The Vision
“It’s coming. Please… oh.” Beverly moaned, rubbing her face with the side of her fist as she rocked back and forth in her wheelchair, the bath towel unraveling from her hair.
Sheila rushed to the kitchen cupboard for the liquid morphine. Fifteen minutes early. The anti-convulsant wouldn’t help with an attack underway, but sometimes the seizures came in clusters. Giving the morphine now would be risky—she couldn’t keep shrinking time between doses—but she had to do something or Beverly’s stress would make the episode worse.
Measuring out the fluid as she returned to the bedroom, Sheila saw that Beverly’s facial muscles already contracted in a distorted grimace. Clenched between withered fingers, Beverly held the clear, crystalline stone that always dangled from a long chain around her neck, and she rubbed at her cheek, leaving flame-red scratches on her feverish skin.
“Daniel… no…” She called her husband’s name, moaning and wrenching her hand toward her face as Sheila restrained her and murmured soothing promises.
Focused on her patient, Sheila didn’t notice her own discomfort, until the tingle became an electric shard streaking agony up her arm to explode in her head. Sheila struggled to pull free, but their hands were locked together, the stone pressed between.
Everything went dark. The room disappeared. A clicking, like a movie projector, drowned Beverly’s complaints. At first slow and deep, the clicks sped up, becoming so shrill her ears buzzed with pain, before slowing to a pulsing thunder once again—loud concussions Sheila feared would shatter her.
A light resolved from the black. Or lights. Flickering along with the unearthly din. A vast funnel, shooting bright spumes at once molten and frigid arcing up into the darkness, then falling to merge with the ravelling sparks. Sheila drew closer and closer to this entity, pulled against her will. The tunneling darkness expanded until it was everything, all she could see…
A snap, like a pick through ice, and the clicking ended so suddenly the silence deafened. Sheila opened her eyes and the room came into focus: wood-paneled walls, dizzying Persian rugs.
Her body twitched with electric pulses as she peeled her hand from Beverly’s clutch. Her charge’s eyes were glassed over, one had wandered to the side, while the other looked ahead at nothing. A line of drool spilled over Beverly’s trembling chin, down her chest into the folds of her bathrobe.
“Beverly.” Sheila spoke in a grinding whisper, as though she’d screamed until her voice gave out. She tried again after clearing her throat. “Bev, can you hear me?”
She rubbed Beverly’s shoulders, felt muscles shudder and ripple, then settle into stillness.
“Daniel?”
“He’s at work. He said he’ll be home tonight, though.” Sheila located the morphine bottle.
Beverly repeated her husband’s name. Her mantra to soothe herself when the myalgia took over.
“Do you know what just happened?” Shelia unscrewed the cap as Beverly watched eagerly.
“There was a noise?”
“You were screaming. I don’t know why. And you wouldn’t let go.” Beverly opened her mouth wide like a baby bird’s as the morphine trickled in. “You didn’t hear anything?”
“Daniel?” Beverly asked again, and tugged at the stone that hung from her neck.
Sheila took a deep breath and looked down at the morphine bottle. An impulse to pour out a measure for herself shocked Sheila. Her stomach clenched at the sweet vanilla smell and the impulse vanished when she thought of where that would end—like Beverly, like her mother—addicted to the release and fading away.
Day Routine
Beverly muttered, fidgeting with her pendant. At least her eyes moved in unison once again. First, Sheila dried Beverly’s dark hair, the drone of the hairdryer cutting the thick cotton of silence that muffled the room. Then Sheila hefted her charge forward and peeled down the terry-towel bathrobe so she could dry Beverly’s skin. When Sheila had started working with Beverly, each fold of flesh hosted a raw red patch. But, with a little care, those sores had nearly healed. Gently lifting each sagging muscle, she dried the crevasses with the hairdryer set on low, applied ointment, and dried again until the cream soaked in.
As she worked she thought about the vision, the consuming blackness. There had been no precursor, no auras before or nausea after, though her head ached and her hands fumbled, fingers clumsy and numb. Both her mother and her grandmother had endured crippling migraines. But this didn’t seem like a migraine. A cold fear seeped into her as she considered what it could mean.
