Anthology - Dark Whispers Part 10

"Sir, I didn't mean to suggest he was murdered, not at all. It simply looks like it might have been an accident..."

Gemmel pinched the bridge of his nose as he held up a hand for silence. It was the end of a long s.h.i.+ft, the last thing he had needed was this case. When he had walked into the tiny bed-sit a few moments ago he had almost shouted with relief that it was so clearly a case of suicide, it was only token respect for the still cooling body that stopped him. With his own bed seeming to sing out to him, the last thing he needed was a new murder investigation. He looked at the young forensic scientist and sighed. "Okay, from the top. How do you think he managed to accidentally shoot himself in the center of his forehead? That, if you ask me, is particularly unfortunate." Again the young man smiled, eager to win back some favor.

"Uh, yes sir. It looks like he was actually aiming away from himself sir."

Walking around the shards of broken gla.s.s picked out by splays of grainy evening light, nearly tripping over the now empty frame lying next to them, he indicated a point on the far wall. *This is where he shot sir, the bullet seems to have ricocheted back at him.'

Gemmel shook his head. "Doesn't scan. Unless he has one h.e.l.l of a c.o.c.kroach problem, what was he shooting at? Plus, where did he get the gun. They're hardly on open sale in Glasgow, and to the best of my knowledge this man has no criminal record. He's an actor or something, isn't he?" The constable on the door spoke up.

"Yes sir. Local theater work mostly. Matt Donovan's his name." Gemmel had never heard of him. Again he shook his head, an ineffective attempt to clear some cobwebs. All he accomplished was the beginning of the headache which had threatened his ruin all day. It was an effort to keep from las.h.i.+ng out his frustration.

"Anything else of note?"

"Yes sir." The constable pointed to an evidence bag resting on the small coffee table. In it was a Dictaphone. "That was next to the body when we arrived."

"Jesus!" Everybody in the room flinched automatically at his tone. "I don't suppose anybody thought that was worth mentioning when I came in?" Holding up a hand to still any response, he strode round the shattered gla.s.s and picked up the bag. "Gloves." A second member of the forensic team handed him a pair and he slipped them on. Peeling open the self-sealing bag, he gingerly removed the small recorder and glanced over it. There was nothing unique or peculiar about the design, but he breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that there was a ca.s.sette within. He pushed the b.u.t.ton to rewind it and glanced over at the stretcher team that had just arrived.

Carelessly, their inhumanity totally unknown to them, they loaded the body for the meat wagon. "Do we have anybody to identify the body?"

"Yes sir," the constable again. "His neighbor says he has a girlfriend. We found the number in his diary. Becky Joseph. I've sent a car to pick her up."

"Good. Hopefully we can wrap this up quickly." The tape clicked to a halt. Praying to G.o.d that it was an audio suicide note, cursing himself for entertaining so callous a desire, Gemmel pressed play. Almost immediately a deep, rich voice began to pulse through the room. Gemmel winced and turned down the volume, then sat on the ragged single bed to hear the last words of Matt Donovan.

"h.e.l.lo. My name is Matthew James Donovan. Could whoever finds this tape please ensure it reaches Becky Joseph at 58 Epsol Square." There was a pause on the tape, just long enough for Gemmel to check that he hadn't caught the stop b.u.t.ton by accident, before the voice continued. "Hi Becky. If you've been given this tape then you know what's happened. I really am sorry. I had to do it. It was him or me.

"s.h.i.+t. That was hardly the clearest way to begin. Okay, listen up. I suppose..."

"...TECHNICALLY, THAT I'M a narcissist. Not an ordinary narcissist as you might understand it, the simple egotist gone rampant. I'm a very special type. You see I don't just love the one me. I love both of them."

Matt looked up from where he slumped over his Dictaphone, meeting the resignation in the eyes of his companion. Messages shot back and forth along that stare, transcending familiarity, a communication of pure inner knowledge. Sighing a torment of invaded privacy, they turned simultaneously back down to their respective tapes.

"When the police hear this, when they pa.s.s it on to professionals of the mind, they'll tell you I had schizophrenia or something of that ilk. It isn't true Becky. Schizophrenia is a state of altered consciousness, a division of cognitive self. Believe me, I've checked. But I can see my other. I can even touch him if we both reach out. I don't like to though. It's so cold where he is. It chills.

"I've known about him for a while, h.e.l.l he's hard to ignore. It's a good thing I can only see him when I'm next to a portal, even that sometimes seems enough for me to lose my mind. Hasn't happened yet, praise G.o.d.

