A Boy and His Dog

Memories of the Dark

"Gay, could you watch the desk for a minute? I've gotta go use the men's room."

"Sure, Tommy."

Gay Defelice wasn't actually the receptionist at the Smith, Smith, & Poniedzielski Insurance Agency. Her uncle John gave her a part-time job as a file clerk in the office he, his brother, and a college friend of theirs shared. Gay, an awkward sixteen-year old with a retainer, worked after school in order to earn money for the car she hoped to buy once she got her license. After three months, she felt fairly confident in her ability to answer the phone, refer general inquiries, and so on, but didn't really feel quite up to it today. She figured it was probably due to the approach of her period, but something told her that wasn't completely it. Maybe it was the fact that her normally dry hands were making foggy handprints on the surface of the desk as she tapped it nervously.

Gay looked out at the street through the window and the bright neon sign that alternately flashed "LIFE" and then "INSURANCE," although today there seemed to be a delay on the "INSURANCE" half. Her uncle hated the sign but his partners seemed to agree on its ability to attract attention. Obviously, they did not fear tackiness, although with the way business was booming of late, it was tough for uncle John to argue that the sign was a repellent.

It took a few moments for her to notice the figure of a woman standing outside the window, a woman who appeared to be intently staring (or glaring thought Gay) at the word "LIFE." Gay started for a moment in an attempt to clear her head of the unmistakable belief that the image of the woman actually flickered, like the picture on a bad television set.

"There's no such thing as the bogeyman." It was the voice of her mother in her head, a memory from the time when she had the Bad Dreams.

"Gay, you allright?"

Gay jumped at the voice, turning to face Tommy.

"Jesus, I didn't mean to startle you. You look scared shitless."

"No, I'm okay," Gay managed to choke out, noticing only then the white-knuckled fists into which her hands were clenched. Regaining her composure, Gay said, "It was nothing. Guess I just got a little nervous." She stood up slowly, granting Tommy his seat back at the helm of the office. "I thought we were about to have a customer and didn't know what to do." What a lie, she thought to herself.

"Oh, really," answered Tommy, sitting down. "Who is it?"

"That blonde lady with the black dress out there," responded Gay, suddenly realizing that she was not only afraid to look up, but that she could not get the image of the woman out of her head, only in that image the woman stood with an grin on her deathly pallid face.

"I guess she changed her mind then," said Tommy.

Gay looked up, saw only the typical Main Street traffic idling by as it always did in the onset of the evening twilight, and shivered.

...........

David Webster plopped down on the couch in his one-bedroom, one-bathroom, one-everything apartment overlooking a scenically dilapidated red brick building, with its elaborate fire escape system rustily hanging from its original struts and supports.

Kicking aside the TV dinner he had just finished, he found the remote control, grabbed it, and mechanically flipped on the tube. David looked down at his watch, noting that it was 7:12. Going through his mental Rolodex, he flipped the channels for about thirty seconds until he finally gave up. Nothing was on until 7:30, when his empty life was blessed with its daily dose of a Seinfeld repeat.

He decided to walk down to O'Malley's Pub to grab the case of beer that would keep him going for at least a little while as he sat and listened to gunshots and police sirens for the remainder of the evening. Grabbing his coat to protect him from the bitter cold of the city air, he locked the door behind him and headed for the elevator from hell.

He felt trapped. He was the dock supervisor for a shipping company on the east side of the river. He hated his job, which he got only because his father knew a guy in the shipping business. David always wanted to travel, so it seemed like a good opportunity at first. He never expected such a horrible position, just as he never expected his college degree to take him the closer side of nowhere, but took it with the expectation that it would only be temporary. He felt forced to stick it out when his parents' business failed, however, because at least it was a steady job. It was better than what most people in the world could lay claim to and it paid the bills.

It was so cold that David decided to stick around O'Malley's once he got inside. He figured a few beers would help to warm him up for whenever he decided to head back, so he grabbed a booth on the far end of the bar, where he could at least watch the tube, and ordered a shot of tequila and a Budweiser. Cathy the bartender seemed to sense his mood and didn't push any attempt at their usual light conversation, which strangely relieved him. He looked up, nodded to Greg O'Malley and a few of the guys at the bar, then stared up at the truck and tractor pull highlights being shown on the local sports channel.

