Cinema of Shadows

by Michael West

  The kitchen was little more than a hallway lined with cabinets and appliances, but Kim could tell Tyler knew his way around. She watched him spin; open a drawer here, a pantry there, knowing just where to find what he needed.

  “Want something to drink?” he asked. “I’ve got some beer, Diet Coke, bottled water ...”

  “A beer would be great.”

  He handed her an ice cold Budweiser, and after a moment, brought her a steaming bowl of rice, beans, and meat.

  “Smells incredible,” Kim told him.

  “Ah, but it’s not done yet.” He set another bowl in front of his own chair and sprinkled shredded cheese over both before sitting down next to her. “Voilà! Dig in.”

  She took a big bite and smiled. It tasted even better than it smelled.

  They sat there for a long while, eating, drinking, talking, and just enjoying one another’s company. He’d asked her about her day and she filled him in on the politics of her study groups, the boring nature of her required classes, the test she just knew she flunked and the one that had earned her an “A.” It was all quite snooze-worthy, but Tyler appeared to listen to each and every word as if he were interested.

  “So how was that long-ass shift of yours today?” she finally asked.

  He shrugged and slowly stirred his Jambalaya. “I lost a patient this morning.”

  “I’m sorry.” The campus ER had been quiet the few times she’d been there, but she’d seen enough movies and television to know that wasn’t always the case. She couldn’t imagine dealing with those fast-paced emergency situations day after day, couldn’t imagine being around so much death. “Was it bad?”

  He downed what was left of his beer, then reached across the table and took her hand in his own. “I don’t wanna bring you down with war stories, especially ones that I don’t understand myself.”

  “You’re not in any trouble, are you?”

  Tyler shook his head and ran his thumb across the ridge of her knuckles. “I’m sure they’ll ask me to present the case, tell them what happened and what I did. We put a rush on the autopsy, so I’ll know more tomorrow, but there wasn’t anything that could have saved this guy.”

  Kim nodded. She looked into her empty bowl, wondering if she would look like a pig if she asked him to refill it. When she felt Tyler squeeze her hand, her eyes went back to him.

  “Are you happy, Kim?” he asked her.

  “Don’t I look happy?”

  “Sometimes. But you’ve got this sadness in your eyes. It never really seems to go away, and I keep asking myself ... what was it? What could possibly have made this beautiful girl so very sad?”

  She chuckled humorlessly. “I’m not beautiful.”

  “Yes you are. Trust me, I’m a doctor.”

  She stared at him a moment and the corner of her lip rose to form a cock-eyed grin. No one had ever called her beautiful before, not even Carter.

  “Every time my mom calls, she asks me how I’m feeling. I tell her I’m fine. I mean, I’m not walking around campus all depressed or anything, but happy?” She lowered her head, looked at her bowl once more. “I don’t think I’ve ever really understood the whole happiness thing.”

  “When I stop a child’s pain, when I save a patient’s life ...”

  Tyler touched her chin, lifted her face toward his.

  “When I met you ...”

  And then he leaned across the table and gently pressed his mouth to hers. His lips were coarse and firm, but his tongue was soft. Her hands rose to his back, felt the fabric of his shirt stretched tightly across his broad shoulders and wondered what it would be like to touch his naked skin.

  When their lips parted, he said, “That’s happiness.”

  “Wow.” An excited tingle crept down her abdomen to rest between her thighs. “So, Doctor Tyler ...”

  He leaned toward her again, his face solemn. “Yes.”

  “What happens now?”

  “Now, I need to do dishes.”

  She punched his shoulder. “After the dishes?”

  “After the dishes, we could watch some TV, maybe play a little X-Box ...?”

  Kim chewed her lower lip, then spoke softly, almost whispered, “You could show me your bedroom.”

  “I could do that.”

  “You don’t want to?”

  “I’m very attracted to you,” he said honestly, “but I didn’t invite you over here just to get you into bed.”

  She smiled. “You wanna know what I think?”