"I wish I could talk to him about it, perhaps confirm that he feels the same fears as me. It's not possible though. Maybe it would be more accurate to describe the portals as windows. I can see him, he can see me. Neither of us can hear a word the other says. We've both tried, many times. I've shouted myself hoa.r.s.e trying to make him hear. There isn't a d.a.m.n thing we can do about it. Doesn't matter really. Even if he fears different things from me, it's plain in his eyes that he's terrified of something.

'Wish you could see him as I do Becky, appreciate him in the same way. Maybe I should have talked to you before making my decisiona" you'd be the better judge of how we differ. You'd see that it's all in the details. He's left-handed, I'm not. Know the scar on my nipple, where it got ripped open during my fencing cla.s.s? He seems to have had a similar accident at some point, but he caught the other nipple. His grin crooks a different way from mine. s.h.i.+ta"his p.r.i.c.k even hangs to the right. I hope you remember that mine doesn't."

Matt stopped the Dictaphone as he exploded into a gust of giggles. With only one tape to tell his story he couldn't afford the wastage. He didn't bother checking to see if his companion also found the moment amusing, he already knew this to be the case. When he found his breath again he flicked the recorder back on.

"It's harder for me to know how we might differ in terms of the people we are. If only I could talk to him I might be able to tell you more. As far as I can see he feels life in a similar way to me. I've seen him cry over the same things, laugh at the same jokes. He even seems to be offended by the same sort of remarks, but it's harder to tell that sort of thing just by watching. I couldn't test him on it even if my words carried across. He'd know I don't mean what I'm saying just as I could never be lied to by him. h.e.l.l, I've finally found an acting challenge that surpa.s.ses my skills.

"I've thought a lot about the possibility that I'm wrong, you have to believe that, but think it through for yourself. It isn't simply that he's different from mea"he's the exact opposite! Every single facet of his appearance is fundamentally reversed. How can you be more different than the total ant.i.thesis of a person?"

Looking up again, he met the eyes that stared back at him. The anguish there was every bit as genuine as his own, he could find no subterfuge in that face. Once more the facts presented themselves to him; his other also sat on a bed dictating, though it was his left hand that grasped the Dictaphone he spoke into. They shook their heads as one and continued, each surveying the other as they spoke.

"It can't go on Becky. The doubt, the wondering. There's only so much I can take." Their hands slid down to touch the guns resting on cotton sheets. "So today I'm ending it. If all goes well you'll never have to hear this message. One of us is going to die today, and I can only pray it isn't me." For a moment he stared in wonder as a tear dripped down the face of his companion, it was a second before he realized that he too was crying. "s.h.i.+t I'm scared. Really scared. I think I'll be all right, I hope so. I keep telling myself that the gun he's going to point at me will do no killing today. It has no power to hurt. Mine is the tool of destruction. All he holds is pale reflection."

Gemmel hit pause on the Dictaphone. With his frown creasing valleys into his forehead he stared a thoughtful moment at the tape recorder. Another man was involved? How in h.e.l.l could he have exited a room locked from the inside? It was impossible, and he immediately discarded it as such. Perplexed, his gaze scanned across the small room, over the gloom and gold of sun and shade. The forensic team had stopped work, were now crouched and listening. Constable Reid still stood in the doorway, almost holding his breath as he waited for the tape to be continued. Whatever the circ.u.mstances of his death, the final performance of Matt Donovan had an attentive audience. Gemmel ignored them. Sunlight glittered over the reflective gla.s.s scattered across the carpet, and to these his gaze returned. What had Donovan said? Pale reflection?

Ideas sparked off in his head, suddenly he had an inkling of the tale Donovan was telling. The frame lying next to the sofa. The hook on the wall above the bullet mark. Oh yes, he thought he could hazard a guess at what Donovan had shot. What in Christ's name had the man been thinking? With a sigh, he released the pause b.u.t.ton and allowed the tape to play on.

"IN MANY WAYS I'll be putting him out of his misery. Think of how he lives. He exists only when I stand before a mirror. Can you imagine the guilt, the horror, I feel every time I step away? I destroy him so fundamentally that there is literally no sign he ever was. I feel the need to run to the next mirror or window just to see if he's still there, still with me. That I haven't hurt or even killed him. There is no rea.s.surance in the fact that he's always reappeared whole before. Just because the sun has always risen in the past is no guarantee that tomorrow won't be the first time it fails to do so."

