Berit Ellingsen - Not Dark Yet

Kaye opened his eyes, the gaze weak and distant, and started struggling to sit up.

“Don’t,” he said and put a hand on Kaye’s chest. “Lie still, the ambulance is on its way.” He didn’t want Kaye to see all the blood. “How do you feel?” he said, to distract the assistant professor from looking around.

“You killed the owl,” Kaye groaned.

“I had to,” he said. “It wouldn’t let go.” He pulled down the zipper of his coverall, stepped out of it, and put it over Kaye. It was flimsy, but better than nothing and would cover some of the blood.

“You killed the owl,” Kaye muttered beneath him.

Since he wasn’t next of kin he couldn’t accompany Kaye in the ambulance, but the emergency personnel gave him a number to call and a floor on the university hospital to go to. He returned to the mouse room and washed his hands in the circular sink with liquid soap from the dispenser, glad the faucet had an optic sensor so there were no handles to sully. Afterward he pushed the faucet from side to side to rinse all the blood away and pulled out a generous amount of paper towels. He dried his hands, then the surface around the sink, clunked the garbage bin beneath it open, and tossed the moist paper in.

On the phone list by the door was a name he recognized: Narayan, one of Kaye’s post-doctoral fellows, and a senior one as far as he had understood from Kaye’s stories about his post-docs and graduate students. He pulled out more paper from the dispenser, moistened it with cold water, and wiped the blood off the phone and cradle. Then he dialed the post-doc’s number from the list.

“Narayan speaking,” a male voice said.

“I’m sorry to call so late,” he said, “but professor Kaye’s been in an accident in the owl room. No need to worry, he’s been taken to the hospital, but there’s a bit of a mess here.”

“What happened?”

“One of the owls attacked during an experiment.”

“How is Kaye? And how’s the owl?”

“I think the professor will be all right,” he said. “At least he’s in good hands now. The owl… didn’t make it.”

“I see,” Narayan said. “Are you a new graduate student or…?”

“I’m the faculty photographer, I’ve been taking pictures of the owls with Kaye.”

“Right,” Narayan said. “Kaye mentioned that. I, God, what a shock, who’d think an owl would actually…”

“I should leave for the hospital,” he said. “The owl is still here.”

“I’ll be there right away,” Narayan said. “Can you let me know what floor Kaye’s in when you get to the hospital?”

“I will,” he said. “Thanks so much.”

He left the camera bag where it was, perfectly safe behind two coded doors, noted Narayan’s number on his phone, fetched his coat in the cloakroom, and rode the elevator down to the first floor. The brightly lit interior made him feel like he was sleepwalking or inside a dream. He suddenly realized that his shirt was full of ominous stains and removed it, then inspected his t-shirt and pants, front and back, in the mirrored walls while he avoided looking at his own face. He rolled the bloody shirt up and put the coat on instead.

A few months ago the news had repeated footage of a missing university student from a hotel elevator somewhere. The young woman, whose ancestry had been from the eastern continent too, was traveling alone on the western continent, where she lived. She had checked into a low-rent hotel which, probably unknown to her, had a history of suspicious deaths. The video from the elevator was the last anyone had seen of the young woman. Via the closed circuit camera some of the last moments of her life were broadcast and watched by millions of people, but only after she was gone, after she had moved past the reach of everyone else, out of the lit circle of safety afforded by civilization and togetherness, and into the darkness beyond. Weeks later the young woman’s corpse was found floating in the hotel’s water tank on the roof after guests complained that the water “tasted funny.”

In the elevator the young woman had pressed several buttons before she leaned out the door to peek into the corridor, as if she were checking to see if there was someone or something following her. She returned inside, squatted in a corner, and pressed all the buttons on the control panel. To him it had looked like she couldn’t see the numbers on the elevator buttons properly and had to bend forward to read them. In the photos released to the press the woman wore red square-rimmed glasses, but in the elevator she had used none. If her eyesight was that poor, why had she been in the elevator without her glasses? After the young woman’s body was found her death was pronounced an accident, because there was no evidence that other people had accompanied her to the roof.

He was certain the university elevator had a camera too and imagined how he might look if the clip was ever broadcast, in his moment of confusion and distress, desperately wiping blood stains from his shirt.

Outside, it was dark and quiet. It had stopped drizzling but the fog that had lingered all spring and summer still enveloped the city. The street outside The Institute of Biological Sciences was empty, the lamps shining like distant moons in the mist. He couldn’t remember the name of the street and was uncertain any taxi company would know where the building was if he called them to the campus without an address. There were no signs nearby, so he started down the road to the student center. It would still be open and there was usually a taxi or two outside.

The moist air cooled his hands and face. He sniffed his fingers. They smelled of copper and wood wool and animal droppings despite the wash. He hoped he didn’t reek as he sometimes had after fighting. The headlights of a truck parked on the pavement were reflected by the tiny droplets suspended in the air. He stared at the vehicle. The logo on its front and sides was displayed in pastel pink, blue, and green, with chocolate-covered wafer cones and red and yellow popsicles dancing around it. As he neared the ice cream truck, it started up a chimy tune and the driver’s face appeared in the side window. He shook his head and continued.

The phone rang. He jumped, then exhaled slowly before he pulled the phone out from his coat pocket and took the call.

“What’s that sound?” Katsuhiro, his younger brother, said. “Are you out buying ice cream at this time of night?” The tune from the truck was slowly receding, but not fast enough.

His first impulse was to hang up to free the line in case Kaye or the hospital called, but he couldn’t do that when he had already answered, so now he had to find a way to finish the chat quickly. “No,” he said, concentrating on keeping tension out of his voice. “Not really.”

Katsuhiro laughed a little at his curtness, but sounded tenser. “I was just calling to invite you over on Friday night, for beer and snacks. We’re testing a new game and have to report any bugs we find, but it’s polished beta code so it should be running smoothly. It’s beautiful, the areas are so big and there’s so much to do, great story, fantastic graphics, it’ll be fun, not work.”

Seeing Katsuhiro and his friends on the weekend was the last thing he wanted. He had all the reasons in the world to decline, but none that could be shared, and a no would have to be followed up with an excuse that at least sounded genuine. He tried, but couldn’t get any white lie going, his mind too busy sorting through the recent events.

“Yes?” he began, hoping that last-second pressure would jog his mind into action. “Why not?” Nothing. He clenched the phone till it creaked.