Bad Glass (24 page)

I could have lied to myself right then and convinced myself that I did have noble intentions, that I was looking for the truth, trying to show the world what was going on inside the military’s oppressive media blackout. But that wasn’t the truth. Carrying my camera, street to street, day to day, I’d never even thought about those things.

I just wanted people to see my pictures. I wanted them to be amazed. By me. By my skill. I wanted to save myself from a mundane future.

Not exactly a noble endeavor.

I was lost in thought when Sharon finished with the bandage. After a vague, shapeless length of time, I looked up and found her leaning back on the edge of her desk, studying me with cool, sympathetic eyes.

“Don’t worry about it, Dean,” she said. “Whatever’s happening here, it’s not the real world. We all just have to do what we do and hope there’s no judgment in the end.”

“If it’s not the real world, then what is it?” I asked, my voice high, almost pleading. “What the fuck’s going on?”

She shook her head. “If you’re suggesting I might have some real knowledge, I don’t. If, on the other hand, you’re asking me what I think … well, I think we’re all going insane. I think
there’s some previously unknown agent at work on our minds—something synthetic, maybe, or some naturally occurring ergot. And what we’re seeing, what we’re experiencing, it’s all just the ravings of a city gone mad.”

“But my pictures … all the shared experiences …”

“Yeah, well, I don’t have all the answers,” she said with a dismissive shrug. “It’s just what I think, what I feel.”

I nodded, preoccupied. I was considering her suggestion.

Could an insane mind grasp its own insanity? And if not, what would a city full of insane minds look like? Would they share delusions? Would they create their own scattershot mythology?

“Well, one thing’s for certain,” Sharon said, offering me a gentle smile, “you’re not going to find any answers sitting there with that confused look on your face. It’s time to get moving, Dean. My errand’s not going to run itself.”

I took Sabine with me on the delivery. That was Mama Cass’s final request before she pushed me out the door.
It’s important
, she said,
for Sabine
.

Taylor was there when I swung by the house—I could hear her voice up on the second floor—but I managed to grab Sabine and get out without attracting her attention. Certainly, I wanted to see her, to set things straight, but I figured that this was not the right time. Not while I was out running errands for Mama Cass. And besides, my own feelings remained ambivalent. I wanted to be close to her, but she kept pushing me away—both literally and figuratively—and that was driving me nuts.

I needed more time. I needed time to figure out what she wanted from me … and what I wanted from her.

It was nearly six o’clock when Sabine and I hit the streets, and the last traces of sunlight had already fled the sky. The moon and the stars were hidden behind a thick layer of clouds, and again I was struck by how unnatural the darkness seemed.

Cities were never supposed to get this dark. That was their purpose, right? To keep the darkness at bay.

Both Sabine and I had flashlights, and as we walked back toward the river, we sent twin beams racing across the pavement ahead. Objects emerged from the darkness like strange alien fish swimming up from the depths of a deep, dark sea: ordinary items, cutting sharp shapes across our wavering circles of light—cars, mailboxes, trash cans—made alien in their stark isolation. I played my light across a snow-shrouded yard and found a ten-speed bike lodged up in the branches of an apple tree.

“What did Sharon say?” Sabine asked. “What does she want me to do?”

“I don’t know. She gave me a package and asked me to deliver it to St. James Tower on Maple Street.”

“That’s near Homestead territory.”

She was quiet for a moment. I think she was waiting for me to respond, to react, but I didn’t know the Homestead, and I didn’t know how I was supposed to react. Was she expecting fear, maybe, or amusement, or annoyance? The Homestead was some sort of commune, I gathered—Weasel had mentioned it during his quick prelarceny tour—but that was about all I knew.

“Maybe Taylor should have come,” Sabine continued. “She’s the Homestead expert. She worked with them for quite a while.”

I nodded but didn’t say a word. Sabine was probing, pushing buttons, trying to figure out what was going on between Taylor and me. But that was my personal business, and I didn’t feel much in the mood to share.

After crossing the bridge, I let Sabine take the lead. She knew the city well and didn’t hesitate as we moved from one street to the next, first heading south, then west.

The buildings grew in height the farther we got from the river. Here, on this side of the water, there were actual signs of life scattered across the cityscape. Laughter came from a tower to our east, followed by dueling jovial voices. I could see dim flickering lights in a couple of the windows above our heads, and the tinny sound of a portable stereo echoed down, losing its coherence and becoming a monotonous whisper inside the vast canyonlike
street. A loud, jangling crash sounded in the distance, followed by a muted yell—angry and confrontational.

Suddenly, Sabine broke into a trot. She ran halfway up the block, her flashlight bobbing up and down in the darkness. Then she pulled to a stop on a vacant stretch of sidewalk.

“Here, check this out,” she said when I finally caught up. I couldn’t see her face behind the flashlight’s glare, but I could hear the smile in her voice. She raised the flashlight beam from the sidewalk, revealing words spray-painted across a concrete wall.

It was a simple phrase, painted in crimson red:
THEY’RE BEHIND YOU NOW
.