He shook his head, looking back down at the tape recorder. His words were becoming as confused as his thoughts. He was an actor, he should be well practiced at clarity and focus. But it was so much harder without the well thought out prose of a writer. He had to concentrate, it wasn't as if he had a chance to come back and get it right later.

"But it doesn't stop there Becky. If it did I might not have to do what I'm about to do. I started to think more and more about him. He only exists when I stand before a mirror, the rest of the time he is nothing more than potential. What really terrifies me is the possibility that I've made a fundamental mistake in the conclusion I've jumped to. What if he isn't destroyed when I walk away? What if he continues about his everyday lifea"meeting people, working, living? What if he isn't my reflection at all?

"What if I'mhis ?"

GEMMEL'S THUMB HOVERED over the pause b.u.t.ton, indecisive. It was tragic and flawed, but so logical in its simplicity. Did he need to listen on? Was it right to exhibit these parting words as a performance for the small team to listen to? No, it wasn't. Somehow, though, his thumb refused to descend.

"COULD IT BE that every time he steps away from the mirror I cease to be? It hurts to think about. There are no gaps in my memory to suggest so, but would there be? If somebody's reflection is an accurate portrayal of that individual it would have to include memory, experiencea"everything that he is or was, recreated in the fractional moment it takes for light to move between person and the gla.s.s. Am I reinvented every time he pa.s.ses something reflective, made alive and whole for a few tragic seconds before he moves on?"

Again he stopped the recorder. Allowing himself a huge breath to steady himself, he turned again to the mirror. There sat his other, looking every bit as small and frightened as he himself felt. One of them would die tonight. Would the real Matt Donovan please step forward? His reflection smiled at him. He hit record.

"I can't stop wondering, I can't make the leap necessary to discard this as fantasy. If I don't exist then there are no consequences, no repercussions, to my actions. If I do exist then this is a foolish experiment, nothing more. I have to know. Which image am I? It will buy me so much peace of mind.

"I've talked enough, if I continue I'll never go through with it. I'll see you soon Becky. I love you."

Without hitting stop, he placed the Dictaphone gently on the coffee table. Staring for a long moment at the last words he might ever speak, he picked up the gun. Then he stood before the full-length mirror on the wall, trying hard not to meet the pain-drenched eyes of the man who stood beyond it. In love and fear they raised their guns, aiming high. Long moments pa.s.sed.

LONG MOMENTS Pa.s.sED. Gemmel dared not breathe, would not move. Everyone in the room was staring at the tiny machine whirring quietly in his hand. A hand that gripped too tightly, that trembled too enthusiastically. A loud crack, a murderous splitting of the air, sounded out. Gemmel's hand jerked reflexively and the Dictaphone dropped to the floor.

Long moments pa.s.sed. Still moments. Empty moments. Constable Reid broke the hush with a deep and shaky exhalation. "b.l.o.o.d.y nutter." Gemmel shot round, his stare hooking straight into the face of the young man. For a moment the officer actually braced himself for an a.s.sault, but the Inspector's eyes dropped instantly.

"Maybe son, maybe. Or maybe he was just a casualty of thought."

"Sir?"

"You said he was an actor? Well then, wasn't his job to create people who don't exist? To breathe life into nothing? That's all he did here." Getting up, slightly embarra.s.sed to be eulogizing to his officers, he made for the door. A mirror caught his eye, and he paused before it. Donovan was right, of course. Every physical feature he saw was the complete reverse of his own.

Sloppy thinking. They were his own. Glancing back at the pock-mark the bullet had made in the wall, he wondered briefly about that ricochet. A ricochet that had rebounded right back at Matt's own head, splitting and cleaving. A ricochet which had been aimed at an entirely different forehead, while an entirely different gun had been pointed at his own. For just a moment, Inspector Gemmel didn't think that such a ricochet was possible.

Walking out to the evening cold, his thoughts scattered before the possibility that somewhere Matthew Donovan was alive and well and living in a Glasgow fundamentally different from his own. Perhaps Matt was now the only man in that city with no reflection at all.

Phallusiesby Brian Hodge Brian Hodge has been all over the place. Recently his short story, "Madam's Babylon" was nominated for a Bram Stoker. Among his body of work are the short story collections, "Falling Idols," and "The Convulsion Factory." He has also appeared in "Hot Blood 8," and the recently reprinted paperback edition of John Pelan's popular "Darkside: Horror for the next millennium." His latest book, "Wild Horses" will be released in hardcover early in 1999.

FOR THE FIRST hour, Andrea didn't pay much more than a fleeting glimpse's attention to the lonely-looking woman at the other end of the bar.

