Night Movies Page 11

  I took another sip of wine, bigger this time. If Culmer really was in Takeshi-muri, someone should have called me. I was pretty sure that even though the doctors had found him legally sane enough to stand trial, they believed there was something very unbalanced in Culmer’s mind, something that the paltry attempts at prison therapy he was to receive upon sentencing would do little to set right again. I believe he very much wanted to complete his count to ten. Leaving it unfinished like that, I imagined, must have felt very much like an itch that couldn’t be scratched, a nagging, OCD doubt that one has turned off the stove, or the slightly nauseating sensation of staring everyday at crooked pictures and off-kilter doors and windows. The need to fix, to finish, to prove whatever it was he had built up so much of his life trying to establish as firmly in my mind as his...no perfunctory weekly session with some bored prison shrink was going to lessen that need. So if he had been released or escaped, I deserved to know. To prepare.

  I glanced out the window again, half expecting to see his mist-shrouded form back by the bench. I didn’t. Darkness fenced in my property, cutting it off from the outside world.

  It was then that I saw the flash of a lantern. It went dark. Flashed again.

  Ichi, ni....

  I put down the wine glass. My hand shook so badly I nearly knocked it over on the bamboo counter.

  The lantern flashed, went dark, flashed, went dark.

  San, shi....

  “No,” I whispered, trying to peer through the darkness, to make out his tall, gangly form. I saw nothing but the disembodied glow of the lantern as it winked on and off, on and off. “No.”

  Go, roku, shichi, hachi....

  I fought the urge to open my mouth and scream or to look down at my hands, which were slick with sweat—at least I hoped it was sweat, though I didn’t dare look, couldn’t bear to see blood....

  Kyu....

  When the lantern glow went out, I was swallowed, mind and body, by a faint.

  I don’t know if it flashed a tenth time.

  * * * * *

  “Francis—” I began. My voice shook. I thought I knew what he meant when he said he wasn’t “done yet,” and I exchanged helpless glances with the others against the wall.

  “Shut up!” he shouted, and I flinched. Softer, he said. “No one calls me Francis. Not even my mom.”

  “Culmer,” I whispered. I could barely hear my own voice. “Please let them go. If you w-want to talk, let’s talk. Privately. Let them go.”

  “Now you want to talk?” Tears shone in his eyes, but his thin-lipped mouth twisted into an ugly half-frown. He raised the handgun and turned, shooting Ed Vernon in the head.

  The sudden blast made us all jump, even Culmer, though while I and a few others burst into fresh tears, Culmer chuckled a little to himself, as if remembering a dirty joke. Part of Ed’s cheek had exploded in a corona of red against the chalkboard. The rest of him sank to a heap on the floor not far from Dr. Winston’s body.

  Someone screamed. The others scrambled away from the line-up and huddled into the corner of the room. It was a corner classroom, and one of the only ones, as I mentioned, with only one door. I understand that the room has since been redesigned.

  Ed Vernon had been tall, skinny, and defiantly quiet, his intelligent and vaguely bored black eyes hiding under shaggy black hair. His was a voice that could have belonged to a hundred different unremarkable faces melding into a hundred different college crowds. He was the type who had the hunched shoulders and brisk walk of a person used to spending years avoiding attention, listening instead of speaking, stepping back into the wings instead of taking the spotlight. I’m not sure why he even caught Culmer’s attention. Maybe something about Ed’s utter nondescriptness enraged him. Maybe it made Culmer think of his impotence in the face of society’s indifference to him. That’s what I think. Culmer saw something of himself in Ed Vernon.

  Ed—never Eddie—was an art major like me. His specialties were sculpture and charcoals. He had big hands, strong and vaguely tanned, with long graceful fingers. It was Ed’s hands I remember best. They never shook. Not even a little bit.

  Something in his own mind apparently seemed to startle Culmer, who flinched like he’d been slapped, blinked, and the handgun dropped to his side.

  Culmer sniffed, pointed at me, and said, “Gina. Come here.”

