Chaos

by Mary SanGiovanni

  “No,” she said, “no no no no NONONONO!” She sank to the floor, then leaped to her feet again at the thought of those fingers reaching under her door and touching her.

  Abruptly the scratching stopped. She waited, forcing each inhale and exhale to stretch over four seconds. She listened for what felt like a long time, convinced that the fingers were just outside the door, biding their time until she opened it.

  She felt a knot in her throat. Tears made her vision swim. This place was very, very wrong. It was tearing her down. It wasn’t fair. This was supposed to be her beautiful new life, her clean break. This was her chance to build a future with Derek free of the ghosts of the past. But somehow, new ghosts had found her, and they were, quite literally, driving her crazy. The laugh that escaped her was harsh and ugly. If the Puritan wagging tongues of the great New England gentry weren’t satisfied with making judgments about a white woman dating a black man, well, they’d have a field day with her losing her mind. Zombie fingers and black, oozing pools of interdimensional gateway and blurry monsters in the dark. Oh yeah. A freaking field day.

  She had to get out—soon, tonight, before she lost herself completely.

  Myrinda turned and opened the door a tiny crack. The hallway was empty. No fingers. No monsters. She closed the door again, relieved. She was just about to return to the bedroom again when she heard the man screaming.

  ***

  Larson’s last gift of proof for the woman in 2C, the woman he’d come to think of as his new Julia, had proved to be the toughest to carry out. Like with his hand, he knew preparations would be essential. He’d picked out a penknife, some towels, bandages, and a plastic container from Chinese take-out that he found in the back of a cabinet on the counter in the bathroom. This time, he would need a mirror to see what he was doing.

  To see. He’d laughed to himself. He’d still be able to see her with his good eye.

  A friend of his from the force had given him painkillers from the evidence locker when he’d had his breakdown. He’d tried a few once to sleep, but they had made him feel paranoid and have given him night sweats and terrible nightmares. Tonight though, he thought they might be more efficient than a bottle of whiskey. He’d taken three—one dose and one extra. He could already feel a warmth numbing his face, his limbs. Even his bad hand felt okay. He used the remaining fingers to pull his eyelid open. The knife he held with his good hand. When he angled the point between the bottom lid and the eyeball, he felt pressure first, and then a far-away pain. Blood trickled from the socket like a tear, trailing red diluted with tears. His eyelid fought to blink, and his fingers strained to keep it open. He dug the knife deeper, under the orb, and his eye watered. A stab of pain broke through the haze of painkillers. He started moving the knife around lightly, afraid of cutting into something other than the muscles and tendons that held his eye in place. The knife caught against something stringy; Larson figured it to be a nerve. Sawing caused waves of blinding pain to blare through his head, so he flicked his wrist hard, to sever the nerve. His vision went white and then black in that eye. With the fingers of his band hand, he dug in and tried to pull the eye out. Blood washed over his bottom lid and down his cheek. The eye caught, still attached. Growing impatient, Larson swiped the knife as best he could behind the eye and finally felt it cut through something thick. The eye popped out in his hand. He placed it gently on the counter so it wouldn’t roll, then wrapped the bandage around his head, binding the socket tightly. He rinsed off the eye, then put it in the plastic Chinese food container.

  He had done it all, finally—everything she asked for through the curtains. He had proved the lengths he’d go to show his love for her.

  Larson carried the container into the bedroom and set it down on the bed. He kept his gun in a box in the closet. He took it out and put it in the waistband of his pants. Then he picked up the container. He made a quick detour to the liquor cabinet and took several healthy swigs from a bottle of Jameson. It splashed lightly into the cracks where the painkiller buzz couldn’t reach.

  Now, he was ready. With every step down the hall and through the den to the front door, Larson felt light. Free. He knew he’d accomplished something. One way or another, this night’s events were his end game.

  He opened the door and crossed the hall to 2C. He knocked on the door and waited. When he had confirmed to his satisfaction that no one was coming to answer the door, he turned the knob. It opened easily.

