Empathy

Kealan Patrick Burke

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2011 by Kealan Patrick Burke

Smashwords License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Find More Titles by Kealan Patrick Burke at the Author's Smashwords Page

# # #

Will Chambers heard the muffled thump in the upstairs bedroom and sighed. He'd hoped his absence wouldn't wake Melanie but here she came now, trudging down the stairs, eyes narrowed at the light, auburn hair tousled, dressed in nothing but an old LAPD T-shirt and a pair of black silk panties embossed with roses. Ordinarily the sight of her---long pale slim legs, unhindered breasts pushing against the material of the shirt---would have been enough to arouse him and force the worries from the forefront of his mind.

But not now.

Dear God, not now.

He watched her shuffle to the table and yawn as she withdrew a chair and plopped down into it. "What's wrong?" she asked, stifling another yawn.

He shrugged, offered her a feeble smile. "Couldn't sleep."

"Me neither."

He suppressed a laugh at that. When he'd left her in bed, she'd been snoring softly. As always, his absence had roused her, like a silent alarm.

"You must be working too hard," he said, and took another drag on his cigarette. Smoke threaded its way upward, only to be shredded by the frantic whirl of the fan. He followed the nicotine with a slurp of coffee and sighed.

"Maybe, but what's your excuse?" Melanie asked again, crossing her legs and playing with a lock of her hair, her eyes filled with the memory of sleep. He knew she hadn't meant her words to sound as snide and accusatory as he took them. He'd lost his job at the Delaware Gazette almost a month ago now, replaced by some hotshot young kid who'd come straight from Penn State armed with 'fresh and innovative ideas,' as Will's editor had put it. So far, Melanie hadn't confronted him about his prolonged unemployment, or when he might start taking steps to rectify the matter. In truth, he was afraid to tell her his plan. Writing was all he was good at, and the thought of working as a salesman or security guard disturbed him---not because of the work involved, but because of how stifling it would be to his creativity. What he wanted to do was write a novel, but he had not yet summoned the requisite courage to announce to Melanie that she would have to support them while he tried his hand at it.

"I couldn't stop thinking, that's all. You know how it is sometimes. Stupid brain won't shut down long enough for me to get to sleep."

She nodded in sympathy. "Yeah, I know. Did you try reading for a while?"

"Yeah. I grabbed that horror novel you'd left on the nightstand. Talk about the absolutely worst possible book to choose on a sleepless night."

She grinned, exhaustion still clinging to her face like a well-worn mask, and spoke as if addressing a child. "Aw, did it scare you, honey?"

No, I was scared to begin with, he almost said, but returned her smile instead. "It was a little on the violent side."

"It's a horror novel. What do you expect?"

He stubbed out his cigarette, clucked his tongue when the air from the fan encouraged it to stay alight and mashed it until tobacco erupted from the filter.

"I think it's out," Melanie said. Her hand slid across the table to rest on his forearm. "What's the matter? Tell me." He offered her another shrug, but she squeezed his arm. "You've been walking around with a frown all week. Even when I say something funny enough to get a laugh out of you, it sounds like you're doing it to keep me satisfied. Something's bothering you and you know I'll plague you until you tell me what it is."

He slid another cigarette from the gaping box by his left hand. "It's the video."

"The one you watched on the Internet?"

He grimaced around the cigarette and nodded.

"I can't understand why this is staying with you," Melanie said, rubbing her fingertips along his wrist and across his palm. It tickled, but Will was afraid if he told her so she'd take her hand away, and right now he desperately needed her touch, needed to feel the blood, the life, ever so softly pulsating beneath her skin. "I mean, it was a terrible thing to see, but in fifteen years of reporting for the Gazette, I'm sure you've seen worse---"

"No I haven't," he said, with a bitter smile. "I've seen accident victims, murder victims, all the awful aftermaths. This wasn't an aftermath. I've never seen anything even remotely like that."

She sighed, leaned forward so her elbows were on the table. "It'll go away eventually," she said softly. "You just need to get it out of your system."

"Maybe, but what I saw on that screen isn't the worst of it."

Melanie said nothing, but waited for him to continue.

He swallowed the fear that seemed to force the words out of him and cleared his throat. "Those people...that woman who died...who they killed."

Melanie nodded somberly.