  Tyler nodded, looking her in the eyes.

  “I think you’re a very nice guy,” she told him, “a very handsome guy, and I’m a very, very lucky lady.”

  12

  The Medical Examiner’s name was Billy Friesen (pronounced Freezin’), so it was either by destiny or irony that he wound up working in a morgue.

  He switched off his Gigli saw, ending its high-pitched whir and the cracking sound of the cold cranium on the autopsy table before him. He reached over to his tray of stainless steel instruments and grabbed a small scalpel, cutting away the thin blanket of membrane, leaving the brain naked and glistening in the overhead lights. Through the plexiglass shield of his facemask, Billy studied its ridges and valleys. No matter how often he saw the organ, it was hard not to be in awe. Everything this man was, all he’d seen, felt, and experienced, was buried within these gray spirals of flesh and nerves. And now the system had crashed and all this vital data was lost forever. Just ... gone.

  Ah, but is it really gone? One day, will I be able to hook up a cable to a lifeless mind and download all of that knowledge, that ... consciousness?

  He’d read works by Plato and others who believed the brain held the human soul. Some even tried to pinpoint its exact location. Erasistratos, for example, placed it in the cerebellum, the little brain. While Galen, the forbearer of modern medical methods, argued for the fourth ventricle as the throne of conscious life.

  Billy freed the brain from its snug home. It was cold to the touch, but it had been in the cooler all day. He placed it in the hanging basket of a scale to his left, watching the needle rock and settle. “Three pounds,” he said, the microphone of his headset recording the findings. “What we have here is the average ... healthy brain of an adult Hispanic male.”

  His words became gossamer clouds and he shivered against the sudden chill. Beside him, the instruments began to vibrate on their stand — their metal bodies clanging against one another.

  “¡Libérenos!”

  Billy looked across the autopsy table and saw a figure moving in the shadows. “Who’s there?”

  “¡El teatro es maldito!”

  The overhead light dimmed as the figure of a man moved forward. Billy’s eyes fell to the body he’d been dissecting. This stranger was the dead man’s identical twin. “I’m sorry, sir. Family members aren’t normally —”

  “¡El teatro es maldito!” the man cried again, his face a twisted expression of agony. “¡Estamos en Infierno!”

  The medical examiner shook his head. “I’m sorry. I don’t speak Spanish. I need you to —”

  Bulbs in the overhead light exploded in showers of sparks, plunging the room into shades of blue darkness. Billy flinched and backed away from the metal table, backed away from the body he’d opened, the body that looked exactly like the stranger on the other side of the room.

  “¡Libérenos!” the man called out. He could be seen clearly in the darkness, as if he were standing in a spotlight.

  Cooler doors flew open and slammed shut. The metal armature that held the Gigli saw swung to and fro, its blood-stained blade coming to life, spinning rapidly. On the floor, scalpels played spin-the-bottle.

  There was something else in the room. Billy sensed its movement and the hairs on the back of his neck stiffened at its approach. The stranger felt it as well. His head jerked toward the darkness and his eyes grew wide with fear.

  “¡Libérenos del demonio!” he screamed, and then he disappeared, but it was no graceful fa
de from reality or slow retreat into the shadows. The apparition was erased like a bad sketch at the hands of a frustrated artist, and when it was gone, the spinning scalpels were flung in Billy’s direction.

  13

  Carter Donovan might have had the honor of “popping her cherry,” as he’d so delicately referred to it, but Kim felt as if she’d really lost her virginity with Tyler. He was so light on top of her, so gentle ... it was the only time she’d been able to climax except by her own hand.

  “Oh ... God, what the hell did you just do to me?” she asked.

  “I don’t know ...” Tyler looked down at her, and when he wiped the sweat-dampened hairs from her face, she could see the tenderness in his eyes. “... but you seemed to enjoy it.”

  “Uh ... that would be a big yeah.” She lifted her head, kissed him, then fell back against the pillow and giggled. “That was amazing.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed, “it was.”

