Fade to Black - Proof

by Jeffrey Wilson

  Rawls smiled sympathetically. He wasn’t at all surprised that she also looked relieved. They had been more than she had bargained for when she came to work this morning, he suspected.

  “That’s no problem, Jack,” she said. “I’ll take you folks back to your car.” She led them towards the door. “You haven’t run me around at all,” Rawls said graciously. “This is exactly what they pay me for.”

  “Thanks,” Jack said as they headed to the truck. He piled in the back with Pam this time and held her against his shoulder as they headed back to the MEF headquarters building. They rode in silence. Rawls seemed to sense that they preferred not to talk. Jack realized he had all he needed here anyway. They had confirmed that Casey and Hoag were very much real, and Jack had no doubt from the PAO’s response in her office that Stillman’s name appeared on a casualty report. He had confirmed in his own mind that everything he thought he knew about Camp Pendleton and his Marines was true. This had been his home, THEIR home. They had lived on base in the married enlisted housing only a few miles from here. They had been neighbors with Staff Sergeant Danny Wilson and his wife and two little girls, both older than Claire. Jack knew that he could drive right this moment to their home in the cluster of townhouses and their house would look exactly as it did in his mind. Behind it was a green and yellow kid‐sized picnic table where Danny and Beth’s little girls had read books to Claire while the four of them drank beer.

  He was Casey Stillman, a young sergeant of Marines. What the fuck the rest meant, other than that he was dying right now, this moment, in a dirty street in Iraq, was a total fucking mystery. What he was going to do about it was the only question that needed answering. And he realized he had no clue.

  None whatsoever.

  Chapter

  24

  Jack’s mind was filled with the uncomfortable blur of images that represented the rest of their day. He tried to tuck them away, in light of the more pressing thoughts that he needed his tortured mind to address. He drove them from Pendleton to San Diego in relative quiet, Pam’s head on his shoulder. He had tried to comfort her more with touch than words—touching her hand, squeezing her arm under his, leaning over and kissing her wet cheek. In any case, he had no real words to offer her. There was nothing he could say that would ease her pain since he had no clue whatsoever what this all meant, and more importantly, what he could possibly do about it. A few times he thought she was sleeping and felt his back tighten and ache as he tried not to shift positions and disturb her. Then she would begin to sob softly and squeeze his arm again.

  They stopped just outside the airport at a Bennigan’s. Jack insisted that they should both eat something, though neither felt the least bit hungry.

  Eat when you can, sleep when you can, and shit when you have to.

  The voice in his head belonged to a seasoned gunnery sergeant who had addressed the entire company just before they had left for deployment. He could see him so clearly in his mind.

  They sat in a booth and picked at some appetizers and left with the food barely touched and their beer glasses still half full. They chatted a bit during lunch, but not about anything substantial. Jack had the sense that Pam had so much she wanted to say, so much she wanted to ask, but elected instead to let Jack sort things out in his mind until he was ready to talk. So they had talked about Claire, about the flight home, about whether they would be served dinner—in short, about nothing. Although he had no idea what else to tell his wife, he had no doubt that he would come up with a plan to make this all right. The alternative was simply too terrifying to even consider.

  And what about Lewellyn? Would Pam still insist that he call the psychologist? Surely she could see by now that this was not all simply a hallucination. Jack wondered, in fact was desperate to know, what his wife really thought was going on. For a moment he considered that if this really was just fantasy that he was using to escape from the fear of his lingering death in Fallujah, then Pam would think whatever he wanted her to think in this dream. Too simple, he decided. Maybe he wasn’t supposed to really know what was going on, but he knew with certainty that it was more than just a simple dream like Hoag had suggested. He did have control, at least some, and if that was true, then surely he could change things, fix them somehow.

  He also had a fleeting thought that maybe this was all just a schizophrenic crisis like he had feared all along. Was he right now sitting and drooling in his office at home and imagining all of this? He shuddered at the thought then hugged his wife closer. He felt suddenly very tired.