Not that she was surrounded by distractions. Not in Tappers Pub at late afternoon. Tappers was one of those comfortable neighborhood bars tucked away from the ebb and flow in every city, anything but trendy, never a place to go to be seen by the right people. It was, for better or worse, a place to go to be yourself.

Andrea let the bartender swap an empty gla.s.s for a fresh vodka gimlet. He was Mike to novice patrons, Tequila Mike to friends of the bar, and Andrea considered herself approaching the status of the latter. Tequila Mike, so-named for his prowess in worm-eating contests. He engaged in other behavior of over-the-top machismo, such as breaking pilsner gla.s.ses in his bare hands without cutting himself (usually). Yet for all that, she quite liked him. Maybe because he didn't do it for show, with see-through motives; it was simply his way. And maybe because he seemed to accept her on face value.

Upon learning that she preferred the company of womena"in every respecta"to that of men, most guys Andrea had run across reacted in one of three ways. First were those whose kneejerk response was a chilly dismissal; men who, when confronted with their implied obsolescence, opted to banish her from their consciousness. Then there were the studs who saw her as a challenge, insisting that all she needed was one good f.u.c.k to bring her back around; naturally they were willing to be her messiah. And finally there were those who went out of their way to make sure she knew just how much they approved, phonily so, unctuously so, as though on the verge of asking if they could watch.

Happily, then, Tequila Mike avoided such pigeonholing. I'm okay, you're okay ... just so long as you don't make trouble in my bar.

When he stepped aside to minister to the needs of someone else, with the air of a priest dispensing communion at Ma.s.s, Andrea wondered what he saw when he looked at her. Rather tall on her stool, hair the color of wheat spilling just past the shoulders of her blue flannel s.h.i.+rt, preferred attire for autumn. As at home in Tappers as anywhere, with every right to conduct her life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness from this very stool. Contrast that with the young woman at the other end. Small, dark, hunched toward her drink with her hair in her face; nearly shrunken in on herself.

"Who is she?" Andrea asked when Mike wandered back her way. She gave a barely perceptible tilt of her head in the girl's direction, and her voice was every bit as discrete as the gesture.

Tequila Mike hunched his shoulders, quite a thing to behold if you were so inclined. They were nearly as broad as an upright deep freeze. "Don't know. This is only maybe the second time I've seen her in here." He smiled. "She hardly looks your type. She's about as different from Kim as you could get."

"Maybe that's what I need about now."

"Maybe you're right."

Noncommittal Kim, whose s.e.xual orientation vacillated between the poles of the spectrum with all the resistance of a feather in high winds. After a year of sharing an apartment with Andrea, she had suddenly returned to an old boyfriend. Kim was either very confused or very shrewd, but outside her head it was impossible to judge which.

The first hour s...o...b..lled into another. Drinkers came and went. Cool suns.h.i.+ne dimmed at the windows, and only two fixtures remained constant. To Andrea's slightly blurring imagination, she and the forlorn woman at the other end must have looked like mismatched bookends on a shelf of broken dreams. Andrea grew curious to hear the sound of her voice, since it didn't carry well whenever she ordered a refill. The longer she stayed there, the more the girl resembled a crippled bird, scooped from the sidewalk outside by a caring pa.s.serby and deposited atop a barstool out of easy reach of predators.

"Hey Mike," Andrea called after checking the clock. "Could you flip the channel? It's almost time fora""

"ForMonty Python's Flying Circus ," he finished. "Way ahead of you." He strolled over to the set behind the bar, forsaking CNN to play requests. "But are you sure this is really the way you want to be spending your vacation? It's not like you haven't had twenty-five or thirty years to catch this show."

She took no offense, more game than critique. "Everybody's life needs a focal point."

"And since you're temporarily unburdened by the same concerns as the rest of us working stiffs..." Tequila Mike made an exaggerated show of checking the calendar pinned up behind the bar. "Wow, you haven't missed an episode in here for a week and two nights, that sound about right?"

"Hey," Andrea said. She sounded angry but wasn't, just another part of the game, seeing what exchange of goofy Python dialogue from the night before they could manage to appropriate. "I wasn't expecting the Spanish Inquisition."

"Nooobody expects the Spanish Inquisition."

Mike and Andrea both blinked in surprise. The line should have been his, but had been yanked from beneath him, clean as a rug.

It had come instead from the heretofore silent young woman at the end of the bar. At once she seemed embarra.s.sed for having blurted it out. If she retreated back into her sh.e.l.l now, Andrea knew she would find it all the harder to emerge again.