  Instant tears blurred him and I shook my head. I think I murmured “no.” He laughed, a hoarse, bitter sound, and said, “Don’t make this difficult.” He pointed the handgun at me. I rose slowly and he jerked it in the direction of Dr. Winston’s desk. There was a spray of red across the professor’s blotter and class notes and I whimpered, seeing it all blur again through my tears.

  “Sit,” he told me, and I sat in Dr. Winston’s chair.

  “Why are you doing this?” I muttered. I hadn’t even realized I’d spoken out loud until Culmer’s fist was tangled up in my hair, his breath in my ear. “I’m doing this for you. Because of you. So you’ll see.”

  “See what?”

  He let go of my hair and grunted in disgust. “See that I’m not no one. I’m not background scenery in your life movie. I’m real and I can change things, do things, move things. I’m not someone you can relegate, Gina. You can’t dismiss me anymore.”

  “What do you want from me?” I asked around the lump in my throat. I wiped at my eyes, which burned from running eyeliner, and sniffed.

  “Besides for you to love me?”

  This time, I scoffed. I couldn’t help it; it was out of my mouth before I could stop it. “Shooting people is not going to make me love you!”

  He sniffed, a poor imitation of indifference. “Maybe not,” he said. “But you’ll never forget me.”

  * * * * *

  I awoke on the floor of my kitchen while it was still dark out. The senselessness of my faint flowed into the dream, only this time it was worse. This time, as Culmer crossed my yard, he mouthed out silent numbers, and with each one, a hole would open up somewhere in his body, spilling black rivulets of blood. When he got within ten feet of my house, his jaw dropped. The flesh of his cheeks stretched, grew thin, and then tore as the bottom half of his face came away. A torrent of that same black blood poured out from his savaged throat, coating the dangling shreds of his ruined face and his broken teeth. In that dream, I was the one who screamed.

  My arm had fallen asleep, and my head ached where I had evidently bumped it on the floor. Avoiding the window altogether, I stumbled across the house to my bedroom and crawled into bed. The sheets and pillow were blessedly cool against my fevered, sweating skin. I wanted to lie there, cocooned in the coolness, and shut out the rest of the night, the oncoming morning, the next day and the outside world. I couldn’t. I had to get up and make sure all the windows were locked, as well as the front and back doors. As I did so, I peeked out the window, searching the property for signs that Culmer had been or was still there. I saw nothing.

  When I was sure the house was secure, I climbed back into bed again, but I couldn’t sleep. My body ached and my mind was exhausted, but I figured subconsciously, I couldn’t handle another nightmare like the one I’d had. I’d have to rest through snippets of light, broken sleep, safely above the surface of my mind’s endless flow of dreams and memories.

  It didn’t stop the conscious thoughts, though—the anxiety that Culmer had found me in Japan, the indignation that no one had thought to notify me. Sure, I was hard to reach, and naturally I didn’t want people at the correctional facility where Culmer was to know where I lived, even the cops. But I had hired a private detective, an ex-cop with a legal degree by the name of Fitzsimmons, through whom any crucial information related to the case could be passed on to me. If anything at all happened with Culmer’s case, the police could tell him and he could tell me.

  Culmer had shot and killed nine people as if he had been stepping on ants. They were not going to just let him go. They couldn’t. Often, the violent turns of the world made no sense, but I had to
believe that at the very least, it tried to right itself again.

  I resolved, since I couldn’t sleep and since I was thirteen hours ahead of the American east coast, to call Fitzsimmons (Fitz to friends) and find out what was going on. I’d also search the yard for signs of that lantern. I believed something would be found, some indication of Culmer’s threat; I had already decided the blinking of the lanterns had been meant to be such. That it might be coincidence, well, I tried that on and discarded it.

  That visions of Culmer might just be in my head...I added a mental note to call my therapist, too.