After the lifting and rolling and folding and pulling of getting Beverly dressed, Sheila propped her charge in bed with all her pillows to listen to the news crackling through the radio.
Sheila sat with her awhile. Beverly ate animal crackers, hooking one with her index finger and clamping it against the other fingers that had withered and curled against her palm. She dragged the cracker across the tray, her hand shaking all the way up to drop the little monkey cookie into her mouth.
The Interview
Sheila had answered the ad for a home-care worker, even though she had no formal medical training. To her surprise she received a letter inviting her for an interview. She left Calgary early, in her mom’s faded green Galaxie 500, the city quickly dropping away until there was nothing but road and sky and the occasional cluster of farm houses.
Ian and Sylvia played on the radio and Sheila sang along… and those winds sure can blow cold way out there.
A lone grain elevator rose from the restless sea of wheat, and then another. Accelerating, she passed a wagon bearing a Hutterite family. The girls, clad in black, bonnets tied tight below their chins, sat primly as their father slapped the reigns gently, urging his horses on.
Shortly after noon, she’d arrived in Mason. Cowboy façades lined Center Street’s three blocks, freshly painted, an “open” sign on every door. She drove down the empty street, straight through to the end of town where the sky spread out again, pale blue and dusted with clouds. The third driveway on the right lead to a yellow, two-story farm house with a curving wraparound porch.
Sheila stepped out of her car into the bright stillness, the air hot and buzzing. The moment she knocked on the door it swung open. Daniel Barkley blinked out into the sunshine.
“Ms. Wilson?” He smoothed his tufts of white hair. “We’re so happy you came.”
Sheila paused in the doorway, eyes slow to adjust to the darkened interior. Heavy draperies covered all the windows and brushed the floor. The rooms held a familiar smell—stale air, sweat, and urine. Both husband and wife sat across from her. Daniel, in slippers and a cardigan, occupied a wing back chair. He asked her the typical interview questions, but showed little interest in her answers. Beverly, in loose polyester pants and a specially kitted recliner chair, fiddled with a tube dribbling yellow fluid into a half-full catheter bag strapped to her leg.
“Do you enjoy gardening?” Daniel Barkley’s eyebrows rose in anticipation of her reply.
Sheila nodded. “I enjoy the quiet. Mostly I read, walk.”
“It’s definitely quiet in Mason. Not much to the town, which is good. No pesky city lights to muddy the stars.” He pinched a pill of wool from his sweater. “We’re close to the Badlands. Great place to hike. Feel the history of the Earth. You were studying Evolutionary Biology, right? Interesting field. Why did you stop in the middle of your grad studies?”
“Financial reasons.” Her stock reply, mostly true. She had a decent inheritance from her mother, but it wouldn’t last forever. “I decided to work for a few years and then go back. Save myself the burden of student loans.”
“Smart girl.” Daniel nodded. “What do you think, Bev? You can talk to her about your research and she’ll understand. Beverly’s an astrophysicist. Designed the new telescope up at the observatory.” He leaned close enough that Sheila could smell the coffee and breakfast sausage on his breath. “The last girl was such a superstitious little thing. Argued sci
ence was just stirring up trouble, messing with God’s plan. But you always got one up on her, didn’t you, honey?”
They both looked at Beverly, whose head bobbed endlessly as she smiled her watery smile.
The Package
The next morning, Beverly sat comfortably in her recliner, a murder mystery flickering from the TV. Sheila walked down the drive to collect the mail. The dry air and the crunch of gravel underfoot nudged at the headache lurking at the base of her skull. For a moment the vision, endless dark and sprays of light, came back to her. She shivered. Should she go see a doctor next time she was in the city? Did she even want to know what he might find?
She pulled a stack of envelopes and a scientific journal from the mailbox. Beneath them sat a paperback-sized box wrapped in brown paper.
