Cassie Alexander: Nightshifted

I swallowed hard a few times and took a deep breath. In a rush, I pulled the envelopes out of my pockets and tore them open. I didn’t think I’d ever been so glad to have gloves on in my life as when I saw the contents inside, the same kind of photos as were on the walls. I let them fall to the ground and put my hands to my face in horror.

“Mr. November—how could you?”

The only place safe to look was the floor, until I realized there were rows of boxes on the far side of the room. I walked over to these, saw they were labeled with names in alphabetical order. Marion. Sascha. Veronica.

I steeled myself and opened a lid. Neat hanging files full of photographs dangled inside, tabbed with what seemed like improbable dates. Melinda 1976–1981. Melinda 1985–2002. I checked at the beginning of these photos, and at the end of them. While the men, women, and backgrounds differed, the girl looked exactly the same. If the dates were right Melinda hadn’t aged in twenty-six years.

“Oh, God,” I whispered.

At the end of the file was a note. “Saved.”

What did that mean? Was it true? I looked around the room. The terror in their eyes seemed plaintive now. Seeking.

Was Anna one of these girls? And if she was, where would she be?

The EMTs had found Mr. November lying out in the street in the middle of the night in another bad neighborhood. They estimated he’d been there for about two hours before anyone local had thought to call. They were amazed he still had his wallet and shoes. After being his nurse, I wasn’t. He’d been a fighter. And there was something strange about vampires, even merely partial ones, that seemed to naturally bend human attention away.

But why would a daytimer care about little girls? I looked around the room. Why did I care? I could still leave right now, pretend I hadn’t seen all this. But—I couldn’t help myself. I didn’t know what “saved” meant—but I thought maybe I knew why he was saving them. To get to her. Anna. Only he hadn’t made it, this last time.

Because of me.

I knelt and dug through the other boxes, the ones not marked “Saved,” and scattered the images around me on the floor until I found her.

Anna. The girl in his picture, the one I still had in my pocket. Almost a century of pictures, they started off as family portraits, the family of five, until the other members disappeared and they withered into pornographic acts. From sepia tones, to black-and-white postcards, to color Polaroids, and finally prints of digital stills.

I couldn’t imagine how horrific it must be to have the only record of someone you loved be photos of others degrading them—while you hoped and prayed that you could match a blanket to a wall, a wall to a place, a place to a person, until they were finally free.

“So where is she?” I asked the room at large. My coming here, Mr. November’s death—this had to have a point. I needed it to. “He knew and you’ve seen her. Hell, you are her. Where is she?”

Their eyes silently stared, accusing, sad. This couldn’t be the end.

“Dammit, Edie,” I whispered, banging my fists on the carpet. My left hand’s nerves stung. Tears sprang to my eyes and I blinked them back as I took off my glove. The bruise was far past the Sharpied outline, encompassing my whole thumb, flowing with dark streaks into my palm.

And then—there was an industrious rustling behind me, ripping and tearing. I froze with fear, my back to the wall, and stared down at the worn carpet, my hands curled into its thin pile, one growing bruise-black, the other one with knuckles corpse-white, until my sense of sharing the room ended.

The Filipino women I used to work with believed in ghosts. After working in Y4, I probably should too.

I sat up and turned around. A portion of the photographs had been ripped off the walls revealing mold underneath, dark and crusted, like deep scabs. Shredded images littered the floor showing little strips of flesh, the corners of stained mattresses, and bleak stares with darkness behind.

“I’m so sorry.” I started backing out of the room, unwilling to turn my back on what was there, out of fear and shame. “I’m so, so sorry.”

A cold wind went through the room, stirring the photos like fall leaves. And when it finished running through me and out the door behind, the fragments of photos on the floor resolved into the shape of an address number and a name.

I remembered a quote from my grandma—just being sorry never helped anyone. I dusted my hands off and reached for my phone.

Three cab companies and a credit card number later, I found someone who’d pick me up. They wanted me at the curb at 7:12 on the nose and if I wasn’t there, they’d gladly keep my deposit. After I hopped in I gave the cabbie my next address—much different from the one I’d given his company on the phone.

“You gotta be kidding me.”

“I’ll triple your fare.” It was do it now, or not at all.

I watched him weigh the extra money against his personal safety, divided by the time of night, and he must have gotten an answer he agreed with, because he went my way.

I stared out the window as the cab ignored stop signs, rolling through perpetually grimmer neighborhoods until he brought the car to a halt.

“You sure you want off here? I ain’t coming back for you.”

“If this is the right address.” I peeled bills out of my bra and handed them over. So much for this month’s student loan payment. The cab rushed off the moment I closed the door.

There weren’t address numbers posted here, but I saw that the third floor on one building had metal sheets nailed up over all the windows. A homemade asylum, a pot farm, or a dark place to keep vampires in captivity—someone had something to hide. I pulled out a cologne bottle and headed for the door.

The air inside this new place had the smell of cat pee and vinegar—the pungent byproducts of cooking large-scale meth or personal-use heroin. Luckily, I was used to junkies. A hairless girl in the stairwell was picking at a nonexistent scab. I skirted her and mounted the stairs two at a time.

My hand began to throb as I walked down the third-floor hall. I took off my winter gloves and found the bruise covering my entire palm, and it ached, bad. Without thinking about why I knew to do it, I placed my hand on one door after another until I found one that was cold, and the pain stopped.

No landlady and no House here. I hit the door with my marked hand, hard. “Delivery!”

“What?”

“Delivery!”

There were sounds behind the door. Metal scraping against metal. Whispers. The door opened to reveal a narrow-faced man, and the smell of sex and blood washed out around him.

I knew I was in the right place. I just knew.

“What do you want?” he asked. I held up the cologne bottle and pressed the plunger, hard and fast. Nothing happened. He tried to slam the door shut and would’ve too, if my steel toe hadn’t been in the way.

“Fuck this.” I unscrewed the cap and sloshed the contents at him. He started shrieking. Mr. November had managed to get the good stuff.

“Jesus Christ!” He stumbled to his knees and started scratching at his face.

“Something like that.” I shoved him out of my way with the door. “Anna?”

The room’s devastation was almost complete. Two lightbulbs dangled from the ceiling on threadbare wires. Waterlogged wallpaper sagged down to the floor. A shiny black camera on a tripod occupied the center of the room, keeping its mechanical eye on a dirty mattress on the dirty floor, where a girl was chained like a bad dog. She looked about nine, but I knew there was no way to tell.

“Anna?” I repeated.