Night Visions (10 page)

M
ost of the passengers are wearing business suits and reading newspapers. They probably take one of these commuter flights to Los Angeles several times a week, Samantha thinks. They have grown accustomed to roasted peanuts, strained conversation, and the smell of recycled air. She can't pass as a regular because she doesn't like sitting so close to strangers and being served by people who are paid to smile.

Ten months ago, she flew to L.A. to see her father. He had been rushed to a burn unit at UCLA after firefighters pulled him from the house. Decayed wiring had started an electrical fire in the living room just after midnight. Within minutes the entire place was ablaze. Father was asleep until a flaming beam from the bedroom ceiling crashed onto his back, causing second-and third-degree burns. The doctors said he was lucky to be alive.

When she and Frank arrived at the hospital, Father was lying facedown in a hammock, his face sweating and lined with pain, drool streaming from his mouth onto the floor. His arms were stretched out to his sides. In one hand he clutched a morphine
button that released a dose as needed, but only up to once every five minutes. He pushed it incessantly. Blood seeped through the gauze on his back so quickly that it seemed to turn yellowish-brown almost immediately. Every time a nurse came in to change it, gently lifting each strip off his moist, blistering skin, Samantha had to leave the room.

His back healed, leaving only scars and discoloration, but Samantha's father said nothing could heal the memory of those long, agonizing moments underneath the flames, waiting for the end. Since then, he hasn't slept well. He tells her that the fear of another fire keeps him awake. Every night he walks around his new apartment three or four times before going to bed, checking each electrical socket. He still wakes up terrified by nightmares, sweating from the heat of imaginary flames and sniffing the air for smoke. Every time she looks at him, she can see the imprint of that fire, as if black ash were permanently etched onto parts of his face.

While driving to the campus, she thinks about calling him, but she didn't even take time to pack. After leaving Catherine's place, she considered returning to work, but as soon as she got home, Don called. Apparently Goldberg kept a list of monthly expenditures, travel records, letters. And all of these documents were currently housed at the Schoenberg Music Library at UCLA; a musicologist on campus was studying and translating them. Don had already contacted him about getting her access, and she left for the airport immediately. Flights ran every hour.

 

“You're here for the Goldberg papers,” the librarian says as Samantha approaches the front desk. The woman's dark brown hair is pulled back, and she has a pale, round face.

“Yes.”

“Wait here.”

Samantha looks around the room anxiously. It has been a long time since she was in a library. Other than a few computer terminals, everything looks the same as in her undergraduate years—the metallic gray bookshelves, the scratched tabletops, even the same unimaginative posters. She took music history classes as a senior and spent a lot of time listening to CDs in the library. She also had a crush on the conductor of the university symphony, making excuses to hang around the department. She secretly admired his commanding stage presence at concerts, which made most girls in the orchestra, and even some of the boys, fawn over him. She is fairly sure that he never knew her name, but that just made the fantasy more bittersweet.

Other parts of campus have been transformed by years of endless construction, to the point where she doesn't recognize things—new bookstores, coffee shops, athletic fields, dorms—but the music building is stuck in the past. This sameness comforts her, as if she were still part of this place.

The librarian returns and places the registry book on the counter. “Sign this and come with me.”

Samantha follows her down the hall to a door marked Special Collections. Closed cabinets line each wall in the small, windowless room. There is a circular conference table in the middle with five long rectangular boxes on top. She hands Samantha a pair of white gloves and a list of the boxes' contents.

“Wear these gloves at all times while working with the materials. Nothing may be removed from this room or photocopied without permission. This box has both original and translated documents. The others have not been translated—so they're still in German.”

“That won't be a problem, thanks.”

Samantha can't read or speak German. She studied Spanish in high school and can't speak that either, but she wants to surprise this woman with the answer, to break through her stoic
professionalism. Instead, the librarian smiles at her indifferently and leaves the room.

According to the catalog, there are a hundred and twenty-five letters. Only fifty-seven have been translated and grouped according to date and addressee. Notated index cards have been paper-clipped to the top left-hand corner of each, and Samantha assumes that they belong to the musicologist Don contacted.

The warm, poorly ventilated room is stifling, and for the first time, Samantha feels uneasy in the quiet. She takes off her jacket, hanging it over the back of a nearby chair. Fluorescent lights buzz steadily overhead, and a low clicking starts to echo in the far distance. It gets louder, and she realizes that someone is walking down the hallway. The footsteps mark time steadily.

Tap, tap, tap, tap.

Her heart is thudding, and she grabs the edge of the table with both hands. Her neck is damp with sweat.

Tap, tap, tap, tap.

 

She couldn't see where the sounds were coming from. They seemed to echo in every direction with the steady rhythm of a clock ticking. She had been studying for hours, not aware of the exact time, not aware that the other students around her had left for the night. In her cubicle, notes from her constitutional law class looked as if they had been scattered by a gust of wind. An empty bottle of
water and half-eaten bag of almond M&Ms were barely visible above the debris of books and papers.

The sounds stopped. She looked over her shoulder, scanning a row of uniform stacks.

Nothing. Just tall shelves casting short shadows.

She turned back to her work.

Samantha smelled him just before he grabbed her from behind. Sweat and grease, like the men where she got her car repaired and oil changed. His thick, smooth arm wrapped around her neck like a boa constrictor. She grabbed his wrist and forearm, struggling to breathe.

In one motion, he seemed to throw her out of the chair and onto the floor. Her head smacked hard against the tile.

A flash of white. The room drained of color until she saw the sliver blade slice through her yellow cotton shirt.

His open hand pressed forcefully against her throat. Her stomach felt warm and sticky, and she imagined sinking into the floor as if it were quicksand. A thick heaviness covered her.

“I've marked you.” His voice was deep and steady. “You're mine now.”

She remembers his pitted face close to hers. Yellow-green eyes and thick purplish lips. Hot breath. The smell of grease.

Then darkness.

 

A young man and woman were kneeling beside her when she woke. Another had run off to call the police and paramedics. Samantha found out later that they were law students too. The woman had accidentally left her reading glasses in one of the cubicles and returned with two friends on their way to a bar.

The man attacking Samantha must have run at the sound of their approaching voices. None of them had seen him, just Samantha's body lying on the floor. Her shirt black with blood. Pools of red on the white tiles.

 

Tap, tap, tap, tap.

The footsteps come together and stop outside the door. Everything is still. Her face flushed and warm.

“Hello?” Samantha's voice is deadened in the soundproof room.

The footsteps start again, moving in the opposite direction. They aren't hurried, but steady and deliberate. Samantha exhales slowly and tells herself not to be afraid. She breathes again. The sounds in the hall fade to silence.

She turns back to the letters and the next index card.