The Shimmer

by Carsten Stroud

  “Okay. We’ll get back to Diana Bowman later. So your parents didn’t want you to go on a trip with this Diana Bowman person?”

  “Yeah, because, like, we had to be back in school in September, but, well, they changed their minds and in the end, they were okay with it.”

  “So, you weren’t fighting? They told you that it was fine with them?”

  “Well, not me personally. Diana and Becca said they were cool with it. Diana told me to go wait in the truck. She and Becca came down in maybe an hour, said it was cool with them if we went.”

  “Have you talked with them since then?”

  “Diana did. On the phone. Letting them know where we were and that we were okay.”

  “But not you and not Rebecca?”

  “No. We sorta didn’t want to, actually. They can be...preachy. It was nice to be out from under them. They’re, like, real religious. I mean, totally nuts about Jesus and being saved. Gets old fast.”

  “I can see that. Tell me about this Diana Bowman. Where did you meet her?”

  “On the beach. And then later we all went to a party. In Fernandina Beach. A private house up there.”

  “What kind of a party?”

  The kid got a little sly looking.

  “You’re gonna have trouble with this, I bet. It was girls only. Get it? Or do you need an emoji?”

  A deep sigh from Pandora. She looked up from her NCIC connection. Karen looked over at her, and Pandora looked back with intent, but said nothing.

  “We’re gay, my sister and me. Got a problem with that?”

  Jack said nothing, and so did Pandora.

  “Anyway, we wanted to go, and Mom and Dad wouldn’t let us. So it was a thing, okay?”

  “Was this Diana Bowman also gay?”

  Karen thought it over.

  “I think she was, like, flexible.”

  Jack nodded, let it hang there for a while.

  “Okay. Flexible. So this Bowman woman, she got to be a pretty big deal in your life, big enough for you to defy your folks and go to New Orleans with her?”

  “Well...we sorta got into three-ways with her, Becca and her and me. She was staying at Amelia too, so we had, like, some time with her. It got real...intense. Got the picture?”

  “We get the picture. Is that how it went weird? Because of the sex?”

  “No. Not then. But we were all pretty tangled up with each other, and with Mom and Dad and Alyssa being in our faces all the time, it got kinda sticky, you know, trying to get together?”

  “I can see that,” said Redding, trying to look sympathetic. He wasn’t good at sympathetic looks.

  “Yeah, well, and after a while Mom and Dad sorta thought we were seeing too much of her.”

  Pandora suppressed a “no shit, Sherlock” comment, but she failed to suppress the snort.

  “But they ended up letting you go to New Orleans with her?”

  “I...I think so.”

  “You think so? You were there, weren’t you?”

  “Like I said, I was in the truck, waiting for them.”

  “Your parents?”

  “No. For Diana and Becca.”

  “Okay, right, sorry to keep asking the same questions, but I’m trying to get this all straight. You didn’t actually see your parents when you left? They didn’t come down to say goodbye?”

  “No. But Becca said they were okay with it.”

  “Did you believe her?”

  Her eyes flicked away, came back.

  “Well, when they came down, Becca and Diana were all sorta like OMG and WTF, like maybe there’d been a big fight. But they said no it was all cool...so we left.”

  “But you had some doubts?”

  “Well, yeah...but I really wanted to go to New Orleans, so if my folks were, like, totally pissed I figured we’d get to have the trip anyway and then deal with the hassle when we got back.”

  “Easier to get forgiveness than permission?”

  “Exactly! Sometimes you gotta, you know, assert yourself. Be an adult. Parents have to see that.”

  Karen’s eyes flicked up to Jansson, and then back to Redding. Both cops got the clear impression that she was starting to get the big picture.

  “Look, I gotta know, how much trouble am I in?”

  “So far you’re not in any legal trouble. You haven’t been charged with anything. You’re in Protective Custody because this Bowman woman is still out there—”

  “She is? I thought you were all chasing her—”

  “She got away. She’s a fleet little thing, give her that.”