  * * * * *

  That night in the classroom, there was a part of me that watched and waited, looking for a chance to maybe grab one of the guns or bolt for the door. It wasn’t heroism on my part. It was pure survival instinct, and I truly believe everyone possesses it, to greater or lesser degree. Some people transcend it and apply the tenacious will to survive not just to themselves but to others. They go so far as to risk their own lives for those of others. Those people amaze me on a profound level. They are heroes. I was raised to have a healthy respect for police, firemen, EMTs, and others whose careers and very existences involve daily risk to protect others. But there are average folks who can rise to those kinds of levels of heroism too, without training or weapons or tools to better their odds. I doubt they consider themselves heroes—they just assume it’s an extension of the survival instinct—but I know better. When a madman with a rifle and a handgun starts murdering people in the room, I believe a good ninety percent of people look for those outs, just like me. An escape route, a means of ending the terror. I don’t think that’s anything more than common human gut reaction.

  But Frankie Galvanetti was a hero to me.

  He and Bobby Faherer were best friends and roommates at the college dorm. Frankie, an accounting major, was robust, almost round with the remnant abundance of his Italian mother’s home cooking. He and I had gone out a couple of times, but ultimately decided we were better as friends. I’d had two brothers, both of whom had died in a car accident, and Frankie reminded me very much of them—maybe too much. Still, I liked him a lot; he made me laugh. Even when he wasn’t cracking himself up in the back of the room, his laughter was still evident in his booming Brooklyn voice and the warm crinkle of the skin around his eyes. He was one of those rare few whose very intonation and facial expressions ignited helpless giggles.

  In fact, I think Bobby might have been the only one in the class capable of keeping it straight once Frankie got going, and even then, more often than not, Bobby would crack up, too. They played off each other, the Abbott and Costello of our community college. By way of contrast to his friend, Bobby was thin, more from some shadowed sense of a past that seemed to hover around him like a threadbare jacket than any particular narrowness of feature. He was also an accounting major, though I suspected he didn’t have the temperament for places like Wall Street. I think he knew that, but didn’t really have any other direction he believed he could take. I think he thought he’d partner with Frankie some day, their respective strengths making up for the other’s weaknesses. Bobby grounded Frankie, helped him focus and commit.

  I don’t know if Culmer resented Bobby or Frankie more. Frankie was everything Culmer never was and would never be. Bobby had somehow managed to find a true friend in someone like Frankie. I don’t think Culmer had ever found a true friend in anyone.

  That night, after he’d killed four people, after he’d told me I would never forget him, he wandered near the classroom door. I was still sitting at Dr. Winston’s desk. He’d told me not to move. The others clung to each other in the corner. I felt naked somehow, vulnerable out there alone before the sea of empty desks. I could feel cold sweat beneath my arms, along my thighs. I shifted uncomfortably in the seat.

  Culmer seemed to be talking to someone—the door, himself, some little voice in his head. He seemed to be arguing with it in hushed, muttered, half-breath undertones, telling it to shut UP, to be QUIET, to let him think, let him finish. I couldn’t catch all of what he was saying, but I heard him mention cops and blood and his mother. When he started giggling—the conversation with the door had evidently taken a different turn—a thousand tiny feet crawled across my skin. The tiny feet of the voices, reminding me that I was his main target, that in Culmer’s mind, this was only going to end one way.

  In the corner, I saw Frankie trying to comfort a girl named Abigail with what looked from the gestures to be a more subdued version of his humor.

  Humor’s a funny thing in these kinds of situations. The tension builds like gas bubbles, pressuring every part of you, making you feel like at any minute you’re going to pop. Frankie called it the human confetti point, where you were going to explode with something, one way or another. What you don’t know is what kind of human confetti will burst out of you—crying, screaming...or laughter. Crazy, high-pitched, glass-edged laughter. We all have pressure gauges letting off the steam, but only laughter is meant to truly establish security and normalcy, as if nothing is really as bad as it seems. Nothing is so dire if you can still laugh.

  And although I couldn’t hear what Frankie was saying to the others, whatever it was made Bobby laugh, just a little. Just a chuckle.

  Suddenly, some internal decision made, Culmer raised the rifle at him.

  Bobby, who squelched his smirks behind one hand so as not to spur his friend on to even wilder antics, never saw it coming. And for once, Frankie couldn’t find the words fast enough to tell him.