  They lay there for some time, just gazing into each other’s eyes.

  “Stay the night?” Tyler asked.

  “Yes.”

  He leaned down and kissed her deeply. She longed to feel his lips and tongue on her neck again, feel them work their way down. She wanted to —

  Tashima!

  Kim broke the kiss. “Shit.”

  “Bad kiss?”

  She blushed. “No ... it’s just ... I told my roommate that I’d study with her tonight when I got back. Can I use your phone? My cell is ...” She glanced down at their clothes strewn across the floor. “... somewhere.”

  Tyler nodded to the bedside table. “Be my guest.”

  Kim reached over, picked up the receiver, and dialed. She hoped for the answering machine, but Tashima picked up after two rings.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s Kim.”

  “Hey, girl. How’s it going with the doc?”

  Tyler leaned down and kissed her shoulder.

  “Good.” She smiled at him, her free hand combing through his hair. “Really good.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Would you ... would you mind if I bailed on you tonight — saw you in the morning?”

  Tashima snickered. “Here I am studyin’, and you’re out there bein’ a ’ho’.”

  “I am not —” Kim lowered her voice to a whisper. “I am not a ’ho.’”

  “Girl, don’t worry about it. I’m happy one of us is gettin’ lucky. Just wish it was me.”

  “I’m sure Joss can help you with that.”

  “Whatever.”

  Kim giggled.

  Tyler’s head had moved down. He kissed her stomach, stuck his tongue into her belly button.

  She bit her lip, then told Tashima, “I should go.”

  “Have fun. You got condoms?”

  Kim glared at the phone. “Yes. Fine. Thank you.”

  Tashima snickered again. She was enjoying this. “Just don’t let him keep you up all night. You got class in the morning.”

  “I’ll be fine. See you tomorrow?”

  “I want to hear all about it.”

  “I ...”

  Tyler’s mouth was between her legs now, his tongue tracing the wavy lips of her vulva.

  Kim closed her eyes, grabbed the corner of the pillow and squeezed hard. “... I gotta go.”

  “Bye.”

  “Bye.” She opened her eyes again, managed to press the disconnect button before letting the phone drop, then looked down at Tyler. “You’re terrible.”

  He lifted his head. “I thought I was pretty good.”

  “I’d give you an A plus.”

  Tyler chuckled. “I hope this isn’t what you’ll expect from all of your pupils.”

  She closed her thighs around his head, squeezed like a vise. “Shut up! You know, that really pisses me off. The media never says anything about the teachers who get their students into college, all they want to show are the ones who get them into bed.”

  “Sorry.” His hand stroked her outer thigh. “I was just joking.”

  She released him. “I know, but still.”

  He climbed back up her body, ran his fingers through her hair and changed the subject. “So what was so important that you and your roommate were going to study so late tonight?”

  “We’ve got Professor Burke’s class in the morning. Tashima’s not doing well on the tests.”

  “Burke?”

  “Geoffrey Burke. British. Glasses.”

  Tyler laughed. “That ghost class everybody talks about?”

  Sudden anger flashed behind her eyes, coloring her words. “It’s called Parapsychology, and Burke’s a great teacher. His classes fill up every semester. It’s amazing Tashima and I got in at all.”

  His hand was on her thigh again, gently sliding back and forth. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have laughed. I know you had an experience that freaked you out.”

  “Yes,” Kim said softly. “And it wasn’t just that time on the bridge. The other night, when my friend Kevin got hurt, we were doing a class project, an investigation.”

  “A ghost hunt?”

  “An investigation.” God, she was starting to sound like Kevin, spouting Burkeisms. “Anyway, we were at this house ... this guy killed his whole family there.”

  “That yellow house on Weyland?”

  “Yeah. Did you treat them?”

  He shook his head. “Before my time.”

  “Right.” She grinned and rolled her eyes. “Well, when we were there, before Kevin’s hand was broken, I saw this shadow in the doorway. It had a knife.”