  A brief flicker of something in the girl’s eyes.

  Unreadable, but there.

  Fear? Pleasure?

  “So she’s still a threat to you. Even if you went willingly in the beginning, you’re still a minor, and she’s committed an indictable offense by keeping you under her control, and we are right now trying to sort this all out. That’s why you’re here.”

  He took a deep breath, changed gears.

  “Look, Karen, you’re a sixteen-year-old kid. No matter what the hell went on back at Amelia Island, or even what you tried to do to Trooper Karras—”

  “I didn’t do anything! That was all Becca! On account of her being in shock and shit!”

  “Okay, fine. No matter what, there’s only so much trouble you can be in, because you’re a juvenile—”

  “I can still go to jail!”

  “Yeah. For juvies, it’s like a tennis camp, only with razor wire. Even that’s a worst-case scenario, given the circumstances. Any good defense attorney can make a case for your state of mind, fear of death, even Stockholm syndrome. I doubt it will even get to a trial. This will be pled down, or sent over to Psychiatric for evaluation. And when you’re eighteen, it’s all wiped anyway. So all we’ve got is this clusterfuck we’re looking at, and if you help us uncluster it, you’ll be doing yourself a favor—”

  The door opened, and Mace Dixon developed into the room. He was wearing his anvil face. But he didn’t say anything, just took a piece of wall next to Pandora Jansson.

  After a cautionary look at Dixon, Redding went back at Karen, who was staring at Dixon as if he were a cave bear. He clearly scared the hell out of her. Good timing. Exactly what was needed here.

  “Look, Karen, the best thing you could do for yourself right now is tell us the truth. We can see you’re dancing around it. So quit that. You suck as a liar. Do yourself a favor and just lay it out.”

  “I told you, she kidnapped us, sorta, and—”

  “Honey, that’s total bullshit, and everybody here knows it. Including you. The inside of the truck was like a Panama City condo at Spring Break. It was a rolling Mardi Gras float, complete with the beads and the beer cans. Had to have your hands free to pop all those beer cans—”

  “It wasn’t like that. We were hostages!”

  “Hostages for what? Give me a free beer or I’ll kill these girls? Look, kid, don’t talk. Just listen. Okay?”

  She opened her mouth to say something but Jack waved her off.

  “You were in New Orleans, stayed at the Monteleone, according to the hotel records, all three of you in the same room. What’d she do, tie you and gag you and sneak you up the freight elevator in a room service cart? There’s hotel security video of the three of you playing in the rooftop pool and having party drinks at that Carousel Bar thing off the lobby.”

  He took a breath, letting what he was saying sink in to the girl’s limbic system, where fear and self-preservation lived together in a too-small room.

  “So, our IT guys have found security camera video of you pumping gas into the truck at an Exxon station in Mobile while your sister and this Diana woman went into the store and came out with subs and a six-pack. And more video of you guys having burgers and white wine at a Ruby
Tuesday on I-10 outside Tallahassee. Karen, honey, this whole thing was a rolling holiday, which is fine with me, except it ended with your sister trying to kill my trooper and getting her ticket duly punched.”

  Redding was lying about the security videos—they were still hunting those—but he could see by her expression that she was buying it all the way down to her toes. Silence, while she took that in and they let her.

  “Come on, Karen,” said Pandora, in a softer voice. “Get this off your chest, whatever it is.”

  More silence, her head down, looking at her knees, and then she lowered her head to her knees and started to cry. Pandora—no sigh this time—crossed the room, sat beside her on the bed, put an arm across her shoulders. Karen slipped sideways and came into her.

  Redding and Dixon said nothing, did nothing.

  Finally Karen shook herself free, accepted a tissue from Pandora, took in a shaky breath and looked up at Redding.

  “Look. You don’t know what she can do. You don’t know what she...what she is.”

  “No, we don’t,” said Pandora, in a soothing purr. “So help us here. What is she?”