  Inside, the apartment was dark. He flipped the light switch, but nothing happened. It took a few minutes for his one good eye to adjust to the gloom inside, but when it did, several realizations struck him at once.

  There was no furniture in the apartment, no pictures on the walls, no rugs. Instead, a thick, fluffy carpet of dust lay across the floor and on the windowsill. Like he’d done with apartment 2G, he made a sweep of each room, looking for some sign of life.

  In the bedroom, he saw the curtains. Those curtains had promised so much from the outside. They had been infused, embroidered with a strange language of terrible tasks and wonderful outcomes. He went to the curtains and picked them up. Between his fingers, the material felt threadworn. There were holes. No pink or gray threads. Just a cheap, gauzy material made for showing the apartment—something old and moth-eaten from the back of the landlady’s closet. It wasn’t the same set of curtains. It couldn’t be.

  He went out to the den and placed the container with his eye in it in the center of the floor. Then he went to a far corner of the room and sank to the floor himself. He took out the gun. He’d figured he might need it to...what, convince her to keep her promises?

  No. He’d known deep down he would need it because the woman of his dreams wouldn’t be there. That she had never been there. The apartment was empty.

  He cradled his bad hand, which had begun to ache, along with his gouged socket, in spite of the painkillers and booze. Frustration wrenched tears from his eyes. Anger and disappointment blurred the gloom in front of him. But none of these compared to the pure depth and breadth of the despair that welled up in him. From his soul through his chest and lungs and up his throat, all the wretchedness of his life, all the mistakes he’d made, all the destruction that had left him scarred, drunk, high, and alone, broke free of him. With all his breath and strength, he screamed.

  ***

  Myrinda ran into the hall and saw the door to 2C was open. Instantly, the bottom of her stomach dropped out, and she clutched at it. She glanced around nervously at the floor, searching for fingers. There were none, but still, her steps across the hallway were careful, almost tiptoed.

  She poked her head through the doorway and called, “Hello?” Her voice sounded small and echoed through the empty apartment. “Hello?”

  From somewhere inside—it sounded like the den—she heard moaning. Someone was hurt.

  She hesitated in the doorway. What if it was a trick? What if she went in there to help whoever was moaning, and the fingers crawled out of the darkness? What if they jumped at her, clawing for her throat and trying to strangle her?

  Another moan escaped into the hallway.

  “Hello? Are you okay in there?”

  She heard the sound of bodily movement, the shifting of weight against the wall.

  “Do you...need help?”

  “It’s all gone,” a voice from inside said. It sounded familiar, but from where? Was it the voice of a neighbor, or a voice from one of her dreams?

  Taking a deep breath, she stepped inside. The door was open; she could run for it if there was even the slightest sign of something suspicious. She flipped the light switch, but no light came on, so she trudged through the darkness, waiting for her eyes to adjust. Her toe connected with something that slid a little across the floor of the den, and she stopped. Then she saw him in the corner.

  “Oh my God, are you okay? You’re hurt! Want me to call an ambulance, Mr.—?”

  “Larson. Jack Larson.” The mutilated figure on the floor sat clutching a he
avily bandaged hand. More bandages dipped over one eye as they wrapped around his head. It was difficult to make out details in the dark, but so far as Myrinda could see from the moonlight filtering in through the den window, the man looked pale, with nearly gray lips and a heavy, uneven stubble on his jaw. His clothes were rumpled and he smelled like whiskey and staleness. His eyes, wild and empty, sat in deep reddish-brown bags.

  She glanced back at the thing she’d accidentally kicked. It was some kind of container, and she bet it belonged to Larson. Given his condition, she didn’t really want to know what was inside.

  “Mr. Larson? I’m Myrinda. Just hang on, okay? I’m going to get you help.”

  “No! Stay.”

  “What?” Myrinda paused.

  “I don’t need help. It won’t do any good, and I’ll be gone before you make the call anyway.”

  Myrinda sat on the floor to look him in the eye. “What can I do? Are you sure I can’t call an ambulance for you?”