"When they...when I close my eyes, I see what they did to her, in more detail than they showed on that tape."

Stop now, he thought in one dazzling, desperate moment of panic. Don't go any further with this. You'll scare her.

Melanie's hand found his fingers, squeezed them tight.

Will lowered his gaze to the tip of the cigarette. "I see every minute detail, from the blade touching skin, to the blood pooling around her head as they begin to cut. It won't go away."

"Honey, don't---"

"I hear her screaming and..." He swallowed again, but this time it was bile he was forced to restrain, just like the first time he'd seen what his mind now replayed in vivid detail. "Tonight, in bed, it sounded so clear it could have been playing at a low volume on the radio." He gestured emptily. "The sound changes when they saw through her vocal chords."

Melanie's face had lost all color. Her free hand now covered her mouth. "Jesus, Will. Stop, please," she mumbled.

"She whimpers." He gasped for breath as the panic that came with remembering seized him. The cigarette began to tremble in his fingers at the realization that talking about it---something he had hoped would help---only served to make them clearer, more vivid. "She sounds so child-like, as if...as if the pain is so incomprehensible it reduces her to an infant...oh God...that sound...and...and when it's over...when it ended, up here, tonight," he whispered, tapping an index finger against his temple, "...they take her head and raise it to face the camera...but...it's not her face."

"Will..."

When he looked up, there were tears in his eyes. "...It's yours."

* * *

She stayed with him until dawn's sepia-toned fingers parted the blinds and painted bars of fire on the wall. They'd moved to the sofa, where he lay on his back staring at the ceiling, Melanie nestled against him, her hand on his chest. He stroked her cool skin while she slept, occasionally squeezing her closer to him, though they could be no closer, smiling now and then at the pleasurable moan she gave when he drew his fingers down her spine. He felt as if the only way to smother the horror that seethed within him was to pull her inside him, so perhaps she could fight the terror with him. So he wouldn't have to fight it alone. For now, she was a slender, sleeping figure, oblivious to the nightmare that danced across her husband's eyes with every breath, every blink.

He was scared, and it was a preposterous fear. But knowing the foolishness of it didn't lessen its severity and now he felt as if the simple act of watching an execution, something not meant to be seen, had broken something inside him; that a rudimentary shield, essential to the sanity of man, had ruptured under the weight of his shock, and now the world had shriveled and dimmed, become a dank dark cell.

As he watched the sunlight crawl across the walls, he squeezed his eyes shut, praying nothing but dark awaited him there.

A knife grinding through muscle...a gurgled moan...Blood plumes, squirting upward and blinding him...

His eyes flew open, blinking in time with the stuttering thud of his heart.

"Of fuck," he whispered shakily. "Oh fuck, God, why won't this stop?"

A sob so loud it frightened him burst from his mouth and Melanie jerked awake, startled, her eyes searching the room before she blinked once, twice and looked at him. "Will?"

Tell her it's all right.

But he couldn't. He could not tell her it was a dream, a nightmare, something that hurt and frightened him for a while only to flee with the realization that his imagination was to blame.

Instead he said nothing, but covered his face with his hands and wept.

"Will?"

But even in the darkness behind his hands, he saw shredded skin.

* * *

"I could stay home," Melanie said, standing behind him and massaging the concrete tension from his shoulders. Will shook his head, and stared at his hands, at the faint trembling there. He was coming apart.

"No, you go. It won't do you any good to sit around here looking at me feeling sorry for myself."

She was already dressed for work, and looking more beautiful than ever. In truth, he did want her to stay---the thought of being alone filled him with cold panic---but he knew it really wouldn't help. She couldn't chase away the shadows that capered behind his eyes no matter how much light her company brought with it.

She gave his shoulders a squeeze and went to fetch her purse from the kitchen counter. "Okay, but you call me if you need me and I'll come home."

He nodded. "I'll be fine. Don't worry."

She turned and watched him for a moment. "You'll get over this, Will. I promise."

He wanted desperately to believe her, but the fact remained that she hadn't the slightest inclination of what he was going through, of how much his world had changed in so short a time. If he could only let her see the nightmare that had corrupted his thoughts, if he could, just for a moment, share the images that relentlessly invaded his sleep, only then might her words mean something. As it stood, her attempts to make him feel better sounded trite and absurd in the face of his overwhelming fear.