  Jack closed his eyes as the Delta jet flew though the late afternoon sky. As his mind continued to tear madly through his random impressions and searched for an answer, he knew sleep would be impossible. After a few minutes he heard the soft double chime and looked up to see the seat belt sign snap off. Jack unbuckled his seat belt and gently untangled himself from Pam’s embrace.

  “Where are you going?” his wife asked.

  “Just to the bathroom. Do you want a pillow or anything?”

  “Yes, please,” she answered.

  Jack shuffled down the narrow aisle towards the back of the plane. He squeezed past a flight attendant who maneuvered a service cart into the aisle with a mumbled apology, then slipped into the lavatory and clicked the door lock shut. The overhead light flickered and then illuminated the cramped bathroom.

  Jack looked critically at himself in the small mirror, and saw that his eyes were bloodshot and his face looked haggard. He pushed the small handle with the blue dot for cold and let some water fill the stainless steel sink. Then he splashed some of the cool water onto his face and held his cupped hands to his eyes to let himself soak for a moment in the bracing feel. He repeated the maneuver several times and felt his mind clear a bit, then looked again at himself in the mirror. Not much better, just haggard and wet. Jack pulled a handful of paper towels from the dispenser and dabbed the cool water from his face. Then he stood for a moment, the paper towels pressed into his damp eyes, and stretched his back. He pushed the paper towels into the flip lid trash receptacle then looked again in the mirror. Shocked by what he saw, he grabbed the edge of the counter with both hands to steady himself.

  The face in the mirror was still his, but vastly different. The hair was cropped close to the scalp in a Marine Corps “high and tight” haircut. His face was caked with dirt and dry blood and his eyes were much more bloodshot. There were red lines pressed in his forehead where his Kevlar helmet had been. Behind the face in the mirror was darkness and swirling sand. As he watched, the dust grew thicker and thicker and swirled around his reflected image, obscuring it.

  Jack looked around frantically, and was relieved to find he was still safely in the airplane lavatory. No dust. No sand. He held out his arms and let his gaze pass over his own body—still in khakis and a button‐down shirt. He looked again at the mirror. All he could see now was the swirling sand and dust where his reflection had been, but now he heard, softly, the sounds of voices and gunfire. It was like the mirror was now his own personal movie screen on which he watched the swirling, blowing dust settle. As it did another face came into view.

  Hoag’s.

  The chaplain looked back at him from the mirror, a nighttime desert scene illuminated behind him by a pale moon. It was not the face from the picture at Pendleton, smiling and happy. The face was worn and older, deeply lined and thinner, the eyes full of stress and fear. The glasses were dirty, covered in a thin layer of dust. Jack expected the commander to take them off and start cleaning them, but he didn’t.

  “Hello, Casey,” the image in the mirror said to him.

  Jack started to tell the image in the mirror that he wasn’t real, but then stopped. He realized that he no longer really believed that. Instead he said nothing and stared back at the sad eyes, wondering if his own eyes looked as old and sad as those that looked back at him from the mirror.

  Hoag held his gaze and spoke again, the voice filled with fear and the borderline hysteria he reme
mbered from a few nights ago.

  “Now do you believe, Casey?” he asked simply.

  “I don’t know what I believe,” Jack said loudly, then lowered his voice, not wanting the passengers and crew to hear him talking to himself in the bathroom. “I believe that you, and Casey, and the others are real. I believe that I’m tied to all of you.” He stopped. He believed more than that, but was not able to say it. Or maybe he was just unwilling to let Hoag have the satisfaction of hearing it.

  Hoag’s eyes held an animallike fear; a dog trapped in an alley.

  “We’re almost out of time, Casey. It is time for all of us to go.”

  “I’m not going anywhere with you,” Jack said. His own voice rose as fear from the real meaning of Hoag’s words gripped him. The reality it carried was ugly and terrifying.

