Fade to Black - Proof (12 page)

Jack leaned
forward, elbows on his knees, and thought about Lewellyn’s words. It sure as
hell made more sense said that way. His problem, so far, had been his
uncertainty about whether the images really were just hallucinations, or
ghosts, or something real and even more terrifying. Their calling was so
powerful and so convincing. Of course it made more sense that the power of that
call came from his unconscious mind somehow.

“Yeah,” he
answered finally. He looked up from his hands and held Lewellyn’s patient look.
“Yeah, that makes sense, Doc.”

Jack sat back again and forced
a smile onto his face. “Just promise me that if I get locked up for talking to
myself in the park, like some kind of bag lady, you’ll come and bail me out.”

Lewellyn laughed an ice–breaking,
and natural, laugh.

“I promise,
Jack,” he said. Then he picked up his little notebook, making Jack stiffen
unconsciously, and opened it again in his lap. “Well, Jack, I am afraid we have
at least an hour of monotony. I need to get a good psychological background on
you, and I am afraid there is really no way around some trite questions.” The
psychologist clicked open his pen. “Let’s talk a few minutes about your parents
and your childhood.”

Jack sighed
heavily and leaned back his head on the large leather couch.

“Okay.”

Here we go.

Chapter

14

Jack strolled slowly down the
street, a few blocks from Dr. Lewellyn’s downtown office. His right hand
unconsciously thumbed the pocketed card that Dr. Lewellyn had given him as he’d
left. On the front was an appointment for two p.m. the next day, and another for
four p.m. on Monday.

“I have to get
back to work by Monday,” Jack had told the doctor.

“I don’t see a
problem with that, Jack. Hopefully tomorrow we will get you some psychological
tools that will lessen your anxiety about going back to school,” his therapist
had reassured him.

On the back of
the card were two telephone numbers—one for David Lewellyn at home and the
other, his cell phone. At first Jack had felt flattered that the psychologist
cared enough to provide him with personal contact information. But now, as he
walked slowly down the block peering absently into shop windows and fingering
the card in his pocket, he worried that it meant something more ominous. What
was it the doctor thought might happen? Why would Jack need to be able to
contact him day or night? Was Lewellyn worried about Jack losing his shit—being
found mumbling to himself in an alley, curled up in the fetal position, the
card in his pocket the only link between the cops or paramedics who found him
and the utter madness inside him?

Jack forced
the thought from his head.

 
Ridiculous!

If Lewellyn
had those kinds of worries he would arrange to have Jack hospitalized or
something, right? He sure as shit wouldn’t have smiled, shook his hand, and
sent him home to his wife and little girl. And he wouldn’t have reassured him
that he could return to school in a few days either, right? Still, the very
idea that he was somehow in a position where he might need to call a
psychologist at home, or on his cell phone, was terrifying. How in the hell had
he ever gotten here? What was it his psychological demons were trying to tell
him?

Jack
considered for a moment that, as Dr. Lewellyn had suggested, his hallucinations
and nightmares really were some inner voice, trying to give him clues to his
mind’s struggle. If he could listen to those images, then maybe he might
identify what was screwing with his mind. He wouldn’t really be listening to
ghosts or demons, after all. He would just be listening to himself, right?  And
could that lead to a cure? He felt skeptical, even though it all made sense
psychologically. Maybe, but Lewellyn didn’t live in these dreams with him. He
couldn’t know the horrible intensity of them, or the incredible reality of them.
He couldn’t know the way his life felt like a lie after he awoke
.

Real or
imagined, in those moments I really am Casey Stillman.

How could he
explain that to anyone, even Lewellyn? He wasn’t sure he had made Pam
understand, who often knew him better than he knew himself.

It’s about
Pam. Your love for Claire and Pam. That is what keeps pulling you to this
place.

Commander
Hoag’s voice, clear as a bell in his mind. But what did that mean? Pulling him
to what place? Did he mean to Dr. Lewellyn’s office or something deeper, or
worse, more sinister? Jack got the sense that the answers were so close, like a
familiar word on the tip of your tongue.

Jack realized
he had walked the whole two blocks and that he now stood in front of his car,
parked at a metered spot by the curb. He also realized that he needed more time
to think about the things he had talked about with the psychologist. Not that
Pam wasn’t a great support. God knows she was. But he felt he needed to sort
things out a bit more before he could go home and talk with her. Besides, he
had a powerful feeling that he was slowly picking the lock on an important door
here. That he was close to something, though he had no idea what. He looked at
the shops along the block on his side of the street. There were several small
clothing stores, a shoe store, and one that advertised “Electronic Miracle,”
whatever the hell that implied. He turned his gaze across the street, where his
eye immediately caught a green neon sign that announced the Tenth Street Bar
and Grill. Underneath was a smaller sign which bragged “Best Sandwiches
Downtown” in bright red script. Perfect. He realized he was starving, and a
cold beer wouldn’t hurt either.