Alone.

Melanie was a mere whisper of light in a roomful of shadow.

"Call me," she said and kissed his cheek, her lips cool against his skin.

"I will," he replied, and did not look at her as she waved goodbye from the door, afraid if he did, he might see a thin red line forming around the base of her throat.

She left and silence took her place in the kitchen.

Exhausted, frightened and already beginning to feel the dark creeping back to the forefront of his mind, Will stood and hurried to the phone.

* * *

He would not watch the news.

He would not watch a movie.

He tried to watch cartoons but even the animated violence quickly brought to mind the echo of what he had seen.

He switched to M*A*S*H, and quickly changed the channel when one of the characters, a surgeon, got blinded by a fount of arterial spray.

He settled on a vapid sitcom---surely a safe choice---but soon even the wisecracking characters clustered around the bar began to lose their heads and bleed into their drinks. The audience laughed.

In the end, he stabbed the OFF button on the remote so hard his fingernail cracked. He lay on the sofa, finger throbbing, struggling to fill his mind with benign images: a sunny beach, the gentle hush of waves, a parade filled with grinning clowns and people in animal costumes; then a carnival, a place taken from a box marked 'safe' in his memory: dour-looking barkers plying their trades, starry eyed children clutching prizes, spinning lights, the scent of sawdust and cotton candy, and the deafening sound of screams

of screams

of screams

Until the scream was his and the room grew silver teeth.

* * *

"Is this going to cost me?" Will said.

Don dropped his considerable weight into the armchair across from Will, and smiled. "Relax. You're one of the most together people I've ever met. I doubt this is going to have me running to write you up for the Psychiatric Times." He shrugged off his sport coat and scowled as he draped it over the arm of the chair. "I need a new suit."

"Heal thy friend and I'll buy you one."

"You couldn't afford the type of suits I wear," Don said. "Even I can't afford the type of suits I wear, but I have an image to maintain, you know?"

"What kind of image is that? Overweight, balding forty-something on the verge of a midlife crisis, too fond of Scotch and not fond enough of his second wife?"

"People like you negate the need for an autobiography."

They shared a smile, then Will sat back and sighed. "Thanks for coming over. I couldn't think of anyone else to call. I need your help."

"So you said on the phone. What's the problem? Nightmares?"

"It's a little more than that. Actually, it's a lot more than that."

Don relaxed into his chair and clasped his hands over his large paunch. "Tell me about it."

Will gave him a tired grin. "Now you sound like a doctor."

The big man shrugged. "I've been impersonating one for over twenty years now, my friend. Sooner or later it starts to come naturally. But, as I say to all my paying patients, don't think of me as a shrink, think of me as someone who owes a small fortune in alimony and has nowhere better to be right now."

"Comforting."

"Works every time."

There was a moment of companionable silence, then Will cleared his throat. "Someone sent me an e-mail a week or so ago. In it was a link to a web site called Noble Sacrifice.com"

"Doesn't sound like porn," Don said.

"No. It was a website of banned movies and images."

Don frowned. "Movies and images of what?"

"People being killed. Accidents filmed by people who just happened to be there with a video camera, footage from wars, disasters...I guess all of the things they don't...can't show you on the six o' clock news. There were films of soldiers being tortured and killed in various conflicts...a lot of war stuff."

"And you looked at all these?"

"No...God, no. There were descriptions beneath all the links, more or less telling you what to expect if you were brave, or sick enough, to watch."

Don grimaced. "Sounds like tons of family fun."

"Yeah, everything from celebrity autopsy photographs to videos of massacres."

"Isn't that stuff illegal though? I mean, how can something like that be available for public viewing?"

"It had a warning...can't remember what it was...and a bunch of legalese saying they were protected by FirstAmendment---one word, with a link to whatever they were talking about."

"Jesus. What kind of sick fuck watches something like that?"

Will looked at him.

Don's bushy eyebrows rose. "Ah, I see."

"If you're thinking of asking me why, don't," Will told him, dropping his gaze. "I don't know. I'm not one of those people who get a kick out of watching people being killed. I don't even know why I followed that fucking e-mail link in the first place. But I did, and even as disgusted as I was by all the videotaped atrocities I saw were available, I still, with everything in me resisting, clicked on one. It said: "Nadejda Petrovna's Execution."