  “I’m not supposed to talk about it! Diana warned us. If we talked about it, then bad people would try to use it.”

  “Use what, honey?” said Pandora.

  Karen wiped her eyes, let out another ragged breath, shredding the tissue with her fingers.

  “The Shimmer. Diana can use the Shimmer.”

  The cops ping-ponged a WTF look around at each other, and Pandora came back to Karen.

  “And what is the Shimmer?” Pandora asked, staying soft.

  “It’s inside everybody. It’s what leaves you when you die. Like with Christ and that Shroud of Toledo thing. When he died he burned his image into it. You can look it up. There are pictures. Diana said what Christ had was the Shimmer, like we all have.”

  “Like a soul?” asked Pandora.

  “Well, maybe...whatever, it’s what leaves you when you die. Diana says they’ve actually weighed bodies that died and they were lighter by this tiny little bit.”

  “Sounds like a soul to me,” said Pandora.

  “Or, what do you call it?” said Jack. “Bio...biomechanical...”

  “Bioelectric energy,” said Dixon, his first words since he entered the room, his voice a bass rumble. “It’s what the body runs on.”

  Karen, startled by his voice, shook her head, eyes into the middle distance, going inward, remembering.

  “No not like that,” she said. “Mom and Dad believe that the soul belongs to God. But Diana believes that the Shimmer belongs to anybody who can use it.”

  “Use it?” said Pandora. “How would somebody be able to use the body’s energy?”

  Karen was vibrating in Pandora’s arms.

  “She can...travel on it. She can use it to take her...take her back in...”

  “In what?”

  “In time.”

  “In time for what?”

  “Not that way. She can use the Shimmer to go back and forward. Through time.”

  They all looked at each other, the message clear: Okay we are now in the presence of batshit crazy. No sudden moves and avoid eye contact.

  Pandora kept her face straight, rolling with it.

  “Okay, honey, are you saying that Diana can travel through time?”

  “Yes. She uses the Shimmer.”

  “And you’ve seen her do this?”

  “No...but she’s like real old. She remembers stuff from a hundred years back. Like when we were in New Orleans. She knew all about the old places—”

  “Like what?” asked Jack, intrigued in spite of himself.

  “I don’t know. She showed us a place where she said she had an apartment back then. The Pontalba?”

  Jack knew it.

  The Pontalba was on Jackson Square in the French Quarter. It was the oldest apartment house in New Orleans. Perhaps in America. It was famous. Why was that woman spinning this complete horseshit to a couple of gullible teens from Missouri?

  “Did she tell you how old she was?”

  Everybody was thinking, Rubber Room, Rubber Room, but they just listened quietly. All the deeply crazy ones sooner or later end up in a room full of silent and attentive cops.

  Karen was breathing quickly, tense and shallow, as she thought about the question.

  “No. But, well she knows all about St. Augustine back in the fifties. The 1950s. When we drove through she was saying, ‘Well, this used to be where Marty’s Restaurant was, and this was where we used to listen to bluegrass at the Driftwood, and this used to be the Monterey Court Motel where she hooked up with some Italian mob boss every afternoon, and that big building used to be the Alka...Alka Seltzer or something—”

  “The Alcazar Hotel,” said Jack, amazed that the kid could remember all the old names. “It’s now the Lightner Museum. And she’s saying she used to go to all these places? Back in the fifties? Didn’t you think she was sort of bullshitting you, honey?”

  “Yes, at first. But she knew...she knew so many things. Hundreds of different places. She named them all, empty lots, burned-down places, places that were all boarded up. And she sounded...like she missed it all. Like she was telling us about happy memories. Places she loved. It was in her voice, you know?”

  “So she talked a lot. Did she say anything you can remember that seemed, I don’t know, nuts?”

  “Like what she was already saying wasn’t nuts?”

  “Yeah, I get that. I mean, anything about what she was all about, who she was, what she wanted, why she was doing all this crazy stuff?”

  Karen went quiet.

