I had felt
his eyes on me already before the ceremony had started, and now as I’m
searching through the crowd I am reminded of the eerie feeling I get whenever
he is close.
The ceremony had been so filled with love
and joy, the pinnacle of success of the festival; people dancing everywhere,
children laughing, all the people filling me with excitement and true
happiness.
There is a young girl who is about to break
out in a fit of laughter at one of the singers from this morning; he has just
fallen head first into a pit of mud. Before I even see her I know she is there,
her laughter comes at me and fills my chest with bubbles that overflows and
pours out of me and I can’t stop my own giggles. The bride, hair in a wreath of
autumn leaves, is kissing her groom with such passion I cannot help but to fall
in love.
There it is again, that intense feeling of
nothingness. He must be watching me for never have I felt so aware of a man,
never have a man made my heartbeat slow down to an almost halt, shutting out
all other people, all other feelings.
There is something with his eyes. I first
noticed them last night when he was playing with the band of folk singers. The
bow danced over his violin with such tenacity and fire, he had the whole crowd
on their feet, yet his eyes remained calm, fixed on mine and I could swear
there were shadows around them for I could not see a thing but his eyes.
Some children are splashing water at each other
as they play by the lake and I’m brought back from the spell. The eerie feeling
I had moments ago has abandoned me and I’m suddenly very aware of the cold
autumn breeze, the vivid colours of red, yellow and orange that made the
festival even more glorious suddenly don’t feel as bright.
The sun is setting and the crowd is drawing
to the tents for the wedding feast as someone lays their hands on my shoulders
and turns me around. Even though I already know who it is my heart skips a
beat, I gasp and tell him how he has frightened me!
It‘s strange, I didn’t sense him walk up to
me. His presence has dumbfounded me the entire weekend. His hands are large yet
delicate and just as pale as his face. His hold on my shoulders is quite tight
and he’s looking me deep in the eyes. If only I could tell what he’s feeling.
We start to walk away from the festival
grounds, he’s taken my hand in his and he’s leading me into the woods, there’s
an enchanted glade there where he must be taking me.
I do wonder if this is what it’s like to
fall in love. It’s a sense of peace, a quietness I’ve never heard before. I can
feel it all through my body, I have ever since I first saw him and I’ve not
been able to think of much else. Even my sense of time is askew, how did it get
so late? The stars have come out and I have to stop and light my lantern.
He has brought me to the edge of the glade,
I can still hear the festivities, the music is loud and cheerful and I can’t
help but smile at the stranger in front of me.
His face is stoic and does not reveal a
thought, not even as he’s grabbing for something under his overcoat. The eerie
feeling is back and I take a step backwards and through the light of the
lantern I see something glimmer in his hand as he pulls out a dagger. For a
second I’m mesmerised by the strange looking thing. I’m frozen in disbelief and
I’m just about to simply ask what is going on as he thrust for me.
I push him, both hands right in the chest,
and I run. It’s dark and I cannot see, but I can hear the music. I run, but
don’t know where. I scream, and I choke on my tears. I don’t know where he is,
I cannot see.
I listen for the music, my breathing, my
crying, and my gasping is all I hear. I have to be silent. I have to hear where
I should go. I hide behind a tree, the moss is cold and wet.
I hear the music and I can see some light
from the moon through the leaves. I run. My heart is in my throat and the woods
are spinning. I think I hear him. We didn’t walk this far, it has to be here.
Why didn’t I stay on the path?
I run for the light; it’s the edge of the
woods. I think I see lights from the tents, I scream. I scream and I run, the
dress has tangled my feet. I’m running and I’m trapped, I’m screaming but I
cannot hear my screams. Where am I? Someone please help!
He’s behind me! I turn but he’s not there.
There’s a flash and I’m on the ground. He has my lantern, I see his face and I
scream. He’s standing above me and now he’s smiling, the glare from his eyes is
all I see. I’m kicking empty air, I pull and punch and tare and kick, I try to
get up.
He plunges the dagger into my chest and my
heart explodes. I am trapped. I cannot breathe. He plunges again, and again. He
plunges the dagger into my gut and I cannot feel a thing,
I wake up
from my own screams. I am screaming, and coughing, I have to gasp for air. I
can breathe. My heart is racing, my limbs are shaking, I am weeping, but I can
breathe. I take several deep breaths. From the moonlight I can see my own hand cramping
and holding my now partially torn sheets.
Slowly I realise where I am, who I am, and
what has just happened. I am beginning to breathe normally again, I can let go
of the sheets, and on shaky legs I manage to get out of the bed. I am soaking
wet.
What in the name of all the deities was
that? I was at a wedding, no a festival! A queer looking man, a very intense
man, murdered me and to make the whole situation queerer still, I was a woman.
Never have I had such a queer dream.