She looked down the deserted road into town. A few cars were parked outside the diner, and relentlessly bright sun sparked off the metal and glass. Daniel had boasted about the revitalization of Mason, which, until a few years ago, had been drifting toward ghost-town status. Construction of the observatory and the restoration of the old Deerfoot Hotel and The Last Chance Saloon had somewhat resuscitated the rest of town. It clearly wasn’t thriving, however. Most of the residents drove to Calgary for work, leaving the street cloaked in its lingering ghost-town haze.
Back in the house, Sheila set the mail on the kitchen table and went from room to room, peeling back the drapes and opening the tall, leaded-glass windows. An insect whirr drifted in from the garden, along with the sweet, dusty smell of desiccating rose bushes. She poured herself another coffee and sat for a moment staring into the liquid blackness.
Some mornings Sheila spent time in the garden, pruning, pulling thistles and clover, but not today with her head still fogged and aching dully. She pulled the journal from the stack of mail. It had a reprinted excerpt of Beverly’s last research paper about the gravitational detector she had built. The detector worked in conjunction with a massive mirrored telescope, collecting data on her discovery, something she claimed was a black hole. In 1973 the OH471 quasar had been the furthest object ever seen. Beverly’s find was even more distant. Her gravitational detector recorded data on how the space surrounding the black hole interacted with the object itself; there was no other way to “see” the phenomenon. But Beverly had been on the brink of a breakthrough, working day and night, feverish with discovery, when the sudden onset of myalgia and seizures prevented her from writing up her final findings.
Some nights Daniel came home from the observatory and unrolled the telescope’s schematic drawings in front of his wife. “We’ve got the computer mostly repaired. It’s coming along great. We’ve almost fixed the telescope, too, though we’re not sure about this metal piece here.” He scratched his chin. “Getting clear readings from the detector is proving difficult. Can you run me through it?”
His hands shook with frustration when his wife pushed the pages away, refusing to look. Moaning and tugging at her pendant until its silver chain left deep red lines on her neck.
Daniel had told Sheila the story, his breath hot with whiskey, how his wife had seized one night at the observatory while she worked after-hours. He’d found her in the morning, computer screens smashed, hard drives in bits. She lay unconscious amid shattered pieces of the telescope, her fists a grid of lacerations, her blood drying on the floor.
Sheila set the journal aside and sorted through the rest of the mail. Bills. Correspondence from friends and colleagues. Beverly would look at those when she got up, feign understanding of what she was reading, her hand shaking so badly the pages fanned and rustled. Then Sheila picked up the box. The address included the word “optic.” Probably a new pair of glasses for either Beverly or Daniel. With a letter opener she sliced the packing tape.
A note from a custom lens manufacturer sat folded atop a bubble-wrapped velvet pouch, which contained a disc of clear glass. It felt heavier than glass, though, the edge rimmed in a silver metal. Sheila read the note:
June 10th, 1974
Dear Dr. B. Barkley,
Here is the second lens you requested. The crystalline material you supplied proved easy to work with, although it was difficult to find a section free of imperfections. You may note microscopic strands floating in the lens, but these do not affect the transparency or the refraction. We were unable to identify some of the source elements in the material’s composition. It is much like crystal, perhaps stronger, though it seems to be at least partially derived from an organic source.
As you did not specify the practical applications of this product, we cannot guarantee its suitability, but hope that you will share with us your results.
Thank you so much for your order and we look forward to assisting you with future projects.
Sincerely,
Dr. K. Trotier
Sheila held the lens up, and saw none of the imperfections mentioned in the letter. Then brought it close to her eye and looked through. Just like putting on the wrong prescription glasses, things in the background receded, and those in the foreground tilted, became too bright, too close. Shadows surged and shifted. She felt motion sick, though she remained still.
She put the lens back in the pouch and slipped it into her pocket.
Duty
Daniel phoned at exactly four o’clock, as he did every day. “I’m sorry to say I won’t make it home for dinner tonight.”
Sheila wasn’t surprised. Since she’d moved in he spent less and less time at home. Her father had done the same, until one day he just left. When Daniel did come home, he usually stayed in his study, or in the kitchen with Sheila while she prepared meals. They discussed Beverly’s numbers for the day: quantity of morphine, liquids in and out, foods consumed. Daniel reported on his progress at the observatory. The telescope was up and running, but they had yet to locate the black hole that Beverly had been studying. Beverly made an anguished sound when she heard the news, and her eyes cleared. Like a light switch she flicked on for a moment, then off, staring blankly at the ceiling, saying Daniel over and over.