  “Hey don–” Frankie tried to say, and Culmer shot Bobby twice in the back.

  Frankie’s mouth never closed. He was too stunned by the shots. Bobby’s own hazel eyes got big, while twin red eyes materialized on the back of his crisp white shirt, spreading outward as he sank to Frankie’s feet.

  It was then that Frankie charged Culmer. Taken off guard, Culmer stood dumbly while Frankie plowed into him, knocking him away from the door and against the blackboard. He uttered a pained “Oaf.” Frankie’s hands wrapped around the muzzle of the rifle. Without letting go of it, he tried to elbow Culmer in the nose but missed, connecting with his upper lip instead. A trickle of blood stained Culmer’s teeth as he snarled. Frankie was shorter than Culmer but bulkier and stronger, and for several seconds, I hung onto the hope that he’d actually wrestle the gun away. Maybe he’d keep Culmer at bay with one of the guns while the others escaped through the door, into the safety of the darkness outside, where I imagined police and EMTs were even now assembling, planning the best possible entrance to prevent loss of hostage lives.

  Frankie was strong, but insanity has its own kind of strength, its own dark and sinister guardians, and Culmer managed not only to hold onto the rifle, but to head-butt Frankie and yank the muzzle from his hands. A look passed between them. It couldn’t have lasted more than a second, but I saw it—saw how much was said in it. Frankie’s expression wasn’t a plea for his own life, but for the lives of the others. Culmer’s was simply empty, dead-eyed indifference. He shot Frankie in the face.

  Based on the upward angle, Frankie’s right eye and most of his nose seemed to instantly vaporize, a fine mist of red forming a halo behind the hole in the upper back portion of his head. I choked back nausea as I realized I was looking straight through that crater to the classroom door. That face that once radiated the warm mirth of smiles and laughter was half-gone. What toppled to the floor looked like a giant, overstuffed rag doll that some dog had torn a chunk off of. More blood spilled out onto the tiled floor. His brain—the storehouse and processing center of his quick wit, his sense of humor, trembled in that torn mess.

  I closed my eyes, forcing myself to breathe, to keep down the bile that kept rising in my throat. I think I even tried counting, though a bark from Culmer made me open my eyes. He was standing over Frankie’s body and crying and laughing—both, at the same time. It was a harsh sound, somehow the least human thing he had done so far.

  When Culmer looked up, he looked at me
. “Looks just like my mother,” he said softly. “Her head...it looked just like that when I...”

  His voice trailed off and he went inside himself to that faraway place again, that place that I think he needed to go to detach himself from what he was doing, to remind himself of his plan and justify it. He had to go pretty damn far, I remember thinking, to have killed his mother.

  Good God, he had killed his mother.

  That made seven.

  * * * * *

  My therapist called it survivor’s guilt. She didn’t state outright that I had imagined Culmer and the lanterns, but she did point out the tenth anniversary of the massacre was only two days away. She pointed out that I spent an awful lot of time alone, a foreigner in a strange country, that I shuttered myself away, content to let the cultural and language barriers brand me the crazy American lady down the street. She also attempted to allay my fears by pointing out the unlikelihood that Culmer was walking the earth a free man. She hadn’t received any phone calls, either, and she pointed out how she had friends at the prison who she was sure would let her know if anything so outrageous happened.

  When I hung up with her, I can’t say I felt better, but I certainly didn’t feel worse. I’d had such vivid nightmares for so long that the possibility I was experiencing stress hallucinations, some residual effect of PTSD, was a far more palatable option than worrying Culmer was there in the flesh. At least one can wake up from dreams, even nightmares. At least PTSD could be treated. I wasn’t dealing with the real, warm, living body of a mass murderer, wasn’t looking at any real possibility of him creeping into my house on the other side of the world to finish the job of killing me. And if I was having hallucinations...well, why they might seem real, my therapist told me, they couldn’t hurt me. Likely, they’d never materialize into anything more than vague shadows, lights, inarticulate sounds. And they’d go away—she was pretty certain they would go away once the tenth anniversary of the massacres had passed. I thought I could hang in for two days and just close my eyes when I needed to.