"No charge here, big Dave," Cathy said as she put the drinks on the table in front of him. "Compliments of the lady at the end of the bar."

David looked up and saw her. She was wearing a black dress and had blonde hair that looked off for some reason. He couldn't quite put his finger on it, but it seemed almost translucent.

He thought to himself how strange it was that he did not see her there before. She was, after all, at the first seat between himself and the guys at the bar. He pushed the thought aside when she smiled at him and started to come over to the table, seemingly floating across the room. Her smile was the last thing David remembered for quite some time. It was the same smile he could always remember seeing in horror movies on the faces of the head monsterÕs cronies as they dragged their next victims off to the dungeon.

That smile made the hairs on his neck stand on end as he shivered with mortal terror, but it also comforted him. It was a knowing smile. She was able to look through him with a mesmerizing dark gaze and the smile/smirk/scowl she held seemed to acknowledge her understanding of the world from David's point of view.

"Life sucks. You won't hear any argument from me," the look on her face seemed to say. "It sucks and there's not a damn thing you can do about it. Tell you what 'though Davey boy, I've seen the ass end of evil, and it's even worse... come and find out." She got to the table, touched his hand, and that was it.

...........

"Aren't you glad I made it in time? How do you like my shoes? I'm going to wear them to dinner when you take me out tomorrow. I want to go to that new place on the river - that classy joint..."

David looked up quickly from the article he was reading in a back issue of Sports Illustrated for the third time in about a minute. He couldn't help it after going through the torture of listening to the worst conversation of his life. The girl in charge of the one-ended discussion was about average he guessed, but definitely not his type. She had jet black hair streaked lightly with a hideous attempt at either auburn or chestnut highlights.

The guy she was torturing, broken arm and all, was tall and lanky. David felt sorry for the schmuck for about a half minute; he didn't think anyone should have to listen to the bullshit that this poor sap was being bombarded with, until he realized it was the ass's own fault.

David put his head back down into his magazine, feeling the onset of a headache, most likely caused by the flickering and buzzing of the fluorescent lights overhead. He hated looking around the waiting room for too long anyway; it made him feel trapped, processed. Here he was in the middle of a room filled with people who had been in car wrecks tonight, domestic squabbles, fights. There was a crazy Hispanic woman saying rosaries off to his left, mumbling the "Our Father" in Spanish. She came in about a half hour earlier with a small boy who had about a third of his face missing. From what David could piece together, his father, in the middle of a crack episode or something, was screwing around and "accidentally" shot his boy in the face for getting the cream of a Ho-Ho on the arm of his favorite chair.

What a world, David could remember thinking to himself. The wacko parade was endless; people coming in with huge holes in various parts of their bodies which they were evidently too numb from smack or too dumb from evolution to feel.

"Welcome to the fabulous world of the ER at Kennedy Memorial Hospital," began the speech David went through in his head each time some new victim of violence and tragedy walked through the automatic sliding doors from the carport at the Northeast corner of the hospital complex. "I'm your guide, David Webster. Please step up to the reception area in an orderly fashion. Ignore Mr. Wino there on the floor. He's had a bit much to drink tonight as you can plainly see. The very rude and rather large woman you see at the desk is Cheryl. She will attempt to fry your last nerve over the next few torturous hours. Please accept the clipboard she hands you and kindly attempt to fill out the proper paperwork. If you can read, that is. If not, please do your best; it's all quite necessary in order to keep things moving as slowly as inhumanly possible."

"Once you've finished, please have a seat in our spacious waiting area. Feel free to browse through our collection of Highlights magazines while you wait for your loved one to bleed to death. Enjoy your stay. Oh, please don't bother Mrs. Gonzalez and pardon her occasional wailing. Her son tried to blow the face off her grandson for being a kid, so she's had quite a rough night."

"You've just got to laugh, huh pal?" David said to the Yugoslavian man sitting on his right, the one who David believed was simply waiting for the 11:15 bus downtown, and was obviously tragically confused. Yugo, as David had affectionately penned his foreign friend, grinned back toothlessly and nodded his agreement.

I must be losing it, David thought to himself.

"David Webster. Mr. David Webster."

David jumped at the sound of his voice being called to see a young but haggard doctor standing in the doorway to the right and rear of the reception desk, a clipboard under his arm and a good amount of blood on his shirt.

"Right here," he said. "How is she?"

