William Lashner - Falls The Shadow

They were waiting for us at the church, standing by the side entrance. Father Kenneth was leaning against the wall, hands in his pockets, the light from the fixture over the door falling like a blessing on his head and shoulders. Wayne was slapping at his arms as he walked back and forth along the street, back and forth, pacing as nervously as an expectant father in the maternity ward, waiting to hear if he would be embracing that morning a boy or a girl.

It was a girl.

I hadn’t slept yet when I banged loudly on the great wooden door. It was light out but still early enough that a gentle tap or a warning phone call might have been polite. But having heard what I heard from Kylie that very night, I wasn’t in the mood just then to be polite. So I banged. Loudly. And I banged again.

It took longer than I would have thought for the door to be answered, and what I encountered was not what I expected. Yes, it was Whit, my old mentor Whitney Robinson III, on whose front door I had been banging, but he was not dressed in his usual fastidious style, no handkerchief in his jacket pocket, no jacket to be precise, nor even a shirt. It was T-shirt and pajama pants, bare feet, unshaven jaw, gray hair mussed tragically, eyes haunted, pale lips trembling at the sight of me.

The last bit of which I could understand, being as I represented, in a way, the ghost of Whit’s past.

“Not a good time, I’m afraid, my boy,” he said.

“It will have to do.”

“Ah, the determined young man out to get to the bottom of it once and for all. I didn’t think you had it in you, Victor, and I must say I’m disappointed. Self-righteousness might be a pleasant enough vice for its holder, but it can be so wearying for those on the other side of its wrath.”

“What did he give you, Whit? What did he do for you that impelled you to ignore Seamus Dent’s confession and ensure François’s conviction?”

“He played God.”

“That seems to be his thing.”

“What happened to your face?”

“The dental hygienist.”

Whit’s eyes widened. “Quite a woman, that Tilda. I suppose you’ll be coming in whether I invite you or not.”

“You suppose right.”

“Then all I can do is welcome you again to my humble home. Come inside, there’s someone I want you to meet.”

As I followed him into the large stone house, I noticed how stooped and thin he was, how much the years had pressed their weight upon him. Without his upper-crust uniform, he appeared more fragile than I had ever imagined, less the highly polished product of the top tier of the American caste system and more the doddering old man, clutching feebly to whatever straw he could grab hold of in this life. I had admired him for years, and then feared him in the latter part of this case, but now, unaccountably, I felt sorry for him.

He led me through the faded hallway and then to the right, through the dining room that, even with its great oaken table and heavy crystal chandelier, felt like it had been abandoned years before. Whatever joyous occasions had been celebrated in that room, whatever festive dinners had been thrown or gracious toasts offered, were well in the past. This room was now just a passageway that led to another room at its far end, a room that in its heartbreak had clearly become the center of the house.

Guarding the entrance was the white-faced nurse whom I had seen through the window my last visit. Tall and gaunt, like a withered stalk of corn, she stared with an admixture of fear and disgust, her thin mouth twitching at the sight of me.

“Leave us some time alone, will you, Miss MacDhubshith.”

“The poor girl, she needs her rest,” said the nurse in a strong burr.

“Of course she does,” said Whit. “Take your break. I’ll stay with her.”

The woman gave me a final glare before stalking off. Toward a telephone, I presumed, to squeal on the two of us to you-know-who. When she left, Whit passed through the doorway, and I followed.

I found myself in an old sitting room, wood-lined, with bookshelves and fine stained-glass windows. It was a room that should have held red leather chairs and calfskin-bound volumes of Dickens and Thackeray, Tocqueville and Maupassant. The fireplace should have been roaring, the port decanted, a game of whist going on in the corner. And at one point I’m sure all of that had happened here, but not now and not, I could tell, for years. Now it had been turned into a shrine for the living dead.

“This is my daughter, Annabelle,” said Whit, gesturing to the hospital bed set into the middle of the room and the woman who lay uneasily upon it. He sat down in the chair placed by the bed, leaned over to his daughter, gently laid the back of his hand on her cheek.

She was seemingly young and pretty, her hair cut short, her skin shiny, her hands waxy and smooth with long, tapered nails. Her pale blue eyes were open and darting about the room as if she were trying to take it all in, but it became clear, after only a moment, that she was taking in nothing. And her body shook and contracted in on itself to some strange, unnatural rhythm. The only things that kept her on the bed were straps binding her arms to the bed frame.

“My youngest child,” said Whit. He leaned forward and kissed her quivering forehead. “My little princess. It came out of nowhere. She was skiing, in Colorado. A heart attack and then a stroke that acted together to deprive her brain of oxygen for far too long. She was left in an appalling condition.”

“I’m so sorry, Whit. How long has she been like this?”

“Five years,” he said. “Five impossible years. At first she was in a minimally conscious state. She had some real awareness of what was going on, sometimes you could tell she was even trying to speak. It was heartbreaking. It looked as if she was inside this shell, trying to break out. But then, at least, there was still hope.”

“What kind of hope?”

“An experimental procedure that showed much promise, something called neural modulation. Electrodes are implanted deep into the brain, and then a battery is placed in the chest, much like a pacemaker for the heart. The deep-brain stimulation had been shown to have real effects in changing the very structure of the brain, in allowing the parts still healthy to take a more prominent role, so long as it was applied very quickly after the damaging event. If it worked, she’d be back, my daughter, my sweet, sweet little girl. Back to us. But there was a problem. The FDA had approved a very small case study, with very rigid parameters. The doctors said that Annabelle didn’t qualify. The precipitating event had happened too long ago.”

“Was there any way around the requirement?”

“None that I could see. I pushed every button I could, but to no avail. I was distraught. And then Seamus Dent showed up in my office. This was just before the trial. I knew he was a witness against François. I was shocked to see him. But he told me he had something to say.”

“What did he tell you, Whit?”

“A strange, fabulous tale of a dentist who had this wonderful ability to help people in need.”

“Pfeffer.”

“Yes. He told me how Dr. Pfeffer had worked on his teeth and in the process how he was recruited by this doctor to help in his causes. And one night Dr. Pfeffer had given him the mission to help Leesa Dubé. There was a key and a videotape. His job was to enter her apartment, leave the tape in the VCR, program it to start playing in the morning, and quietly leave. She was supposed to be dead asleep, it was supposed to be so easy. But the woman awoke and was so frightened at the intrusion that she came at him with a gun. And he reacted badly. There was a struggle, there was a shot, and the bullet went through her neck. He said it was a hurricane of blood. He ran away and called Dr. Pfeffer, who said he’d take care of it, and he did.”