Fade to Black - Proof (21 page)

He was Casey
Stillman, a young sergeant of Marines. What the fuck the rest meant, other than
that he was dying right now, this moment, in a dirty street in Iraq, was a
total fucking mystery. What he was going to do about it was the only question
that needed answering. And he realized he had no clue.

None
whatsoever.

Chapter

24

Jack’s mind was filled with the
uncomfortable blur of images that represented the rest of their day. He tried
to tuck them away, in light of the more pressing thoughts that he needed his
tortured mind to address. He drove them from Pendleton to San Diego in relative
quiet, Pam’s head on his shoulder.  He had tried to comfort her more with touch
than words—touching her hand, squeezing her arm under his, leaning over and
kissing her wet cheek. In any case, he had no real words to offer her. There
was nothing he could say that would ease her pain since he had no clue
whatsoever what this all meant, and more importantly, what he could possibly do
about it. A few times he thought she was sleeping and felt his back tighten and
ache as he tried not to shift positions and disturb her. Then she would begin to
sob softly and squeeze his arm again.

They stopped
just outside the airport at a Bennigan’s. Jack insisted that they should both
eat something, though neither felt the least bit hungry.

Eat when you
can, sleep when you can, and shit when you have to.

The voice in
his head belonged to a seasoned gunnery sergeant who had addressed the entire
company just before they had left for deployment. He could see him so clearly
in his mind.

They sat in a
booth and picked at some appetizers and left with the food barely touched and
their beer glasses still half full. They chatted a bit during lunch, but not
about anything substantial. Jack had the sense that Pam had so much she wanted
to say, so much she wanted to ask, but elected instead to let Jack sort things out
in his mind until he was ready to talk. So they had talked about Claire, about
the flight home, about whether they would be served dinner—in short, about
nothing. Although he had no idea what else to tell his wife, he had no doubt
that he would come up with a plan to make this all right. The alternative was
simply too terrifying to even consider.

And what about
Lewellyn? Would Pam still insist that he call the psychologist? Surely she
could see by now that this was not all simply a hallucination. Jack wondered,
in fact was desperate to know, what his wife really thought was going on. For a
moment he considered that if this really was just fantasy that he was using to
escape from the fear of his lingering death in Fallujah, then Pam would think
whatever he wanted her to think in this dream. Too simple, he decided. Maybe he
wasn’t supposed to really know what was going on, but he knew with certainty
that it was more than just a simple dream like Hoag had suggested. He did have
control, at least some, and if that was true, then surely he could change things,
fix them somehow.

He also had a
fleeting thought that maybe this was all just a schizophrenic crisis like he
had feared all along. Was he right now sitting and drooling in his office at
home and imagining all of this? He shuddered at the thought then hugged his
wife closer. He felt suddenly very tired.

Jack closed
his eyes as the Delta jet flew though the late afternoon sky. As his mind
continued to tear madly through his random impressions and searched for an
answer, he knew sleep would be impossible. After a few minutes he heard the
soft double chime and looked up to see the seat belt sign snap off. Jack
unbuckled his seat belt and gently untangled himself from Pam’s embrace.

“Where are you
going?” his wife asked.

“Just to the
bathroom. Do you want a pillow or anything?”

“Yes, please,”
she answered.

Jack shuffled
down the narrow aisle towards the back of the plane. He squeezed past a flight
attendant who maneuvered a service cart into the aisle with a mumbled apology,
then slipped into the lavatory and clicked the door lock shut. The overhead
light flickered and then illuminated the cramped bathroom.

Jack looked
critically at himself in the small mirror, and saw that his eyes were bloodshot
and his face looked haggard. He pushed the small handle with the blue dot for
cold and let some water fill the stainless steel sink. Then he splashed some of
the cool water onto his face and held his cupped hands to his eyes to let
himself soak for a moment in the bracing feel. He repeated the maneuver several
times and felt his mind clear a bit, then looked again at himself in the
mirror. Not much better, just haggard and wet. Jack pulled a handful of paper
towels from the dispenser and dabbed the cool water from his face. Then he
stood for a moment, the paper towels pressed into his damp eyes, and stretched
his back. He pushed the paper towels into the flip lid trash receptacle then
looked again in the mirror. Shocked by what he saw, he grabbed the edge of the
counter with both hands to steady himself.

