Allan Leverone: Mr. Midnight

She described the moments of incredible insight—“brain movies,” she called them—that came upon her without warning, flashes of thoughts or mental pictures. They represented experiences other people were having, things they might be thinking or plans they might be making.

Suddenly, the strange, thought-provoking scenarios that had occurred over the course of their courtship—none momentous when considered on its own, but all quite disturbing when added together—all made sense. The empathetic connection Virginia seemed sometimes to share with random strangers, her inexplicable flashes of insight into lives and situations of which she should have no knowledge, all of it.

Initially he had been hurt and angry, even frightened. Then, after some time and reflection, Robert had decided it was far from the worst thing that could happen. Quite the opposite, actually, it was in some ways reassuring. Virginia wasn’t a freak, she was simply a young woman with an unusual, almost mystical ability; a gift she had not asked for and could not divest herself of even if she wanted to.

Hell, if you really thought about it, the gift was nothing more than a hypersensitivity to the needs of others. And that was a good thing.

That was what Robert told himself.

And he stayed with Virginia.

He assumed Virginia had used her gift to find “Dr. Jones.” He assumed she had experienced one of her strange “brain movies” when somewhere near him, maybe at the gas station or while in line at the bank, had uncovered his disgraced standing in the medical community in her mind and then had approached him to deliver her baby.

Virginia had adamantly refused to give birth in the hospital. Her fear of the place was something Robert did not quite understand—he found it illogical and senseless—but his wife would not be dissuaded from her insistence that the delivery occur at home.

Now, with the woman he loved suffering greatly, contractions wracking her body and “Dr. Jones” flippantly unconcerned, Robert began to feel the tug of panic in his gut. Virginia could die in childbirth; it was a very real possibility here in this nonsterile bedroom equipped with only the most rudimentary medical equipment.

Or her baby could die.

Or, God forbid, both things could happen.

The tenement was ancient, probably over one hundred fifty years old. Its red brick construction had been worn down by decades of extreme Boston weather until it now sagged and buckled as if the act of defying gravity was becoming simply too much to bear.

The building had been condemned years ago, deemed unfit for human habitation and then ignored, never renovated but never demolished, either. Now it sat, hulking and silent, its interior stripped, everything of value removed, either legally by owners who had long-since disappeared, or illegally by everyone else. Smashed-out windows had been hastily boarded over with sheets of plywood, and the building’s exterior doors drooped in proportion with the rest of the structure. The entrances had been secured with locks that were broken off within days, likely within hours, of their installation and the tenement now formed a convenient gathering place for vagrants, drug dealers, users, and the occasional hooker performing a fifty-dollar quickie.

And one other man.

Milo Cain was the only resident of the top floor, having carved rudimentary living quarters out of the empty shell of one of the apartments. In one corner of what at some time in the past had been a living room, Milo had placed an air mattress, which represented a massive improvement over sleeping on the buckling floor. A ratty wool blanket lay over the mattress, one side eaten raggedly away by moths.

In the opposite corner, Milo had placed a Coleman cookstove, offering a way to heat coffee and soup and the occasional canned spaghetti dinner. There was no oven in the kitchen; that appliance had disappeared decades ago along with everything else of value.

Milo sat unmoving, butt on the floor, back against the wall. He stared across the room at nothing in particular. The electricity had been turned off years ago, and candles placed inside grimy old drinking glasses provided uneven lighting, splashing flickering shadows across the wall. A gigantic spider moved slowly and clumsily across the floor in front of Milo, its movements jerky and insectile. He barely noticed and didn’t care.

His head lolled, striking the wall behind him as he was assaulted by a series of vivid images, all different but uniformly dark and disturbing. In the first, a man dressed in a stained wifebeater undershirt screamed at a woman, consumed by a white-hot rage that Milo could feel but which was meaningless to him because the vision provided no context. It was simply a scene, picked up at random by his subconscious mind.

The next involved a drug deal going down somewhere near the tenement. Milo watched through his mind’s eye, floating high above the illicit meeting, silent and unseen. The participants were nervous, both sides tense and fearful of a double-cross and the potential for deadly violence.

That image seared itself into Milo’s brain in an instant, only to be replaced by another, and another. Finally the images came to an end—for now—disappearing as if with the flick of a switch, and Milo sagged against the wall, spent. How long the break would last he had no way of knowing. It might be a precious few minutes, or maybe even a couple of hours if he was extremely lucky, which most of the time he was not. The only thing he knew for certain was that before long the images would return and when they did, they would be uniformly dark and disturbing and exhausting.

But there was one silver lining. When the images returned, maybe they would provide him with information he could use for his own purposes; there was always that possibility.

In the meantime, he would rest while he could. Milo considered crawling to his air mattress and napping while he had the chance, but he was too fucking tired to move. The visions were so goddamned draining.

Instead, he bent down, head hanging between his spread knees, and closed his eyes. God, he was tired. Maybe he would just lie down on his side right there on the floor and nap.

Then the visions exploded into his brain, beginning anew. Milo Cain’s head snapped up, smashing against the wall, and once again he stared off into space, lost and dazed.

Cait sipped her wine, enjoying the last of the pot roast dinner and reveling in the nearly continuous stream of compliments being lobbed her way by her boyfriend. Kevin Dalton was not a hard guy to please when it came to food, but Cait wasn’t about to let that minor detail lessen her appreciation of the moment.

Both worked long hours in the hopes of building their careers, Cait as a real estate attorney and Kevin as a Tampa police officer. But their long-standing tradition was a home-cooked meal every Thursday night, and tonight it had been Cait’s turn to cook. She had purchased everything she needed at the Super-K and then spent the next couple hours peeling potatoes and carrots, tossing a salad and cooking the roast, before Kevin’s arrival.

“I gotta tell ya,” Kevin said, leaning back in his chair with a satisfied sigh, “this might be the best meal I’ve ever eaten.”

Cait smiled. “Like I’ve never heard that before. I think it may have had more to do with the fact that all you had to eat today was half a cheese sandwich for lunch.”

“Duly stipulated. Whew, that was quite the vigorous cross-examination, counselor. You’re really getting this lawyer thing down.”

Cait laughed and shook her head. “I do real estate law, remember? We don’t cross-examine people.”