I stagger through the room and fumble for my
cigarette case, I can scarcely make it out by the pale moonlight. It is still
early, not even midnight yet, I only got two or three hours sleep. As I light a
cigarette and begin to analyse what had just happened I can only be sure of one
thing, I will not be getting anymore sleep tonight. And with that realisation I
put on a pot of coffee and I think to myself that I do not have to be down at
the newspaper until tomorrow afternoon, I am just picking up a couple of pay
checks anyway, I might just skip it all together and wait a few days.
A few dozen
old newspaper articles, half a thick war novel (of which I do not recall a
thing) and several pots of coffee later, I still cannot let go of that dream. I
decide to head down to the office after all.
I grab my hat and my scarf and the heavy
overcoat; this October has been really cold (as most Octobers are) and shut the
door to the apartment and hopefully the dream behind me.
My trusted and rusty bicycle is still
leaning against the brownstone as I get out on the street. No one would want to
steal an old and rusty thing like that I tell myself for the hundredth time.
I get to the newspaper a little after one
o’clock. The other reporters are just coming back from lunch and the first one
I see is “Fat Eddie” Hamlin, a man of many words and few I find of interest, a
middle age man who like to drink too much and recent everyone’s successes except
his own, should he ever have any. I hurry my way through all the buzzing,
trying to avoid them all but Eddie in particular, and as I shut the door to the
Boss’ office I scarcely hear him murmur something about the “boy wonder”.
The Boss is sucking on a fat cigar, as he
always is, shouting at people over the telephone with his booming voice that
commands authority and tell the tale of a man who has done this job for a very
long time.
After he has slammed the receiver and voiced his wonder for why I am at the office on one of the few days I have off he hand
me my pay checks and expresses his gratitude. Well earned money he tells me,
more than he could say for the rest of the sorry group of misfits. He calls me
Parker. He is the only one who has ever called me by my surname. Ever since I started
working for him I have seen it as a sign of respect. All my life I have only
ever been called Billy, or William by my late mother and by my professors.
We have a rather lengthy conversation about
the last couple of articles I wrote. He was amazed how I managed to out-scoop
all the other papers in the city several times in the last few months,
something I have wondered myself. Recently I seem to stumble across evidence
and find witnesses and other people who would like to talk without making the
effort one would think it takes, it is almost as though I know where to go even
before it comes to mind.
I feel uneasy about it all and I change the
conversation to work, new work and I ask him for a new assignment; something to
keep my mind off last nights dream. I can tell he is hesitant to give me
something, instead he gives me a speech on how nothing is really happening
except for the situation in Europe, how war is hell and we are selling papers
on how people are fleeing for their lives. The only tip he has gotten all day
from any of the informers down at the police station is not all that
reliable. The informant is a semi-corrupt cop named Thompson who sells
stories to feed his gambling habit. Finally he tells me that there supposedly
was a murder last night, a woman was stabbed to death at a wedding down at
the Garden Festival.
Needless to say I was utterly dazed, I felt
all the colour drain from my face, for a moment it was as though time slowed
down to a halt and I must have looked whiter than a ghost.
I must not have spoke for what seemed as
several minutes. The Boss looked upon me with a inquisitive face and proceeded
to tell me that he was sending Hamlin down there to investigate. All I could bring myself to do was to protest
and demand that I be put on the case. I could tell the Boss did not entirely
believe me when I told him that I simply needed a distraction and that this
story might be good for a crime novel I was writing. I had to agree to take
Eddie with me and let him take charge on this.
After I found Eddie, slumped over his desk
drinking Scotch from a paper cup pretending it was coffee, I explained the situation.
I could tell he was not happy about it as he shoved me into the back of a cab,
but then again; neither was I.
Thompson
was waiting for us when we arrived at the downtown police station, the Boss
must have phoned ahead. Looking at his rat-like face, with pinpricks where eyes
should be, I am not sure if I managed to hide my detest for the man during our
questioning.
The body of a young woman was found early
this morning on a field close to the festival tents. The killer had not
bothered hiding the body and they believe she was murdered right on the spot
where she was found. She had been found by a couple of wedding guests who had
returned in the morning to collect some personal belongings they had left
behind.
As Thompson told the tale I just stood there
and could not get the image of the glaring man standing over me in the field,
with a twisted smile and a tortured face he stabbed me in the chest. As I think
of it now I can still feel her pain, the jagged blade cutting through my flesh
and scraping my bones. I’ve got a very queer feeling about all of this, but who
can I tell that would not think me mad?
Her name was Madeline Stuart, a girl from a
wealthy family that own and operates the rubber factory and half a dozen other
businesses in town. The police have tried to contact her father but he is out
of the country. Her brother, Patrick, is up at the sanatorium where he has
apparently been a patient for years. They have sent officers there but Robert
refuses to talk to any of them, he is tied to a bed and has been for years.