"Who's Nadejda Petrovna?"

"A Russian reporter. That's all I know, except of course for the fact that Chechen rebels captured her, and videotaped themselves beheading her. "

"Christ."

"Yeah."

"And you watched this?"

"Not all. What I saw was enough though. I threw up right afterward and I haven't slept since."

"I'm not surprised. That would be enough to fuck up anyone's sleep."

Will nodded. "When I do sleep, there are nightmares, except I see the people I love being hurt, not that woman."

"That's to be expected," Don said.

"Why?"

"Well because what you have to realize is that you witnessed a murder. How many average Joes can say that? Just because you watched it on a computer screen doesn't lessen the reality of it. You might as well have been looking through a window. And as any murder witness will tell you, it takes some time for the shock to wear off. Even after it does, they find themselves unable to shake off the horror, the stark reminder of just how tenuous this life of ours actually is, and the guilt."

"Guilt?"

"The guilt of watching that poor woman die, the guilt of giving in to that morbid voyeuristic impulse that exists in all of us, and of course, guilt for not doing something to help her."

Will frowned. "But I couldn't!"

"Exactly. Had you actually been looking at her through a window, you could have tried to help, or called the police...something. But you weren't. Remember that this technology---the ability to watch such things from oceans of time and distance away---is relatively new. You wouldn't see it on the news. The movies make it fake enough for you, but when you're essentially there, when the atrocity takes place inches from your face, the mind, sitting in the front row, demands intervention. The impotency that follows as a result of inaction leaves a clear path for guilt, self-disgust and depression."

Will pondered this for a moment. Don had the complacent look of a man impressed by his own wisdom, but despite it, Will felt a swell of gratitude toward him.

There was, however, another problem.

"How does knowing all this help me to deal with it? How does it make me stop seeing death and violence every time I close my eyes?"

"It will pass eventually. That I can assure you. My advice is to find something positive in all of this." Will made to say something; Don raised a hand. "I know, I know. What could possibly be positive about it, right? Well, how about the fact that death, to you, is no longer something that happens to everyone else? Maybe from now on every time you hear about some tragedy you won't---like everyone else does---just shake your head and cluck your tongue before getting back to your crossword puzzle. Maybe it will actually mean something to you."

"That can't be all," Will said, feeling the familiar barbs of panic writhing through him. "I mean, just feeling bad about death can't be the only reason this is happening."

"No, the reason this is happening is because you watched a woman getting her head sawn off."

Will felt his hope dwindle. "So in the meantime I just sit around and...what? Isn't there something you can prescribe for me?"

"Other than patience, no. At least nothing that would do you any good."

Will rubbed his hands over his face. "Shit."

"Look, Will. You made a mistake watching that damn video. But it's a mistake you'll get over with a bit of time. The cost of it is suffering through this little nightmare show for a while."

When Will dropped his hands from his face, his eyes were hollow, haunted. "And what if that isn't all?"

* * *

That night, Melanie dragged him from his turbulent nightmares with her lips, and her tongue. He moaned in pleasure as she tended to him, rocked his hips as she straddled him, her hair hanging in her face, eyes twinkling in the gloom. The streetlight filled the window behind her with moonlight blue, making a silhouette of her.

"I love you," he whispered.

She didn't reply. He sat up, embracing her and crushing her heavy breasts against his chest; the nipples were hardened points against his own, her legs like a vice around him, locking him into the soft wetness of her. She breathed in short sharp gasps as he ran his fingers through her hair.

Then her breathing caught. Another silhouette rose behind her.

Will froze, his erection wilting immediately.

Slowly, slowly, Melanie threw her head back.

And her neck split with a horrendous zipping sound.

As her body fell away and rolled heavily off the bed, Will found himself staring into the still watching eyes of his wife, his fingers, still tangled in her hair, now the only thing holding her head aloft.

"Help me," she gurgled.

Will screamed.

* * *

"Don?"

Static crackled over the phone. Will frowned.

"Hello, Don?"

"Hey buddy, you there?" Don said. "This line sucks, let me call you back, okay?"

"Okay. Thanks."

A moment later, with Will standing in the hallway, chewing his thumbnail down to the quick and frantically avoiding his reflection in the hallway mirror for fear of the ghoulish visage he might see staring back at him, the phone rang and he snatched it up. To his relief, this time the line was clear.

