A Life Transparent

by Todd Keisling

  “Put it down, old man.”

  Sparrow’s eyes widened at the sound of a cocked hammer. Michael Candle pressed the revolver into the back of Sparrow’s silver mane.

  Donovan’s legs nearly gave out as the adrenaline slowed. “Mike, thank God.”

  “I said put it down.”

  Sparrow looked ahead, his eyes possessed with hatred more vicious than Donovan had ever seen. It made his cheeks burn. He almost wanted to apologize to the man, but the look in Sparrow’s eyes made him hold his tongue.

  The old man licked his lips and spoke evenly through clenched teeth. “Well played.” He lowered the gun. Michael reached over, took it from Sparrow, and shoved it into his jacket pocket.

  “Got anything else up your sleeve, old man?”

  “No,” Sparrow said, “I don’t.”

  “Then you won’t mind if I pat you down.” Michael was quick about it. He came up empty handed. “Get in the car.”

  Sparrow’s eyes darkened. He did not look back at Michael, but forward, glaring into Donovan’s eyes.“I didn’t catch your name, son.”

  “My name is Donovan Candle.”

  A thin smile cut across Sparrow’s face. “Mr. Candle,” he said, “I’m going to remember you.”

  Likewise, Donovan thought. Michael opened the door and shoved the doctor inside. He looked up at his brother.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah,” Donovan said. He looked at Michael’s revolver. “Do you normally do this?”

  Michael flashed a smile. “Do what, break the law? Only when my brother and his wife are in danger.” He leaned into the car and held out his hand. “Keys.”

  Dr. Sparrow tossed the keys outside. He spat. “Fuck you.”

  Michael slammed the door and picked the keys off the ground. He said, “Get in. I’m driving.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Away from here. Now get in before someone sees us.”

  • • •

  Michael Candle, you are one crazy son of a bitch. The words repeated in the detective’s head as he guided the car out of the alley and into traffic. Everything caught up to him in those moments, the sequence of events replaying in a constant blur behind his eyes, and he realized the gravity of what they’d done.

  More words played like a litany through his skull: armed kidnapping, hostage-taking.

  He looked in the rearview mirror at Dr. Sparrow. The old man glared at Michael’s reflection, his cheeks stained a dark shade of red. His face looked like a giant bruise.

  What are you doing? Michael asked himself. He turned his attention back to the road, struggling against the urge to turn the car around or sucker-punch his brother for dragging him into this mess. Take the old man back to the bookstore. Drop him off. Apologize for the bad prank, and get the hell out of there.

  Despite what he’d witnessed since the previous night, with his brother’s inexplicable vanishing acts and the conversation with the weirdo on the phone, he still resisted belief. It was something he’d built up over the years, a requirement for logic that ran deep in his veins, and it was hard to shake. This logic told him they would be caught, and they would go to jail.

  However, there was more to all this than he understood, and this depth undermined his rationale, stirring something within him. It was a fear that there was something greater at stake, something deeply rooted in the world which they took for granted. It was something he was sure he would never fully understand. Whatever it was made him set aside his fear of breaking the law.

  For the moment, all he understood was that his sister-in-law was in trouble, and he’d do whatever was necessary to help his brother get her back.

  Michael drove, his path describing a straight line from downtown toward the outskirts of the city, eventually headed toward the countryside. His mind raced. For a few minutes all he could think about was how he had turned the corner and spotted the old man with his gun to Donovan’s head. Providence led him to that alleyway—the store was at capacity, and he was one of the many who were denied entrance. He watched from the window, and when the old man retreated to the back, something—a stir in his gut, a prickle at the back of his neck—spurred his feet to action.

  The gut feeling. Every gumshoe had one.

  Now his gut told him the old man was bad news, and not just because of the gun. There was a cold intensity in his tired eyes: murderous, calculating—the eyes of a sociopath, he suspected. And when he looked up in the rearview again, he was relieved to find the good doctor staring out the window.

  Donovan spoke up. “How did you know—”

  “I didn’t. Just a hunch, is all.”