"Another fan of cheeky British humor," Andrea said. "We may be a minority, but we're definitely an elite."

At this, the girl smiled tentatively, and such a difference it made in her face. As if all she had been seeking was a bit of approval, or something to be part of.

"Why don't you move down this way? You can hardly see the tube from where you're sitting."

"Um. Okay. Sure. Okay." A trifle unsteady, she slid off her stool and crossed the distance. Two stools away she lingered, as though hesitant to invade Andrea's turf, then settled beside her. "Thanks."

They made smalltalk, and Andrea learned that her name was Melanie, but what she left unsaid was the most revealing. On the far side of her face, makeup failed at a clandestine attempt to conceal a bruise r.i.m.m.i.n.g the edge of her eye and temple. There were always alternate explanations, but every instinct told Andrea that someone had been using Melanie for punching practice.

Let it go, she told herself. Most victims were only too ready to defend the source of their misery from the judgments of strangers.Let it go. For now .

They focused attention onMonty Python's Flying Circus . Andrea found herself delighted that Melanie knew every verse and chorus of "The Lumberjack Song," Michael Palin's paean to transvest.i.tism in the northwoods. By the time the show ended, they were both the drunker for it, and had laughed enough to put themselves at ease.

"Oy," said Melanie, shaking her head. "I really should be getting home. My husband will kill me."

"So should I," said Andrea. "Except in my case were talking cat."

"How bad can that be, it'll only ignore you more?" Melanie laughed. "Screw *em. One more for the road?"

Two rounds later they still hadn't budged.

"Didn't I hear the bartender say you were on vacation?" Melanie asked.

"I had this trip to Cabo San Lucas planned with someone. But then we broke up first." Andrea lifted her drink to eye level. "I figured I'd still spend the money somehow."

"Oooo, that's rough, I'm sorry."

"'s'okay. Don't be. There were a few things we didn't see eye-to-eye on, and probably never would've."

"Yeah, I know how that can be." Melanie's face clouded with discomforts remembered, or maybe antic.i.p.ated, and she averted her gaze. "At least it's good you found out before it was too late."

Andrea nodded, then rubbed Melanie's arm, for what seemed intended as a small comfort had instead emerged as a dismal plea for the same.

"I mean ... what I mean is ... Bart's not abad man ... I just seem to have this knack for making him so mad sometimes, and I know he's got things on his mind."

"Oh, would you lighten up on yourself." Andrea raised her hand from Melanie's arm to her shoulder. "No matter what, you're not an excuse for anyone else's behavior. Not if it's what I think it is."

She looked into Melanie's eyes, trying to transplant some backbone from her own reinforced spine. She thought it might have even worked when Melanie seemed freshly ashamed of her bruise but refused to turn her head away to hide it, no matter how much she wanted to. And moments later it was Andrea who had to turn away. Alcohol-eroded inhibitions starting to crumble, and the longer she looked at Melanie's lips, caught by a gentle tremble, the more she ached to touch them. With fingertips, with cheek, with her own mouth.

"Make you a deal," Andrea said, a diversionary tactic. "You forget about Bart for now, and my cat can fend for himself a while longer."

Melanie was game. So they talked, and glanced over at the television during the silences. Tequila Mike now had it set to MTV, and what a peculiar, glossy wasteland it was, tough to discern content from commercials.

Melanie pointed. "Do you ever wish you were more like that?"

On the screen, prancing nameless models, each one minimal of clothing and pouty of mouth and smoldering of eyes. Their heads could inflate basketb.a.l.l.s, and some of the b.r.e.a.s.t.s looked about that big. Sure, they'd taste good, but there was no nutritional value.

"G.o.d, no," Andrea said. Her voice dripped scorn. "You'd never want to hear them talk, and that's the point."

"I know, I know, but still..." Melanie seemed wistfully captivated by the screen. "Sometimes they seem so ... appreciated." A few mo-ments later she pulled back and shook her head and started to laugh. "And why am Istaring at them like this? Like I'm a fourteen-year-old boy all of a sudden."

"Most women have a fascination with other women's bodies, I think. To some degree or another. If for no other reason than to see how they compare. We all stare. We're all fascinated."

"I don't guess I'll argue that."

"Maybe that's the reason most women, even if they never act on it, are supposed to have a fantasy about going to bed with another woman. Some sort of narcissistic thing, maybe, like making love to yourself."

Andrea attuned herself for any signs of withdrawal, that she'd gone too far, but noticed none. Melanie seemed to take this in as readily as the rest.

"I don't guess I'll argue that, either," she finally said.