The doctor extended his hand and David took it, noting the firm but soft grip he had. It was dry too, just like all the doctors he could ever recall being introduced to. David always wondered how that worked anyway.

"I'm Dr. Levinson. Could you come back here to have a little talk?" he said as he held the swinging doors and guided David through.

"How is she, Doc?"

"Perhaps when we get back in the office. On the left. Third door."

David felt a quick shudder of fear run down his spine. This was all getting too cold, too military. He suddenly wanted to leave. He hated hospitals, hated uncertainty, hated the fact that he was getting trapped in this nightmare for a girl he didn't even know three and a half hours ago. He went back into the "office," which was actually just an unused examination room, and sat up on the table at the direction of Dr. Levinson. The doctor, in the meantime, planted himself upon the round stool omnipresent in seemingly every examination room in every medical building across the globe and began to routinely clean his glasses.

The whole scene started to cave in on David when the realization of what was going on and, especially, what had happened earlier in the night managed to hit him.

He realized that he could not remember anything but fear. His terror grew as he slowly came to grips with his inexplicable ability to block it out, even for as brief a time as his stay in the waiting room.

"Mr. Webster... Mr. Webster."

David jumped off the examining room table at the sound of Dr. Levinson's voice, quivering throughout the whole of his generous frame. Immediately a thousand questions raced through his head.

"Where am I?" he thought. "No. I know that. I'm in the hospital. But I was just in O'Malley's less than..."

David looked at his watch. 11:04.

"Shit!" he exclaimed, beginning to frenetically pace the room, fidgeting with the scale, the paper roller on the examining room table, the sink. He ran the cold faucet, thrust his hands under and splashed the cool water all over his face. He was trembling violently, a fact he did not completely realize until the Doctor grabbed his shoulders.

"Are you allright?" he asked.

David turned, unable to answer, unable even to look him in the eye. There was too much running through his brain, too much emotion, too much goddamn fear.

"Mr. Webster, please settle down."

David ignored the doctor and huddled in the far corner of the room. His eyes were wide with attempted concentration and yet he saw nothing. Not even the two large orderlies with the straitjacket and a rather long needle they handed to the doctor. The jacket wasn't necessary, but David could not have told them that he really didn't intend to go anywhere at the moment even if he were capable of making sounds other than dull moans. Once the cold fluid from the needle hit his bloodstream, he quickly settled into a state of controlled unconsciousness.

...........

David opened his eyes slowly, the flickering fluorescence burning his dilated pupils. He tried to scratch his balls but found he could not. Lying prone on a soft couch, he was strapped down at both his hands and feet, as well as across his waist and chest.

"Welcome back to the world of light," said an unfamiliar voice coming from a woman in a white coat with curly red hair and very intelligent-looking eyeglasses.

"Did I hear right?" David thought to himself, laughing at the absurdity of her words.

"You remember Dr. Levinson, I hope." He was standing beside her, further down towards the foot of David's sofa. "I'm Dr. Wood. This is..."

The woman droned on, introducing an army of doctors, psychiatrists, psychics, and paranormal experts lining the room. David didn't listen, didn't notice any of their faces. The only face he saw was HERS. They could not see her, of course. He knew that. She stood off to the back with a terrible grin on her now bloodied face. David smiled back.

I remember now, he thought. I can remember everything. I remember running with the dead, I remember the hunt. I remember how good it felt to be free for once. I remember. I remember.

It all came back to him. That little girl with all the LIFE about her; she was one of the first. He knew he didn't actually do anything to her, but he was certainly along for the ride. He was along for the greatest ride of his life and SHE was driving. The woman in black did it all. She did it through him, but what did that matter? When the bullet slammed into his face, she was the one that took it. He remembered now that he brought her to the hospital after that. It seemed silly knowing what he knew now, but he wasn't in complete control at the time. It didn't matter. He would always know, would always chase along at her side. They could ask him all they wanted about what happened that night, but they would never find out. They would never discover why the apparently still living, breathing woman with a hole in her face came into the hospital that night and proceeded to confound all medical science by presenting absolutely no vital signs. The people in that room might forever wonder how her body disappeared, and how blood work suggested that she had been clinically dead for years.

David could tell them, but hearing him say, "She was never alive" probably would not be a comfort. David smiled death's grin, and she smiled back.