  “Well, I’m glad.”

  Michael glanced over at his brother, then back at the rearview reflection. Dr. Sparrow stared back.

  “Are you two faggots or something?”

  Michael signaled a turn, guiding the car to the far end of a vacant parking lot. He put the car in park and shut off the engine.

  “We’re going to sort all of this shit out,” he said, pointing to Sparrow. “Starting with you, Dr. Dickhead.”

  “Don’t patronize me,” Sparrow said. “I may be old, but I’ve killed punks like you for less.”

  “Right.” Michael pulled Sparrow’s gun from his pocket. He set it beside his own revolver on the dashboard. “Is that why you carry this thing? To threaten your fans?”

  “I carry it to keep shits like you from doing what he wants.”

  Michael shot a glance to his brother. Donovan said nothing, his furrowed brow reminding Michael of their youth. It was “the Donovan look,” a sure sign that something was brewing somewhere in that rich expanse of brain matter.

  “Dr. Sparrow,” Donovan said. He spoke slowly, careful with his words. “Mr. Dullington has my wife.”

  “How can I say this and avoid euphemism?” Dr. Sparrow chuckled quietly. His voice was dry, hollow. “Ah, yes. You’re fucked.”

  • • •

  Donovan stared at the old man for a long while, sizing him up. The doctor’s words came as a slap in the face. He’d hoped this man might have some answers, that he might work to help him recover Donna in one piece, but after looking into the man’s eyes, he realized it was a facade.

  He thought of his wife, her smile engraved in his memory. It was all the motivation he needed.

  Donovan plucked Sparrow’s gun from the dashboard. He raised it, put his finger on the trigger, and pointed it at the old man’s forehead.

  “You will help me, Dr. Sparrow.”

  “Or what? You’ll kill me?” He snickered. “Your master wouldn’t like that very much, would he?”

  Joe Hopper’s words came bubbling out of a red haze and found their way to Donovan’s lips.

  “One way or another,’ Donovan growled, “you’re going back. Donna’s life is worth ten of yours.”

  He paused, cringing as Sparrow ground his teeth together. The old man looked like a rabid dog ready to snap.

  “Do you really think he’ll let you go?”

  “He’s kept his word so far.”

  “So far,” Sparrow scoffed. “But Dullington always has an angle. He might let your wife go, but he’ll still have you. One way or another, he’ll still have you.”

  Michael shook his head. “This guy’s so full of shit.”

  “Full of shit? You don’t even know what you’re talking about, Mikey. You’re not exactly Dullington’s type. You haven’t been there. You haven’t see the things—” Sparrow locked eyes with Donovan. He slowly nodded. “But you know what I’m talking about. You have been there.”

  Donovan looked away, his cheeks flushed with heat. He tried not to think about the Monochrome, its emptiness, the lifeless drone humming through the very air, or the pale things that inhabited it. A chill worked its way down the back of his neck.

  Sparrow propped his elbow against the window. “You aren’t the first. You won’t be the last. His game’s been going on for a very long time.”

  “Why does he
want you?”

  “Because,” Sparrow twirled his fingers, “I’m the one who got away. The rest of them, they’re just there in the ‘chrome to be sucked dry. You, your brother, everyone on this planet—you’re all cattle. Once you go over for good, you belong to him.” The old man paused, thinking. “What do you do for a living?”

  Donovan lowered the weapon. “I work for an identity theft monitoring service. Sales department.”

  “So you’re a salesman? Oh my.” Sparrow put his head back and let out a hearty laugh. Donovan glared. “I can’t imagine a more mediocre job. No wonder you’re flickering. Frankly, I’m surprised everyone in your workplace hasn’t vanished.”

  “That’s beside the point.” Donovan muttered.

