Green Eyes

  A thrill ran across the muscles of her abdomen. His head wobbled and his hand fell off the arm of the chair, half a gesture of dismissal, half collapse. He whispered once more, ‘Go away.’ She jumped back, pulling the door shut behind her, and she leaned against the doorframe trembling, unable to stop trembling no matter how insistently she told herself that her fright was the product of stress alone. His voice had terrified her. Though it had been the same decrepit wheeze he had spoken in earlier, this time it had been full of potent menace, the voice of a spirit speaking through a cobwebbed throat, its whisper created by the straining and snapping of spider silk stretched apart by desiccated muscles. And yet, for all its implicit power, it had been wavering and faint, as if a wind and a world lay between them.

Chapter 4

  February 11 - March 24, 1987

  Every morning at nine-thirty or thereabouts an astringent odor of aftershave stung Donnell’s nostrils, and the enormous shadow of Dr Edman hove into view. Sometimes, though not this morning, the less imposing shadow of Dr Brauer slunk by his side, his smell a mingling of stale tobacco and sweat, his voice holding an edge of mean condescension. Edman’s voice, however, gave Donnell a feeling of superiority; it was the mellifluous croon of a cartoon owl to whom the forest animals would come for sage but unreliable advice.

  ‘Lungs clear, heart rate… gooood.’ Edman thumped Donnell’s chest and chuckled. ‘Now, if we can just get your head on straight.’

  Irritated by the attempt to jolly him, Donnell maintained a frosty silence. Edman finished the examination and went to sit on the bed; the bedsprings squealed, giving up the ghost.

  ‘Had a recurrence of that shift in focus?’ he asked.

  ‘Not lately.’

  ‘Donnell!’ said Jocundra chidingly; he heard the whisk of her stockings as she uncrossed her legs behind him.

  He gripped the arms of the wheelchair so his vertigo would not be apparent and concentrated on Edman’s bloated gray shape; then he blinked, strained, and shifted his field of focus forward. A patch of lab coat swooped toward him from the shadow, swelling to dominate his vision completely: several pens clipped to a sagging pocket. By tracking his sight like a searchlight across Edman’s frame, he assembled the image of a grossly fat, middle-aged man with slicked-back brown hair and a flourishing mustache, the ends of which were waxed and curled. Hectic spots of color dappled his cheeks, and his eyes were startling bits of blue china. Donnell fixed on the left eye, noticing the pink gullies of flesh in the corners, the road map of capillaries: Edman hadn’t been sleeping.

  ‘Actually’ - Donnell thought how best to exploit Edman’s lack of sleep - ‘actually, I had one just when you came in, but it was different…’ He pretended to be struggling with a difficult concept.

  ‘How so?’ Papers rustled on Edman’s clipboard, his ballpoint clicked. His eyelids drooped, and the blue eye rolled wetly down.

  ‘The light was spraying out the pores of your hand, intense light, like the kind you find in an all-night restaurant, but even brighter, and deep in the light something moved, something pale and multiform,’ Donnell whispered melodramatically. ‘Something I soon realized was a sea of ghastly, tormented faces…’

  ‘My God, Donnell!’ Edman smacked the bed with his clipboard.

  ‘Right!’ said Donnell with mock enthusiasm. ‘I can’t be sure, but it may have been…’

  ‘Donnell!’ Edman sighed, a forlorn lover’s sigh. ‘Will you please consider what our process means to other terminal patients? At least do that, if you don’t care about yourself.’

  ‘Oh, yeah. There must be thousands of less fortunate stiffs just begging for the chance.’ Donnell laughed. ‘It really changes your perspective on the goddamn afterlife. Groping, bashing your head on the sink when you go to spit.’

  ‘You know that’s going to improve, damn it!’ The blue eye blinked rapidly. ‘You’re retarding your own progress with this childish attitude.’

  ‘What’ll you give me?’ Jocundra stroked his shoulder, soothing, but Donnell shrugged off her hand. ‘How much if I spill the secrets of my vital signs?’

  ‘What would you like?’

  ‘Another whore.’ Donnell jerked his head toward Jocundra. ‘I’m bored with this one.’

  ‘Would you really prefer another therapist?’

  ‘Christ, yes! Dozens! Orientals, Watusis, cheerleaders in sweatsocks for my old age. I’ll screw my way to mental health.’

  ‘I see.’ Edman scribbled furiously, his eye downcast.

  What gruesome things eyes were! Glistening, rolling, bulging, popping. Little congealed shudders in their bony nests. Donnell wished he had never mentioned the visual shift because they hadn’t stopped nagging him since, and he had begun to develop a phobia about eyes. But on first experiencing it, he had feared it might signal a relapse, and he had told Jocundra.