Jack dropped
four quarters into the meter by his Volvo, checked the traffic, and crossed the
street, smirking at the irony of the Armed Forces Recruiting Station sign on an
overhanging marquis on the corner. Beneath the sign hung four small flags; one
for each of the four branches of the military. He felt a lump in his throat at
the sight of the red flag in the middle, the yellow eagle, globe, and anchor of
the United States Marine Corps emblazoned in its center. Jack tore his eyes
away, confused by the tightness in his chest and tears in his eyes, and pushed
through the glass door with a fancy brass bar handle into the restaurant. He
breathed in the aroma of hot sandwiches and French fries. There was a small
podium in front of him, with a college-aged girl dressed smartly in a pants
suit.

“Can I help
you, sir?”

“Yeah,” Jack
answered. “Table for one.”

The girl
smiled. “Certainly, sir. I can seat you in the dining room, or would you prefer
to sit at the bar?”

Jack looked to
his left and saw a large, old‐fashioned wood bar with a brass railing, glasses
hanging upside down above it. Scattered around it were several tall wooden
tables with barstools around them. The bar was fairly crowded, mostly with men
in suits conducting business or just having a quick drink on their lunch break
from their downtown offices. Too many people, he thought.

“The dining
room, I think,” he answered. “A booth if you have one.” To his right he peered
into the dining room, with high-backed dark wood booths surrounded by scattered
four‐top tables with green table cloths. The restaurant was a bit more upscale
than he had expected from a bar and grill, no doubt catering as it did to the
downtown business crowd.

The girl
grabbed a menu and led him through the maze of tables with a crisp “Right this
way, sir.”

She sat Jack in
a corner booth towards the back, sensing he wanted some quiet, he supposed, and
announced that Ethan would be his waiter. He slid into the booth and rubbed his
face with both hands, scanning the large lunch menu the hostess had placed in
front of him. He guiltily skipped over the salad section that Pam would love
for him to order from, and decided that a hot turkey Rueben and French fries
would hit the spot.

When a large
glass of water with a wedge of lemon was slid in front of him, a familiar voice
caused him to look up.

“Here’s your
water, Sar’n,” a young voice with a southern Tennessee drawl said.

Jack felt the
blood drain from his face as he looked into the face of Jason Kindrich. The boy
smiled and his hair was longer. More importantly, his head had no hole in it. But
it was definitely Kindrich. Jack pushed back reflexively from the table,
scurrying deep into the corner of the booth, and his hand knocked over the
glass of water as he did.

“Oh, shit!” he
exclaimed, more from the shock of seeing Kindrich than from the cold water that
now soaked his lap. He grabbed the green cloth napkin and used it to dam up the
remaining pool of water on the table, keeping more of it from pouring into his
seat. The waiter grabbed another napkin from the table and began soaking up the
water.

“Here let me
get that, sir,” he said, his voice now deeper and without any trace of southern
accent.

Jack looked up
in shock at a man closer to forty than twenty, with close‐cropped dark hair and
an earring. He looked nothing like Kindrich.

“What did you
say to me?” Jack stammered.

“Sir?” the
waiter responded, confused.

“When you put
the water down. What did you say?” Jack demanded.

“I …uh,” the
waiter looked completely baffled now. “I think I said, here is your water, sir.”
He used a green napkin to slide the ice and much of the water onto his tray.
“Are you okay?”

Jack nodded.
He also tried to shake off the now all too familiar I-am-fucking-nuts feeling
that he suspected the waiter would agree with at the moment. He was just tense
and obsessed with thoughts of his demons. He had let his imagination go wild,
maybe. The hostess arrived with a large cloth, which she used to begin cleaning
up the remaining spilled water.

“Is everything
ok here?” she asked, seeing Jack’s wild look. The waiter looked at her and
shrugged, his eyebrows arcing as if to say “I don’t know what the hell is going
on.”

“My fault,”
Jack said quickly. “I’m afraid I was lost in thought and got startled. I
knocked over the water glass.” He looked at the completely unfamiliar waiter
with a sheepish grin. “I’m sorry, Ethan,” he said, remembering the name the
hostess had told him.