The face in
the mirror was still his, but vastly different. The hair was cropped close to
the scalp in a Marine Corps “high and tight” haircut. His face was caked with
dirt and dry blood and his eyes were much more bloodshot. There were red lines
pressed in his forehead where his Kevlar helmet had been. Behind the face in
the mirror was darkness and swirling sand. As he watched, the dust grew thicker
and thicker and swirled around his reflected image, obscuring it.

Jack looked
around frantically, and was relieved to find he was still safely in the
airplane lavatory. No dust. No sand. He held out his arms and let his gaze pass
over his own body—still in khakis and a button‐down shirt. He looked again at
the mirror. All he could see now was the swirling sand and dust where his
reflection had been, but now he heard, softly, the sounds of voices and
gunfire. It was like the mirror was now his own personal movie screen on which
he watched the swirling, blowing dust settle. As it did another face came into
view.

Hoag’s.

The chaplain
looked back at him from the mirror, a nighttime desert scene illuminated behind
him by a pale moon. It was not the face from the picture at Pendleton, smiling
and happy. The face was worn and older, deeply lined and thinner, the eyes full
of stress and fear. The glasses were dirty, covered in a thin layer of dust.
Jack expected the commander to take them off and start cleaning them, but he
didn’t.

“Hello,
Casey,” the image in the mirror said to him.

Jack started
to tell the image in the mirror that he wasn’t real, but then stopped. He realized
that he no longer really believed that. Instead he said nothing and stared back
at the sad eyes, wondering if his own eyes looked as old and sad as those that looked
back at him from the mirror.

Hoag held his
gaze and spoke again, the voice filled with fear and the borderline hysteria he
remembered from a few nights ago.

“Now do you
believe, Casey?” he asked simply.

“I don’t know
what I believe,” Jack said loudly, then lowered his voice, not wanting the
passengers and crew to hear him talking to himself in the bathroom. “I believe
that you, and Casey, and the others are real. I believe that I’m tied to all of
you.” He stopped. He believed more than that, but was not able to say it. Or maybe
he was just unwilling to let Hoag have the satisfaction of hearing it.

Hoag’s eyes
held an animallike fear; a dog trapped in an alley.

“We’re almost
out of time, Casey. It is time for all of us to go.”

“I’m not going
anywhere with you,” Jack said. His own voice rose as fear from the real meaning
of Hoag’s words gripped him. The reality it carried was ugly and terrifying.

Then the chaplain
let out a visceral scream that reverberated in the small bathroom, making Jack
cover his ears. The blowing dust swirled again, beginning to obscure the image
in the mirror.

“YOU WILL COME
BACK TO US, SAR’N,” Hoag’s fading image screamed at him, “YOU WILL COME WITH US
OR WE WILL COME FOR YOU! WE WILL TAKE YOU, AND THOSE AROUND YOU WILL SUFFER. DO
YOU HEAR ME?”

The sand and
dust twisted viciously in the mirror now. Jack could smell the distinctive odor
of Iraqi desert, and with it, another foul smell—the smell of old blood and
death. On the verge of vomiting, he tasted burning bile in his throat and
mouth. Jack retched and swallowed hard.

“Leave me
alone, you bastard!” he shouted at the darkening image in the mirror.

As Jack watched
in fascination and horror the image, or maybe the mirror itself, began to
shimmer. At first it was subtle, a waving shine like the air over hot asphalt
on a brutally hot summer day. But as he watched, the shimmering itself became
more distinct, like a million microscopic fireflies were fluttering on the
surface of the mirror. Then as the tiny flickers of light became more distinct,
it no longer appeared like it was the mirror itself that was the source. The
tiny flickers of light spread out from the mirror surface and filled the room.
It was then that Jack realized that the surface of the mirror was gone. It was
no longer a mirror, but a glassless, open window to the world from which Hoag
called him.