  “Ah, so it is,” Sparrow grinned. He took off his glasses and cleaned them with his handkerchief. “Dullington wanted me to take his place. I used to be just like you, living an empty life. Then one day I woke up and found I was disappearing. And I let it happen, too. I started seeing little things on people’s shoulders, whispering for them to forget me, and then I started seeing the bigger ones—the Yawning, he calls them. Not long after that, I found myself lost in a gray haze.” He kept running the lenses through his handkerchief, wiping them with a circular motion. “Aleister Dullington made himself known to me. He said, ‘I will set you apart from the others, Mr. Sparrow. I will deliver you unto banality.’”

  Sparrow squeezed so hard the lenses cracked. One of them fell from its frame.

  “I didn’t like the prospect of an eternity in that gray hell, so I found a way out.”

  Donovan leaned forward, caught up in the doctor’s reverie. “How?”

  “Mediocrity is a fickle thing. Anything can be mediocre. I surmised that whatever boring thing led me to the Monochrome could be counteracted by an equal and opposite excitement.”

  Michael muttered under his breath and shook his head. Donovan shot him an annoyed glance but said nothing. Sparrow went on:

  “Being one of the Missing means being on the brink of starvation. There’s nothing tangible in the Monochrome. No food, no water. Dullington let us into the Spectrum once a day to feed, and our time there was limited to scrounging for table scraps, rummaging through dumpsters, living like transients.” Sparrow put down his broken glasses. He picked up the cracked lens and examined it. “I figured an event of drastic proportions could propel me out of the Monochrome just long enough to weaken its pull. I needed to reach a kind of escape velocity, if you will.”

  Donovan’s throat clicked when he swallowed. The car’s enclosed space suddenly felt very small.

  “What did you do?”

  Sparrow held up the lens with both hands. “He let us into the Spectrum in pairs, one to watch the other. If one misbehaved, both would suffer punishment. My partner was a man called Smith, a sad sack of shit who clung to some perverse hope that things might change one day. I knew better. I knew change wouldn’t come; it had to be pursued and taken with force.” He snapped the lens in half. It broke in two, jagged pieces. Small shards fell to the seat. “So I took matters into my hands. I murdered the poor bastard. It was enough to get me out of there.”

  The doctor’s macabre confession did not startle Donovan, he’d already witnessed more than enough of the man’s true character to be anything other than sickened. Phantom fingers curled around his stomach and pulled, causing him to flicker for a moment. Sparrow remained in full clarity as the car faded and colors bled from the world.

  When it stopped, Donovan caught the old man’s eye. “But you’re still flickering. If you’re flickering, how come people can see you?”

  “It’s all a matter of negative space.”

  Michael grunted. “Negative space?”

  “Yes,” Sparrow sighed, “It is a matter of perception. The odds are you’ve seen one of the other Missing without even knowing it.” He traced his finger along the edge of the lens shard. “Imagine a painting of a vase. At a glance, you see the vase, but if you were to look closer, you might see a face on either side. Both images are visible, but you only see one at a time.”

  “But what about those—” Michael snapped his fingers, searching for the right word. Sparrow finished for him.

  “Cretins. They act as a veil, covering up the faces. They exist so you only see the vase. And in the odd chance you’re lucky enough to perceive the faces, they ensure you won’t remember it.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question,” Donovan said.

  Sparrow grinned. “A person can weaken their chain to the Monochrome, but they can’t break it. Once it’s in place, it’s there to stay. The weaker it is, the more others are able to see. Even his Cretins can’t interfere. In my case, the chain is weak enough that others can see the faces for the vase.”

  Donovan smirked. “Sounds like you’re living on borrowed time.”

  The sly humor left Sparrow’s face. He looked away. “I’ve taken great pains to keep myself at a distance, correcting where I went wrong. I went back to school, I excelled, I wrote my book and found success, fame. Constantly changing, keeping track of any possible routines, sleeping on the floor once or twice to break the cycle of sleeping in a bed—you’ll do anything to keep your head above water when you’re drowning.” Sparrow looked back at Donovan for a moment, sizing him up. “You’re going to wind up just as I did if you don’t change your ways. Everyone does.”

  “Everyone?”