I turned around.

“This is one of my favorites.”

Sabine panned her light to a brick wall on the far side of the street. There were black shapes covering its surface, and at first, I couldn’t tell what they were. Burn marks? Mud? But they were far too intricate, too regular … too planned. And, as my flashlight beam joined Sabine’s, the marks seemed to move.

A cold chill rocketed up my spine.
Spiders
. There were spiders all over the wall, climbing out of a hole in its center.

I took an involuntary step back, remembering the feel of spider legs crawling up my thigh. Feeling it again, this time on my back, on my shoulders, on my neck. I dropped my flashlight and started to brush at my clothing. For a moment, I lost myself, transported back to that empty apartment building, to the feel of those spindly legs, to the fear of being trapped and vastly outnumbered.

“Relax, Dean,” Sabine said, a note of perplexed amusement in her voice. “It’s just spray paint. Just fucking art!”

I forced myself to stop, clenching my hands down at my sides. My fingers ached, shaking as I fought the urge to brush at my neck and face. I closed my eyes for a brief moment and took a deep breath.
There are no spiders. Not here, not now
.

But the painting was so close to my memory. Spiders swarming out of a hole in the wall. It was like the mural had been plucked
straight from my head, a moment from my past, sketched out line for line.

I moved forward, crossing to the middle of the street. Then I stopped. I wanted to study the image up close, to look for a single stubby-jointed spider leg amid all of those crudely drawn figures—something that might represent a human finger—but I didn’t want to get too close.

I took the camera out of my bag. It was a comfort, moving through these well-choreographed motions—setting my backpack down, unzipping the topmost compartment, lifting my camera out, popping off the lens cap, raising it to my eye—and it settled me into a calmer state of mind. I had a task to perform, and it was a task I enjoyed, a task I wanted to do well.

“Fix the flashlight beams, one on either side of the hole.”

Sabine complied. She grabbed my flashlight from where I’d dropped it to the street and moved the two beams into place.

I took a couple of shots with the flash on, but I was afraid all the subtle colors would be lost in that artificial glare, and I had no idea how the glossy paint would react to the light. I played with the camera’s settings—switching the flash off, increasing the ISO, cranking the aperture as wide as it would go—then took a couple more shots. Even with the adjustments, I had to use a fairly slow shutter speed, and I fought to hold the camera steady.

They don’t have to be perfect
, I reassured myself. Mostly, I wanted to compare these images with the ones I’d taken back in the abandoned apartment building. I wanted to compare the two sets of spiders.

What would I see, I wondered, when I held these fake spiders up against the real ones? Would they match up? Would the number and placement be the same?

Impossible.

“How long has this been here?” I asked, lowering the camera.

“At least two weeks,” Sabine said. “Probably longer.”

I grunted and continued to stare.

Sabine moved the flashlight beams back and forth across the
wall, finally focusing on the deep, dark gash in the middle of the mural. It was the focal point of the entire piece: the nexus, the birth canal, from which all those spray-paint spiders emerged. The flashlight beams failed to illuminate anything inside. Nothing but inky black.

If I stuck my head in there, what would I see?
A dim blue light? A face, staring back at me, fixing me with accusing eyes? Maybe a
spray-painted
face—a bright yellow smiley face, mocking me.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said, once again storing my camera. “This place gives me the creeps.”

“And go where?” Sabine replied. The smile was back in her voice; I could hear it playing at her lips. “We’re already here.”

She raised her twin flashlight beams, casting the spider-infested wall back into darkness. Three floors up, I could see a square of light trickling out around the edges of a boarded-up window.

“Welcome to St. James Tower,” she said. She laughed and started toward the front door.

Photograph, 1990. Joyous Iraqi soldier:

After entering St. James Tower, we plunged from a dark foyer into an even darker stairwell. We found both doors—the door to the stairwell and the door to the street—propped open with stacks of books, volumes from a timeworn set of the
Oxford English Dictionary
. Despite a cold breeze from the street, the air inside was thick with the smell of rot; I made an effort to breathe in through my mouth, trying to keep that horrible stench out of my nose. Sabine swung her flashlight across the width of the stairwell, revealing a mound of trash bags stuffed into the space beneath the lowest flight of stairs. Some of them had split open, spilling a litter of apple cores, coffee grounds, animal bones, and soiled paper to the concrete floor.

“Fuck,” Sabine said. “I think it’s time to call the health inspector.”

She started toward the base of the stairs, then stopped abruptly.

There were twin glowing lights up on the second-floor landing, small metallic orbs floating about a foot off the ground. They winked off for a moment, then started moving forward, sliding noiselessly through the air. Sabine jerked the flashlight up and let out a relieved laugh.

The light revealed an orange-striped tabby perched on the edge of the landing. Its bright eyes narrowed under the flashlight’s
sudden glare, and it stared down at us for a moment, its tail swishing angrily. Then it resumed its descent. It stayed close to the wall, watching us with suspicious eyes, and when it was about five feet from the ground, it suddenly leaped forward. It bounded down the remaining steps and out the sliver of open door.