  Then the chaplain let out a visceral scream that reverberated in the small bathroom, making Jack cover his ears. The blowing dust swirled again, beginning to obscure the image in the mirror.

  “YOU WILL COME BACK TO US, SAR’N,” Hoag’s fading image screamed at him, “YOU WILL COME WITH US OR WE WILL COME FOR YOU! WE WILL TAKE YOU, AND THOSE AROUND YOU WILL SUFFER. DO YOU HEAR ME?”

  The sand and dust twisted viciously in the mirror now. Jack could smell the distinctive odor of Iraqi desert, and with it, another foul smell—the smell of old blood and death. On the verge of vomiting, he tasted burning bile in his throat and mouth. Jack retched and swallowed hard.

  “Leave me alone, you bastard!” he shouted at the darkening image in the mirror.

  As Jack watched in fascination and horror the image, or maybe the mirror itself, began to shimmer. At first it was subtle, a waving shine like the air over hot asphalt on a brutally hot summer day. But as he watched, the shimmering itself became more distinct, like a million microscopic fireflies were fluttering on the surface of the mirror. Then as the tiny flickers of light became more distinct, it no longer appeared like it was the mirror itself that was the source. The tiny flickers of light spread out from the mirror surface and filled the room. It was then that Jack realized that the surface of the mirror was gone. It was no longer a mirror, but a glassless, open window to the world from which Hoag called him.

  Jack began to choke as the sand poured out of the mirror and into the lavatory, slowly at first, then building into a howling torrent of dust and heat. As it had before, the sand started to swirl around him, building in speed until it was a whistling tornado, a dust devil like those he had seen screaming across the open desert in Iraq.

  Jack held out his hands, which began to tingle, and saw that his own skin now shimmered like the mirror had. He knew where this was headed. He was being pulled—by Hoag, or the devil, or whatever fucking force controlled all of this—back to Iraq. He felt the cyclone try to spin his body around inside the cramped bathroom. He could no longer see the walls, only dust and swirling, shimmering light. He threw his arms outward in both directions, felt them impact against the flimsy plastic walls of his sanctuary. He pressed outward with all his might and riveted himself in place against the spinning cyclone of sand. All he could see in his mind was Pam, alone and frightened in her cramped airline seat. The spinning sand grew in ferocity and he felt himself lifted from the floor. Jack kicked out his legs, jammed his feet firmly against the walls, and fought the force that tried to spin him wildly in the thick and blinding cloud of sand.

  “No!” he hollered over the now deafening roar of the sand tornado. “No, goddamnit! I’m not going! I won’t leave her, you hear me?” He braced himself with all his might against the bathroom walls, his arms and legs pushed out, until his muscles burned with pain.

  Then with a sudden flash of brilliant light, the sandstorm disappeared and Jack collapsed roughly to the floor, coughing. His stomach wretched and he covered his mouth, as if his hand would keep the vomit from spewing out of him. He struggled to his feet and looked at the mirror. It still glimmered, but only barely, and there was a faint image of Hoag’s screaming, twisted face, like a light spot you see with your eyes closed after looking at the sun.

  “Leave my family alone, you motherfucker!” Jack screamed. Then he lost the battle with his stomach and spun around, flipped up the lid to the silver toilet and vomited violently. He wretched several times, struggled for control, and then sat on the black rubber floor, gasping for breath. A knock on the door jarred him back to his senses.

  “Sir?” a worried female voice said. “Sir, are you all right?” More knocking. Jack pulled the silver handle and his pool of sick was sucked away with a hissing vacuum of air and a swirl of blue water.

  “Just a minute, please,” he choked out.

  “Are you sick?” the voice asked.

  What the fuck do you think?

  ”Just a minute please.” Jack flushed the toilet again. Then he struggled to his feet and braced himself weakly against the wall.