  “Poor saps who are tethered to the other side. He’s used some of them, sending them after me for the better part of ten years, to do exactly what you’re doing now. All of them have something to lose, all are given the promise of freedom if they succeed.” A wry grin formed across his face. “You’re no different. You’re just sinking to new lows to save your own skin.”

  His words struck Donovan with jarring force. In his struggle to rescue Donna, he’d become no different than George Guffin by kidnapping this man. But Donna’s life depends on it, he thought.

  “All you had to do was talk to me,” he whispered. “I didn’t want to force you.”

  “Oh, please.” Sparrow rolled his eyes. “You know damn well I wouldn’t have come with you, regardless of whatever sob-story you tried to sell me.”

  Donovan closed his eyes and took a breath. Joe Hopper’s voice spoke up within the darkness of his head, and Donovan didn’t like what he had to say. Up against a wall, hoss, and you’re damned either way. But the old codger’s got a point—sometimes you can’t wait for change to come. You have to make it yourself.

  He thought of Donna again, and he realized he’d already made up his mind long before encountering this vile excuse of a man.

  “I told Dullington I’d bring you to him, and that’s what I intend to do.”

  “Your weakness is beneath you. Even if you get her back, it won’t change the fact that you’ll soon be his. Too many people refuse to change, and you’re just like them, another tick on Dullington’s fucking chalkboard.” His words ran together in a guttural deluge of rage. “You’ll end up right back there with me in the end, and I’ll make sure you regret it every fucking day.”

  Sparrow took the broken lens and lunged forward. Donovan reacted without thinking, lifting his hand to block the attack, crying out as the lens cut a gash across his palm. Sparrow recoiled, growling incomprehensible words as he pulled back for another slash—

  Michael brought down the butt of his revolver against Sparrow’s head. It connected with a dull thud, and Donovan watched lights go out in the old man’s eyes. The glass shard slipped from his fingers and fell to the floor. Sparrow slumped back into the seat with a faint groan. A thin line of blood trickled from his silver temple.

  “You okay?”

  Donovan put pressure on his wound to slow the bleeding. “Yeah.”

  He was distant, his mind lost in a mental replay of the doctor’s words. He wondered if he would be stuck living a life transparent forever, flickering in and out of existence while fading into complete obscurity. Thinki
ng back, he realized it was all he’d done for the last nine years. Working at Identinel had drained the last ounce of life from his body. Now he was just a drone, and he had nothing to show for his life because he hadn’t done anything with it.

  “So what now?”

  “Now I guess we—”

  Donovan’s cell phone vibrated in his pocket. A moment later, Michael’s cell phone rang. Outside, a row of old pay phones rang in succession, forming a melody of buzzing notes.

  Michael shook his head, amazed. “I think it’s for you.”

  “I think you might be right.” Donovan pulled the dead cell phone from his pocket, flipped it open, and answered.

  • • •

  “You impress me more with each passing moment, Mr. Candle. I applaud you.”

  “I have him. What do you want me to do with him?”

  The static in the line rose and fell, echoing laughter. “Listen to yourself. You kidnap one man, and now you are ready to take on the world.”

  Donovan clenched his teeth. “I’m not proud of what I had to do.”

  “Do not pity him, Mr. Candle. He is not as innocent as he makes himself out to be. I assure you, given the opportunity he would do the same to you without a second thought.”

  He looked back at the unconscious man, remembering the hatred in Sparrow’s eyes.

  “I just want my wife back, Dullington.”

  “And so you shall have her, in time.”

  Donovan shook so hard he almost dropped the phone. He balled his free hand into a tight fist. The anger came from a deep place, fueled by his fatigue and heartache.

  “I have your goddamn puppet,” he growled. “Now just give her back. She’s all I want. I’ve done what you’ve asked.”

  “Calm yourself, Mr. Candle. You are correct in your statement—you have done everything I have asked of you, and you will be rewarded.”

  He closed his eyes for a moment and cleared his head. He told himself to focus, to suck it up and suffer the last few strides to the finish line. An image of Donna’s smiling face rekindled the dying fire within. Donovan opened his eyes and looked outside.