“…bring anything home that you need?”
“Ah, no. I went shopping yesterday when the nurse was here.” Sheila realized she’d drifted from the conversation. The phone line hummed and cracked in her ear, reminding her for a moment of the strange static noises she’d heard during Beverly’s myalgia seizure.
“All right, then, sweetie. Maybe I’ll see you tonight when I get home.” Daniel often slipped like that, calling Sheila by the pet names he used for his wife.
Sheila peeked in Beverly’s room. The ringing hadn’t woken her up. On the television Jacques Cousteau narrated as schools of fish spooled through rippling light, splitting to allow a beluga to drift through in pale, lumbering undulations. Beverly lay, mouth open, a glistening bead of drool sneaking across her cheek. Her breasts hung to the sides with the rest of her flesh, loose and sagging down to the mattress. Even in sleep she clutched her crystal pendant tight against her chest.
Intrusion
Sheila parked at the head of one of the many access points to the Badlands. Four hours to herself before she had to be back at the house. The nurse that came in as relief used the time to do a check up on Beverly, change her catheter, go through the morphine numbers and make sure everything added up. It always did.
This gave Sheila time to enjoy a quiet hike. The air was crisp, the sky clear and pale blue. Grass bent in currents before the dry wind and crunched underfoot. Grasshoppers scratched a steady rhythm, popping away from the path, left and right in front of her, then resumed their electric whirr, scattered constellations of sound in the bone-pale meadow.
Where trail met canyon the path turned to follow the ledge, winding along, the canyon dropping away on one side, barren scrub-land stretching off to the horizon on the other. Rounded over, time-worn rock formations bulged from the canyon slope and floor. Striped stone hoodoos rose here and there in giant mushroom clusters.
The brittle wind dried the sweat as it be
aded on Sheila’s forehead. She licked her salted lips as she searched the decline for a way down. She’d imagined her studies would be like this. Solitary pursuit, hunting specimens to bring back to the lab. Chipping back sandstone to reveal a creature never before seen. Cataloguing fossils in a quiet room where dust motes spun out from the shadows to dance in the milky shafts of sunlight.
She’d been wrong. In university it was all about teamwork, about fitting in, sharing data and credit. Endless discussion, constant compromise. Interdependence. How could anyone think with so many hormonal, frivolous people around, rubbing up against each other, gossiping, sharing academic admiration and bodily fluids? As focused on their own small lives as they were on the task of exploring the infinite universe with a rock hammer and microscope.
Sheila appreciated people depending on her in class, and in her personal life. Relished it, in fact. She’d always been in charge, since she was a teenager. Running the house, caring for her mother as she wasted away under the thrall of her disease, handling everything, no discussion needed. It had driven her boyfriend nuts—her constant care-giving, silent independence. And finally it had driven him away. But others always ended up disappointing her. She was better on her own.
The occasional solitary individual or small group littered the canyons and bluffs; like bugs, they crawled up the naturally formed stairs that curved around the hoodoo formations. Sheila found a quiet spot in a smoothed-out alcove and sat in the shade to drink her iced tea.
Soon she would have to go back to the house and fix dinner, then execute the night routine. Beverly’s morning had been particularly bad, starting when Daniel left them for work. The poor woman had moaned in dread as he put on his shoes—he’d needed Sheila’s reminder to change from his slippers. No, please don’t, Daniel. She’d repeated over and over, although neither Sheila nor Daniel had been clear what he shouldn’t do.
Once he was off, things had calmed down for a few hours. Then a series of moderate seizures hit, and Sheila rushed for the next morphine dose, a cool cloth, anything that would soothe Beverly, all the while haunted by the strange vision she’d endured the previous day. The whirling, the molten spumes, a concussive boom winding into a rapid stuttering shriek…
Shadows Over Main Street, Volume 2 Page 6