  The mirror flashed back only his own pale face, the cheeks streaked with tears. Jack filled his cupped hands with cool water and splashed it on his face again. He sipped some more of the soothing liquid into his mouth and swished it around before swallowing it. He found a cup dispenser and greedily drank down two cups of water from the sink, clearing his mouth and throat.

  Hoag was right. He was out of time. They were coming for him and he couldn’t stop them. They would take him back to his death in Fallujah and he would be gone from his girls forever. What the hell did he mean that those around him would suffer? Could they hurt Pam and Claire? The thought almost made him throw up again, but somehow he got control of his retching stomach.

  Then he stopped, frozen motionless by an idea—an epiphany, in fact. He did not have to accept this as his fate. He couldn’t accept it, and he realized now that he didn’t have to. There was some control here. Wasn’t that what Lewellyn had tried to get him to see (or his own mind talking to him as the psychologist, or whatever the fuck this all was)? Only he could change it, and only he wanted to, apparently. And now he had a vague, but sharpening, idea of how.

  Jack felt a sudden weak but growing sense that he might really be able to fix all of this. Hadn’t he just prevented himself from being sucked back into the mad nightmare—prevented it with a sheer burst of will? And he had come back to Pam from that nightmare the other night on his own as well, now that he thought about it. He could fix this. He would fight it until there was no fight left.

  Jack looked one last time at the face that stared back at him from the mirror, relieved to see the long hair of Jack, instead of Casey Stillman’s close-cropped scalp. This time he saw eyes set with a fiery determination, jaw clenched tightly. He could do it. He had the power to change all of this. He would stop it before it started.

  Jack dried his face with another towel then brushed the wrinkles from his shirt and pants. He sighed nervously and clicked open the lock to the lavatory door.

  A young and agitated flight attendant stood nervously beside the door to the lavatory. Jack tried to smile and failed.

  “Are you all right, sir?” she asked with real concern, and, Jack thought, a tinge of fear.

  “Airsick,” he said simply and squeezed past her, heading for the aisle.

  The flight attendant looked past him into the bathroom, and seemed surprised that it looked normal.

  “I…I, uh…” she stammered. Jack walked away up the aisle towards his seat before she could finish her thought. As he left her behind he heard her whispering to the older flight attendant beside her, “I could have sworn I heard someone else in there with him.”

  You have no fucking idea, sweetie.

  Jack continued up the aisle to his seat. He flopped down heavily beside Pam who looked up, startled from near sleep in her seat. Her eyes got wide as she looked at her husband.

  “Are you all right?” she asked. “Jesus, you look like shit.”

  Jack looked at her and smiled—a real and determined smile this time. Then he hugged her tightly.

  “Everything is going to be all right, baby,”
he said. “I know I’ve been saying that, but now I’ve really got this figured out.” He started to ride the wave of his own excitement at his slowly crystallizing plan. “I know how to make this right.”

  Pam pulled away and looked into his eyes, her own filled with hope and confusion. He could see that she wanted so much to believe him.

  “How, Jack?”

  “You’re going to have to trust me,” he said and put his arm around her in the seat. Then he pushed the call button with his free hand. Pam looked up at the illuminated call light.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Forgot your pillow,” Jack said with a tension-relieving chuckle.

  “I trust you, Jack,” was all she said.

  Chapter

  25

  The rest of the flight passed in comfortable quiet, at least it seemed to for Pam. Instead of the frightened musing and self-doubting rumination he had become accustomed to lately, Jack felt a surge of personal confidence, now that he had something to focus his mind on. No more questions, he promised himself. It was time for answers and action.

  He had no idea, of course, whether his idea would work, or was even possible. He still had no clue what this was all about or, he supposed, who he really was. But he succeeded in keeping his mind away from questions he couldn’t answer (Lewellyn would have a marathon session on that) and instead started to outline a plan for his night. Maybe his last night, he thought grimly.

  Better to face it and go down fighting.

  Hoorah.