  “Just let me talk. I want to tell you something,” Larson said.

  Myrinda looked around, uncomfortable. “Uh, okay.”

  “When I was still a patrol officer in Boston, I responded to a domestic violence call one night. A neighbor called it in. She didn’t have much good to say about this couple that lived next door. Twenty-somethings. Black hair, blue eyes. By all accounts, striking set, they were, both good-looking in that way that sort of hurts your heart. Like you, really. You and your man.”

  She smiled at him, not quite sure if that required an acknowledgment of the compliment, but he didn’t seem to be looking for one. He went on before she could say anything at all.

  “They were creepy, though. No family, no friends—they only had each other. For years, it was just the two of them. I knew this, because I had gotten to know the both of them a little. The woman, Julia, was worried about her boyfriend. Apparently, he was convinced that something...I don’t know, some kind of entity, was stalking him, filling his head with diseased thoughts. Making him confused. Julia was afraid maybe he would hurt himself. Or her. It got so she was scared to be home alone with him at night. She wouldn’t leave, though. She loved him. God, she loved him. She refused to go.

  “So anyway, when the domestic violence call came in, I recognized the address. I was scared for her. I...I had fallen in love with her. She... her safety was everything to me. I don’t think—no, I know—she never loved me back like that. I wasn’t good enough. I could never prove myself. But it was enough to just be near her, to protect her. To see her once in a while.

  “So anyway, my partner and I showed up at the house and found the door open, so we announced ourselves and went inside to check out the situation.” His eyes filled with tears. His whole body shook now.

  “When I found him, he was standing over her, holding onto the handle of an axe with both hands. I remember the blood more than anything else because there was just so much of it. His t-shirt and jeans were splattered and soaked through with blood, there was blood in his hair, blood dripping from his coated palms and down his arms. Blood dripping off his nose. The blade of the axe looked dull, a kind of dark gray that reminded me absurdly of tornadoes—funny, sometimes, what rolls through your head when you’re trying not to think too hard about what you’re seeing. Anyway, the blade was all slick with red streaks. Her hair—little strands of it—stuck to the blade. Her lovely long black hair. She lay there like a broken doll cracked all to pieces, and the cracks in her body swelled with blood that ran all over the floor. Her eyes just...stared up at him. All glassy, glazed over. Still loving, though—still loving. And her hair, the rest of her hair....” He shook his head. “It clumped in the pooled blood around her head, heavy, stringy, as lifeless as those cooling lips, those eyes....”

  “God, how awful,” Myrinda whispered. She was afraid to speak louder, afraid to wake him, in a sense; he spoke to her as if he wasn’t really speaking to her at all, but rather, reliving it.

  “I don’t think he ever saw me,” he added softly. “I watched him for a bit, trying to assess the situation. His head was bowed a little, smears of blood across his forehead, his cheeks, his mouth. And his eyes—he had cold eyes, and right about then, they looked as dead as the ones that stared up at him from the floor. They never left her face. I approached him slowly. I had my gun on him. Guys like that, you never know what to expect. They could fold up and sink to the floor, blubbering like a baby, or turn on you all growling and snarling and swinging the axe. He didn’t do either. I think...yeah, I think what he did was worse.”

  “What did he do?” Myrinda wasn’t sure she really wanted him to answer.

  “He started laughing, laughing and then screaming, and the laughter came harder and harder, like waves—like convulsions, really—and the screaming was hysterical, high and thin. It was like he was strung up inside like a guitar, see, and all his strings were winding tighter and tighter and...snapping.” He sighed. “Have you ever heard someone do that? Laugh and scream at the same time? I think it’s the most awful sound in the world.” He sank to the floor, looking very tired and very small just then.

  “Did...did he ever, you know, say why he did it? Why he killed her?”