“No problem, sir.
My fault,” the waiter said, though they both knew it was not. “Let me clean
this up and get you some more napkins for your trousers. And then I’ll get you
a fresh water.”

He and the
hostess scurried away, no doubt to talk about the strange guy in the corner
booth. Jack looked down at his wet lap and sighed heavily.

Jesus, Jack!
You’ve got to get your shit together. If you don’t calm down you will indeed be
calling Lewellyn from the ER, or maybe jail.

He dabbed at
his wet lap with the damp napkin and tried to calm down. The demons were bad
enough. He couldn’t afford to let his imagination become his enemy, too. Slowly,
he felt himself begin to relax. The tremor in his hands diminished and the
pounding pulse in his temples disappeared. What had triggered that bullshit?
Jack decided to blame his therapy session. Probably that shitty conversation
about his ghosts and the thought of “trying to listen to them and hear what
they have to say” had made him even more paranoid.

When Ethan
returned, Jack did his best to hide his embarrassment and ordered a hot turkey
Reuben with French fries and a tall Foster’s lager. The thought of food made
him realize he was starving, and the anticipation of a nice meal distracted him
momentarily from the obsessive thoughts about his problems. He was aware of the
strange way the waiter looked at him, and imagined murmuring from the other
diners about the crazy guy in the corner booth. Jack shuddered and tried to
force his mind away from the paranoid thoughts. He focused his thoughts instead
on the things he had come here to try and sort through. He knew he was delaying
going home to his girls, but he really needed to organize his thoughts. He
shoved the guilt out of his mind and thought again about his session with Dr.
Lewellyn.

The remainder
of the session had been fairly uneventful. They had talked a lot about his
childhood, his relationship with his family, his education and job. Jack was
surprised to find that his memories of his college years were somewhat vague
and disjointed. Most of the memories that were vivid involved Pam—their early
friendship and later courtship, falling in love. The time around his sophomore
year things seemed again somewhat staged and artificial. He had mentioned his
thoughts of joining the Navy or the Marines, mostly to help earn money for the
rest of his education. Lewellyn had stopped him there.

“I thought you
said you never considered a career in the military?”

That had
caused an uncomfortable pause in Jack’s train of thought. He
had
said
that, hadn’t he? In their first session. He hadn’t lied. He simply hadn’t
recalled any desire to join the service until he had begun his free association
rambling about his years in college.

“You were with
Pam then, right? How did she feel about you joining the military?”

Jack had
considered that a moment. He remembered very clearly their conversation about
the Marines. They had been at Paul’s, a Greek deli they hung out at a lot,
eating sandwiches, just the two of them on a Saturday afternoon. They had
skipped the football game with their friends to have lunch alone together (private
moments were a rarity back then, much like since Claire had arrived). He had
told her of his plan to join, probably the Marine Corps, to get the GI Bill. He
had already gotten a brochure online and talked to a recruiter on the phone.

Pam had made
it clear that she would support any decision he made, and had offered to take a
break from school, also, so they could be together. He remembered she had been
worried, though not as much about his safety. There was no looming war then, and
the chance that he would not return to school, thereby giving up his plan to be
a biology teacher, was small.

“What happened
then?” Lewellyn had asked.

Again Jack
remembered feeling uncomfortable and unsure, though he didn’t know why the
memories seemed so vague after that.

“I decided not
to do it, I guess,” Jack had answered.

“Why?”

Jack didn’t
really know. He had told Lewellyn that he thought it was because of Pam’s
concerns, but he really wasn’t sure why he changed his mind. In fact he
couldn’t really even remember the end of their conversation that day. It felt like
a gap in his memory at that point. Not in the memories themselves, but more in
their clarity. They seemed broken and vague, somehow, like trying to remember a
story you had been told instead of one you had experienced yourself. He had
graduated a few years later and started his job at JFK High several years ago.
He and Pam got married, which he had clear emotional memory of, but again he had
trouble with the details of the wedding, which he felt should be crystal clear.
Jack remembered getting anxious again during this discussion with Lewellyn. He
had been very disturbed at the thought that so much of his memory after the day
at Paul’s Deli was superficial. Especially frightening was the fact that he
could not conjure up clear memories of his wedding, arguably one of the
happiest days of his life. He couldn’t even picture the wedding party, though
they must have a picture album that recorded the day. He remembered his dad,
shaking his hand. He remembered the breathtaking sight of Pam entering the back
of the church in her gown. He remembered their first kiss as a married couple.
But it was these fragments that he was left with, rather than a clear
recollection of the whole day.