Jack began to
choke as the sand poured out of the mirror and into the lavatory, slowly at
first, then building into a howling torrent of dust and heat. As it had before,
the sand started to swirl around him, building in speed until it was a
whistling tornado, a dust devil like those he had seen screaming across the
open desert in Iraq.

 Jack held out
his hands, which began to tingle, and saw that his own skin now shimmered like
the mirror had. He knew where this was headed. He was being pulled—by Hoag, or
the devil, or whatever fucking force controlled all of this—back to Iraq. He
felt the cyclone try to spin his body around inside the cramped bathroom. He
could no longer see the walls, only dust and swirling, shimmering light. He
threw his arms outward in both directions, felt them impact against the flimsy
plastic walls of his sanctuary. He pressed outward with all his might and riveted
himself in place against the spinning cyclone of sand. All he could see in his
mind was Pam, alone and frightened in her cramped airline seat. The spinning
sand grew in ferocity and he felt himself lifted from the floor. Jack kicked
out his legs, jammed his feet firmly against the walls, and fought the force
that tried to spin him wildly in the thick and blinding cloud of sand.

“No!” he
hollered over the now deafening roar of the sand tornado. “No, goddamnit! I’m
not going! I won’t leave her, you hear me?” He braced himself with all his
might against the bathroom walls, his arms and legs pushed out, until his
muscles burned with pain.

Then with a
sudden flash of brilliant light, the sandstorm disappeared and Jack collapsed
roughly to the floor, coughing. His stomach wretched and he covered his mouth,
as if his hand would keep the vomit from spewing out of him. He struggled to
his feet and looked at the mirror. It still glimmered, but only barely, and
there was a faint image of Hoag’s screaming, twisted face, like a light spot
you see with your eyes closed after looking at the sun.

“Leave my
family alone, you motherfucker!” Jack screamed. Then he lost the battle with
his stomach and spun around, flipped up the lid to the silver toilet and
vomited violently. He wretched several times, struggled for control, and then
sat on the black rubber floor, gasping for breath. A knock on the door jarred
him back to his senses.

“Sir?” a
worried female voice said. “Sir, are you all right?” More knocking. Jack pulled
the silver handle and his pool of sick was sucked away with a hissing vacuum of
air and a swirl of blue water.

“Just a
minute, please,” he choked out.

“Are you
sick?” the voice asked.

What the fuck
do you think?

”Just a minute
please.” Jack flushed the toilet again. Then he struggled to his feet and braced
himself weakly against the wall.

The mirror
flashed back only his own pale face, the cheeks streaked with tears. Jack
filled his cupped hands with cool water and splashed it on his face again. He
sipped some more of the soothing liquid into his mouth and swished it around
before swallowing it. He found a cup dispenser and greedily drank down two cups
of water from the sink, clearing his mouth and throat.

Hoag was
right. He was out of time. They were coming for him and he couldn’t stop them.
They would take him back to his death in Fallujah and he would be gone from his
girls forever. What the hell did he mean that those around him would suffer?
Could they hurt Pam and Claire? The thought almost made him throw up again, but
somehow he got control of his retching stomach.

Then he stopped,
frozen motionless by an idea—an epiphany, in fact. He did not have to accept
this as his fate. He couldn’t accept it, and he realized now that he didn’t
have to. There was some control here. Wasn’t that what Lewellyn had tried to
get him to see (or his own mind talking to him as the psychologist, or whatever
the fuck this all was)? Only he could change it, and only he wanted to,
apparently. And now he had a vague, but sharpening, idea of how.

Jack felt a
sudden weak but growing sense that he might really be able to fix all of this.
Hadn’t he just prevented himself from being sucked back into the mad nightmare—prevented
it with a sheer burst of will? And he had come back to Pam from that nightmare
the other night on his own as well, now that he thought about it. He could fix
this. He would fight it until there was no fight left.