  Larson looked up at her, but some part of his gaze was somewhere else, seeing past her, maybe to some cramped, cold, harshly lit interrogation room. “He said he loved her. He said—” He exhaled a shuddery breath, inhaled, tried again. “He said he loved her, had loved her many times in many lives on many worlds, whatever that meant. He told me she was...his sister, and that since their parents’ deaths, they had become each other’s worlds. They rarely left the apartment. They had no other friends, no individual hobbies. They had each other, they had the sex between them—the bond, he said. The love that no one else understood. But he was jealous, paranoid. He didn’t want her to leave him, ever. He never said what it was that set him off, just kept telling me over and over that he loved her, missed her, wanted her back, and why the hell wouldn’t we just let him see her, just for a moment?”

  “He...didn’t realize?”

  Larson shook his head. “Not all crazy is dangerous. Not all crazy is real, honest-to-God crazy. Some people play at it. Some are even good at it. But that boy was the real deal, and he was deadly.” Officer Larson seemed to come back a little then, and when he looked up at her, his eyes were stormy and troubled. “I didn’t tell you about that for the shock value. I told you because I need someone to know I tried to love, and to be worthy of being loved. I tried. When I first moved here, I thought I could feel something...I don’t know, inside me, maybe. Taking over in my head, like a cold. Something’s been wrong with me for a long time, but here, it’s gotten worse. For the first time, I understand—I mean, really understand what that boy felt. Why he did what he did. I’ve carved out the best parts of me and given them over to someone who was never there. Myrinda, I died in that room with Julia. Her death destroyed me. It ruined my career, my life. And something here—” he looked around the apartment “—made me believe I could get it all back. But it’s gone. Everything...everything I was is slipping away. Now, I’m tired. Now, I realize I never had a chance. And...I don’t know how to reconcile that with what I thought I knew. Maybe...maybe I really am crazy.”

  Myrinda crawled a little closer to him. She didn’t question what he was saying; she didn’t need to. She knew on a gut level that he was right because she could feel it, too. “I don’t think it’s just you. I think there’s something in this building affecting everyone, making them sick. Confused. I feel it, too.”

  Larson stared at her.

  “Do you think...well, I mean, could it be possible that the craziness is like an infection or some kind of poisoning? What if it’s their exposure to something from...someplace else, something we don’t have mental antibodies for?”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “There’s no question in my mind there’s a kind of insanity unbalancing people around there. But what if at least some of what these
folks are seeing is real? That some kind of...external force is driving people crazy?”

  Larson stretched out his legs. “I don’t know. But I can’t take it any-more. I don’t have the strength to find out. I just want it all to stop.”

  “Mr. Larson—”

  “Myrinda, have you ever seen someone die? Ever seen the color drain from their faces, their necks, their hands? Seen their lips turn a little bluish and dry around the outlines? I’ve seen that depth, that color and flicker, the intelligent thereness of life fade from the eyes. And that’s the kicker, the eyes—that’s when you really know, if you ever knew the person at all. Life doesn’t wink out. It fades. And for several seconds after, you just kind of look in those eyes, expecting to see something of what used to be there. You want it so badly to be there still that maybe you drag it down for a time, that you keep it from flying up and away from the person you love. Bodies take time to cool from the heat that meant life. Eyes, too, take time to develop that glassy vacancy. And I don’t think you feel true loss until you look into those eyes and know the person you loved isn’t there to look back out at you.”

  “Mr. Larson, I’m so sorry.”

  He offered her a weak smile. “You know what’s worse? Not getting to be there for someone while they make the great change from life to death. Knowing that she had to face death with no one to capture those last moments of her life in his memory, to cherish what she was before she became a shell, a nothing.”

  “I—I don’t.... Please, let me call an am—”

  “And what’s even worse than that? Loving someone who never really was. There is no closure, there is no comfort in thinking circumstances beyond anyone’s control took away someone who loved you. When death and death alone takes someone, she can still be yours in your heart because her life, her moments transitioning into death, were spent loving you. But when that person you thought you loved never was, it’s more than death. It’s living death. Pain that echoes on and on. It’s death and rejection. There is no room for healing to get a foothold, because the hurt is too immense.”