He’s a “nut-job” as Thompson so delicately described it, but he cannot have
killed her or witnessed any of it.
Eddie decided to go to the coroner’s office
for the final report. I have to admit I was glad Eddie took it upon himself, I
am not sure I could face Madeline’s dead body just now. Eddie also thought I
was wasting time for wanting to go and see this brother of her's. Robert could
not have killed her or seen who did, Eddie told me, something I need not be
told since I did see who the murderer was, but this queer feeling of mine tells
me there is something more going on here, something terribly foul and something
I believe Robert will know.
The rain fell heavy when I got back out on
the street, I waved down a cab and the driver gave me a queer look as I told
him to take me to the sanatorium, the asylum as the people in the city always called
it. I could not be sure whether the driver thought me to be a patient or a
doctor, either way I could tell he had preferred another route.
The Bellevue Sanatorium is housed within a
mid-century neo-classical building. The façade is quite magnificent,
frightfully so with its tall columns and large windows; all barred to keep
people from attempting escapes. The private cemetery within the tall stone
fence did not take away from the overall intimidating and jarring feeling I got
when I walked up the steps to the massive iron-barred doors.
Originally I had planned to introduce myself
as the worldly newspaper reporter I believe myself to be, but I quickly decided
that I would have a greater chance to get to see Robert if I instead pretended
to be an old friend of his. A fool-proof plan I believed until the nurse who
greeted me looked upon me with great scepticism. In the end she did send an
orderly to find out whether or not Mr Stuart would see me. Now the plan hung on
the thread of hope that Robert was either a man in desperate need of company,
and just so happened to carry a greater than the average person’s grudge
against the police (who he had refused to see), or that he was mentally
disabled enough to believe I was indeed an old friend of his. Surely I would
not be so fortunate that he actually had a friend by the fictitious name I gave
the nurse.
Walking through the corridors the thought
struck me that this is not a good place to regain one’s sanity. I could not
decide whether the walls were a dark green or dirty-grey colour, the grit and
grime in the crevices played their part in the illusion.
Robert Stuart is a very thin man.
Exceptionally tall (his legs and feet did not fit entirely in the bed!) and
very thin with hollowed out cheeks, a razor sharp chin, grey sickly skin and
greasy hair. Bathing the patients did not seem to be a high priority, the
room reeked of sickness and filth, human filth.
I told the orderly who had brought me to
Robert’s room to leave us to ourselves. Once he had shut the door I introduced
myself as a reporter investigating the death of his sister.
At first Robert had remained very calm, a
man of few words I thought, either that or he was heavily medicated which would
better explain the restraints that tied his arms and legs to the bed, but he
soon got agitated when I began my inquiry into who could possibly have wanted
to hurt Madeline.
“Wicked men everywhere, after us all, no one
else could see. Only Madeline could feel them. They are there; everywhere.
Always looking, always plotting. Behind you, behind you!” Robert shrieked.
Possibly it was my imagination getting the
better of me; I felt a chill on my neck but when I turned around there was
nothing there.
Had it not been for my dream last night I
would have written off these words as the feverish ramblings of a man cursed
with delirium.
I was hesitant to ask, by now I was plainly
aware that the answers I would get would create even more confusion, but I had
to know who these men were, where they are and why they wanted to kill
Madeline.
“Not men. Not anymore. They are everywhere,
they are keeping me here. The screams! The screams from the others! Always
screaming, Madeline could feel them, that is why she is dead. She only told me
and dr. Bailey.”
Bailey? I recognised the name. A further
inquiry into Roberts mind confirmed what I had suspected.
Dr. Arthur Bailey was a disgraced
anthropology professor and archaeologist who had been shunned from the
university after many years for “baseless results, fabricated evidence, threatening
witnesses,“ among other allegations. He had once been the expert in his field
but everything had come into questioning at the hearing where he lost his seat
at the university, the lawsuit against a former colleague and the respect of
the entire academic world.
It would seem the rather peculiar
coincidence that I happened to come across this very article in the newspaper
this morning.
Robert on the other hand did not describe
dr. Bailey in any manner or form; he had only confirmed Bailey as a doctor from
the university, someone who had seen Madeline regularly. Unfortunately Bailey
had never been to see Robert, that much I gather for he could not tell me what
Bailey and Madeline had discussed.
Robert was slipping in and out of
consciousness, continuing on in incoherent ramblings. Every now and then he
would seize-up, let out a shriek and curse the demons for keeping him here.
I scarcely wanted to believe it but no
matter how much I tried to convince myself that these were all just
coincidences, that this husk of a man was simply insane, I could not. The
murder of Madeline, which I had experienced in a dream, was too frightful to
ignore. I have to find Bailey.