  “Well, yeah, there was this thing about...what do you call it? A gold thing you put pictures in?”

  “A locket?”

  “Yeah. A locket. She was always talking about them, these locket things. Like she had a real OMG BFF about them. If we ever went near an antiques store, she was all over that. In New Orleans, that was like almost all we ever did, hunt for some stupid locket.”

  “Did she collect them?”

  “No. It was like she was looking for this one specific locket. Nothing else would do.”

  “She say why?”

  “I don’t know. Sort of. You know, like it was a lucky charm or something. If she found the right one, then she’d be happy.”

  “The right one?”

  “Yeah. Like there was this one perfect locket, one she used to own, and she had lost it somewhere, but she couldn’t remember where, and if she could just find it, then everything would be okay, like? She was sort of a bore about it, actually.”

  “I get that. She is looking for this magic locket. She’s obsessed with it?”

  “Yeah. Yes, like, totally.”

  “Because her...what, her happiness was all tied up in it?”

  “Yeah. I think, underneath all the rest, the sex, the money, the thrills, that locket was always on her mind. After a while, me and Becca tried not to remind her about it, she was so, like, fixed on finding it.”

  Jack took that in, filed it.

  “Okay. You’re on the road, you’ve all gone down memory lane with her, in New Orleans and St. Augustine. Did she talk about this... What it is? The Shining?”

  Karen didn’t like the question. Her body stiffened up.

  “You mean the Shimmer?”

  “Yes. The Shimmer. Did she tell you how the Shimmer works? How does she call it up? How does she use it? How she can ride it back in time?”

  This seemed to trigger a serious panic attack. Karen went white, started to tremble, and then got short of breath. Very short.

  “She... I’m not supposed to say. If I say it, she’ll know. She’ll come and she...she...”

  Now she was gasping, began to struggle for air.

  “My puffer..
. I need...my puffer...!”

  Everyone reacted to that.

  Karen’s face was getting whiter. Dixon pressed the Emergency button by the door, and Pandora started rubbing Karen’s back.

  Jack picked her backpack up, but didn’t pass it to her. He rooted around in it—it had been gone over by the nurses—and found a pale blue cylinder with a little plastic mask attached. She reached out for it—hesitated—her breath was coming in short sharp wheezes and the intake breath was like a stone sliding down a grate—

  “No...mine...mine is silver...”

  “Was what, honey? Silver what?” said Pandora, just as the door slammed open and the charge nurse was suddenly right there, a lean black woman with serious command presence, who shoved everyone aside and hovered over Karen, who was still shaking her head, trying to speak, and that terrible wheeze—

  “Quit fucking around and gimme that,” she said, snatching the asthma puffer out of Jack’s hand and putting the mask tight against Karen’s nose and lips, her right hand on Karen’s back.

  “Come on. Slow and deep, honey...yes...again...”

  Everyone watched Karen as she pulled the mist in, her eyes wide as she fought for air. The charge nurse was strong, steady, confident. Jack was thinking, Minor case of asthma like hell—

  And then Karen tensed, arched, went into a convulsion, bent into rigid upward bow, began to make a high-pitched keening sound—pure distilled agony—the charge nurse said something along the lines of Holy Fuck and hit the Code Blue button above the bed...a few seconds later a crash cart crew piled into the room and shoved the cops back against the walls and everybody started doing all sorts of very intense and cool and competent professional “stat gimme ten cc’s roll her roll her now okay she’s not breathing she’s in cardiac arrest gimme the paddles everybody clear okay again clear” stuff like you see on Grey’s Anatomy...

  * * *

  ...and none of it mattered a rat’s ass, because the kid was stone dead in a little less than four minutes. The look on her face would stay with all of them forever.

  In the stunned silence, after they had stared at the dead girl for a while, the crash doc shook himself like a wet dog, checked the wall clock, and said, “Okay. Subject female Walker, Karen, declared dead at one seventeen hours this a.m., note the time and log it.”