  Tyler said nothing. His eyes were bright in the darkness. After a moment, he reached for the bedside table and found a small pile of change. He grabbed a coin, then held his fist up to her ear. When he pulled it away and uncurled his fingers, there was a quarter in the center of his palm. It shimmered in the faint light. “Look, there’s money in your ear.”

  She snickered. “Daddy’s done that same trick a million times. God, I haven’t thought about that in years.”

  Tyler chuckled.

  She looked at him. “What?”

  “I love hearing a grown woman call her father ‘Daddy.’”

  Kim smiled. “You know, that magic trick would work a lot better if you didn’t let me see you grab the coin first.”

  “I’ve never been very good at this,” he told her cheerily. His voice then grew softer and he leaned down, touched her forehead with his own. “If you know how a trick is done, it stops being supernatural. I’ve seen pictures that have these spots on them. People like Burke call them ‘spirit orbs’ and say that they’re proof of ghosts, but they’re really just stray particles caught in the camera’s flash.”

  “I didn’t realize you were such a Scully.”

  “Sorry.”

  “So you’re saying I’m seeing things?”

  Tyler shook his head. “I wasn’t there. I’m just giving you one possible explanation. Sometimes, when we get all worked up and our adrenaline kicks in, we see what we want to see, or what we expect to see.”

  Kim reached up and pressed her palm against his cheek. “What about the voices?”

  “Voices?”

  “The little girl who was killed, Anna ... I think I heard her.”

  “What did she say?”

  “‘Take me with you.’”

  “Ooh ... That’s pretty specific.”

  Kim felt a chill; shuddered in Tyler’s arms.

  He grabbed the blankets, pulled them up around her.

  “Got a rational explanation for that one, Scully?” she asked.

  “No,” he told her honestly.

  She lowered her eyes. “Now Burke wants us to help him on this new investigation of his. I told him no, but Tashima keeps telling me I should go ahead and do it. ‘Get back on the horse’ or whatever. She says I won’t get over my fears unless I go out and face them.”

  “She sounds pretty smart to me,” Tyler told her.

  “So you think I should do it?”

  “I’m c
learly not qualified to advise you on that field of study.”

  She wrapped her legs around him, rubbed his left buttocks with her calf. “Would you do it?”

  “Yeah, I would.” He touched her chin, lifted her eyes up to meet his. “What some people call problems, I think of as mysteries. I like to solve mysteries.”

  Kim nodded in his hand.

  “Wanna talk about something else?” he asked.

  “Actually ...” She smiled and pushed on his shoulders, rolled him over onto his back. “I don’t think we should talk at all.”

  “You sure?”

  Kim pressed her finger to his lips. “Positive.”

  And then she straddled him. She’d never been on top before, and wondered what all the fuss was about. When she sank onto Tyler and started moving her hips, she found her answer.

  14

  If only Kim didn’t dream.

  It was always the same, as if this moment in her life had somehow become God’s favorite and He kept rewinding the tape, watching as she relived it again and again and again. The glass broke behind her. She could feel the shards sting her skin, feel the cold. She dreamt herself turning in slow-motion, knowing what she would see, not wanting to look and yet unable to stop. Sometimes the dead girl looked the same, and sometimes she was far worse, a moldering skull covered in thick clumps of moss. She would reach into the car and pull Kim out through the broken window, dragging her down toward the water of the creek below.

  “Ready to go home?” the dead girl would ask, her voice a bubbling gargle.

  Kim called out to Carter Donovan for help. Sometimes he would be gone, sometimes ...

  Sometimes he would be dead, his face green and shriveled until it was crumpled tissue paper stretched across bone, his exposed teeth forming an eternal smile.

  And still the little girl drew her down. “Ready to go home?”

  Kim thrashed and kicked to break free of the girl’s lifeless grasp, but it did no good. Nothing ever did any good. The murky water rose up, filled Kim’s open mouth, and there was an explosion of bubbles as her last breath slipped away in a muffled, submerged scream.