jack told her everything he remembered. He spared her some of the gory details, but left nothing important out. He told her about the paper and seeing the names of his men from his nightmares. He told her of Hoag, and how he had become angry, nearly hysterical, and demanded that Jack, or Casey, go with them on some death journey. He relayed how he had refused, insisting that he had to get home to his family.

  “They said I died in Fallujah,” he said.

  “Oh, Jack,” she cried and hugged him tighter, her head on his chest.

  Then he told her about going back to the dirty street in Fallujah, where he had lay dying, bleeding to death in the street. Jack told her about the battalion surgeon doing something to his chest that made it easier for him to breathe and how he kept just trying to picture her and Claire in his mind.

  “You were talking to me,” Jack said softly.

  “What did I say?”

  “You asked me not to leave you,” Jack answered. Tears rolled down his cheeks now. “You told me to come home.” He held her tightly. Pam raised her head and looked at him, a sad but loving smile on her face.

  “And you did,” she said, and kissed his cheek.

  “Yeah,” Jack replied. He didn’t know what else to say.

  “Jack,” Pam said, her head again on his shoulder, “I really think we need to call Dr. Lewellyn. I mean, blackouts, Jack? What if something happens to you?”

  “I don’t think Lewellyn can help me now,” Jack said.

  “What do you mean?” Pam said, louder than she meant to. “You said yourself he was helping you a lot, that things were getting better.” Pam’s voice was higher, more desperate.

  “It’s different now, Pam. Can’t you see that?” He spoke more harshly than he meant to and Pam looked down, her lip quivering. Jack sighed and sat beside her again, taking her free hand in his. “Pam, their names were in the goddamn paper for Christ’s sake! Don’t you get it? This isn’t a nightmare. It’s real, now. Somehow I’m connected to this Casey Stillman, or I am him, or…Shit I don’t know!” He looked down at the floor and massaged his forehead in frustration.

  “Where is the paper now, Jack? I never saw it.” Pam demanded. She was holding Claire against her chest now.

  Jack thought a minute. “I left it, I guess.”

  “Left it, Jack?” Pam stood up and started to pace back and forth, Claire clinging to her neck. “Left it in Iraq in some nightmare, is that what you’re saying? Jesus, Jack!” She stood next to him again. Jack stared at his feet and said nothing. What in the hell could he possibly say? Everything she said made sense. Everything.

  But she’s wrong.

  "Isn’t it possible that you just imagined reading that paper? That you left it in your car or it never existed? Just because you think you remember reading names in a paper that you don’t even have anymore, we’re supposed to believe, that…that…Jesus, what the hell is it we’re supposed to believe? That you’re some kind of fucking ghost? I mean, Jack, that’s just…” She stopped and Jack looked up at her sharply.

  “Crazy? Is that the word you’re looking for, Pam?” Jack felt a stab in his chest. He would rather endure almost anything before having this woman he loved so much think he was insane. Maybe he shouldn’t have told her.

  “No.” She started to cry again, and she pressed her face, wet with tears against his neck. “No, baby, I didn’t mean that. Something is bothering you, something deep inside you, and I want to help you.” She kissed him on the lips. “I love you, Jack, and I am here for you no matter what, ok?” she cupped her hand on his cheek.

  “Ok,” he said. “But I don’t want to call Lewellyn. Not yet. I want…I don’t know. I just want to figure this out more before I call him, okay?”

  Pam was with him, on his side as always, but now what? She depended on him to think of some way to sort this out, right? What she said about the paper made sense, he supposed. But he KNEW he had gotten that paper, and that he had carried it with him more than once. Maybe it was still in the car. Jack stood up again and headed for the door. He grabbed his keys from the mirrored key hook they had mounted near the front door. “I’ll be right back,” he said.

  “Where are you going, Jack?” Pam’s voice was frightened. Jack rushed back over and kissed her.

  “Baby, it’s ok,” he said and smiled. “I’m just going to the car to look for the paper, okay? I’ll be right back.”

  “Ok,” Pam said with a weak smile. “I’m sorry, Jack. I just don’t want you to leave me.”

  “I’ll never leave you, Pam,” he said.

  The Volvo was right where it should be, neatly parked in the center of the driveway. Jack clicked his fob and the door lock clicked open, the interior light coming on. He opened the door and looked inside.

  No Marine Corps Times, although the porcelain vase full of flowers was still there. He tore the car apart looking for it but found nothing. Was Pam right? Had the paper been another hallucination? Jack gritted his teeth in frustration. He had no fucking idea anymore what was real and what was his imagination. Maybe he had been right before. Maybe he was just like the screwed up math guy in that fucking movie with the gladiator. Maybe he was schizophrenic. Wouldn’t that explain all of this horseshit? And they had medicine for that now, right? I mean, that story had been in the fifties when they didn’t know shit about medicine. Jack started to think that he should call Dr. Lewellyn after all.

  “Bad idea, Casey.”

  He spun around in fear and rage and looked at Hoag with gritted teeth, fire in his eyes.

  “You get the fuck out of here,” he hissed. “You stay away from my family, you son of a bitch! Do you hear me?” Jack was glad that the commander didn’t start cleaning his glasses, or he would have punched him in the face for sure.

  “Casey,” Hoag said patiently. He was the saintly chaplain again, all the hysteria and mania from the night before well hidden. “Lewellyn is just something you made up to help you escape from the reality of your death. He’ll say whatever you think you want him to say.”

  “Bullshit!” Jack said and turned on his heel, heading for the front door. He clicked the fob, locking the Volvo over his shoulder.

  “There are other ways you can check it out, Jack.” Hoag hollered after him. “Go to Pendleton, Jack. You’ll see. Go to Pendleton and see for yourself.”

  Jack watched a moment as Hoag began to shimmer, sparkling with light, and then disappeared. He looked at the flowers in his hand and stood there, his mind trying to figure out his next move while he caught his breath. Maybe Hoag, or whatever part of his mind had created that bastard, was right. He could go to Camp Pendleton, couldn’t he? Go to the base and check out One MEF, especially Third Battalion and Kilo Company, for himself. That would settle it for sure. He looked again at the flowers in his hand and suddenly felt ridiculous.

  Jack shrugged his shoulders and went inside.

  Chapter

  22

  Pam had not liked the idea of a trip to the United States Marine Corps Base, Camp Pendleton, California, in the least. To her it seemed only to feed the
delusion that the hallucinations, or nightmares or whatever the hell they were, could be real. She had expressed that opinion to him in no uncertain terms. It wasn’t that Jack didn’t appreciate where she was coming from. He knew how crazy it sounded. He worked hard to help her see his frustration that he didn’t understand what he was doing, and so he most certainly couldn’t help her understand what was going on. It wasn’t just that the dreams seemed real. The subtle and hard to define ways that everything else—his whole life—seemed unreal and dreamlike. Everything except Pam and Claire. When it was all boiled down to shit and grease, as his granddad used to love to say (what a weird time to remember that little phrase), the only things he knew were real were his girls and his deep, almost desperate love for them. Everything else was suspect. He had admitted to Pam the fact that he wasn’t sure of anything. That while it seemed plausible, in a bizarre way he knew she couldn’t comprehend, that Hoag and Simmons and the others were in some way real, he also knew how fucking crazy that sounded. He told her that he needed to go to Pendleton to find out the truth. It was not to prove something he thought he knew, because he admitted he didn’t know what the hell he knew and what could be dream—or insanity, he supposed.

  In the end, that was what won the battle. Pam seemed able to accept that the trip could prove, once and for all, that the nightmares and hallucinations were just that. His promise that he would call Lewellyn when they returned had clinched the deal.

  The only wrinkle was her insistence that she go with him. To be honest, the thought of having her by his side was a tremendous comfort. He didn’t put up a tremendous struggle, as he thought he might really need the strength her presence would give him, no matter what he found in California. Perhaps more important was the realization that, as far as he knew, he had not yet had a hallucination (or whatever the hell they were) in front of her. Maybe his images, real or not, would not come to him if she was there—whether because they were unable to appear in her presence or because as products of his mind, he unconsciously protected her from them. Either way, he felt better having her along despite his guilt over the tremendous strain he believed he was putting on his wife.