"How's my favorite non-paying patient doing?" Don said.

Will's cast a glance at Melanie, who sat on the sofa in the living room, nursing a cup of coffee and looking worried. He felt such a swell of love for her he thought it might reduce him to tears, and an equal pang of regret that she should have to bear witness to whatever was happening to him. Although she hadn't said anything about last night, he had caught her more than once massaging her scalp and wincing, which forced him to wonder how hard he had pulled her hair. Guilt forced him to look away, and he turned his attention back to the phone.

"Will?"

"I've been better," he told Don. "Last night was the worst night yet."

"How so? Nightmares?"

Will sighed shakily. "No. They're more than nightmares. Hallucinations, maybe. I find myself watching..." He lowered his voice, aware that Melanie was within earshot, "...watching them killing Mel."

"Watching who killing Mel?"

"I don't know. Whoever I saw in that video killing Nadejda Petrovna, I guess."

A sigh. "Jesus, bud, this has really burrowed its way into you hasn't it?"

"Yeah. Big time. I'm walking around in a daze from lack of sleep, afraid to close my eyes for fear I'll see the same thing over and over again---some shadowy figure cutting my wife's head off." He heard the faint rustle as Melanie rose and moved away into the kitchen. "I can't do this forever, Don. There has to be something you can do for me."

"I suppose I could prescribe some relaxants for you. Maybe some Valium."

"Will that help?"

"Well, from the sounds of it, anything would be better than lack of sleep. If nothing else, it'll help calm you down, siphon off some of that anxiety. It could be that the apprehension and fear is prolonging these 'hallucinations'---you're expecting to see them, so your mind is obliging. I think maybe one calm, uninterrupted night's sleep will do you the world of good."

"Ok, great," Will said, relieved. "So do I come down there to pick it up, or what?"

"No need. There's a CVS around there somewhere, right?"

"Yeah, over on Sandusky Street."

"Good, I'll call them from here and have them set you up. They'll call when they have the goods for you."

"Thanks a million, Don. Really."

"Don't thank me yet, bud. There's no guarantee this will help, but it should."

"It'll work. I know it will." He ran a hand through his hair. "So what do I do in the meantime?"

"Hang up, light a big fire, grab a bottle of wine from the refrigerator, get Melanie drunk as hell, then take her to bed and teach her the ancient art of bang-fu."

Will laughed. "A note from my doctor might help the request. After last night, I expect she'll be a little gun-shy."

"Gun-shy? Man, Freud would have had a field day with your sorry ass. And what happened last night?"

"Coitus interruptus, in the worst possible way."

"Ah, well...say no more, and that's a command, not a request. If I start getting envious of your failed attempts at getting it on, it'll only serve to remind me how empty and pitiful my own sex life is."

The burgeoning strains of cautious relief threatened to turn laughter into a fit of weeping as Will wiped a tear from his eye. Melanie returned to his side, put a hand across his shoulder, her eyes wide with concern.

"Thanks, Don," he said into the phone, his voice unsteady.

"For what? I'm well aware that you do this shit just to irritate me, to get me working harder than I care to. Then you stiff me and I'm the one left depressed. Textbook emotional osmosis, pal. Thanks a bunch."

"Would you knock off the wisecracks? I'm serious," Will told him. "I think I'd have gone completely insane without you."

"Bullshit. My ex-wife said the exact same thing and now she's getting porked by pool boys down in Maui, on my tab I may add. Now get off the damn phone and see to business."

"Okay, okay. I owe you one."

"Right. Give Melanie one for me and we'll call it quits."

A rumble in the distance and a sea of static erupted from the phone. "Don?"

There was silence, then the dial tone stuttered in his ear. With a slight shake of his head, Will hung up.

Melanie turned him around to face her, her hands seeking his face. "Are you all right?"

He summoned the best smile he could muster and wrapped his arms around her. "I think so."

She kissed him, a long passionate kiss he didn't want to end. But after a moment he broke away, staring at the small arched window at the end of the hall. Dark clouds had obscured the sun, leeching the light from the day. A moment later, rain began to fall, pattering against the glass and tapping on the roof.

"What is it?" Melanie asked.

Will looked at her, at the slender oval of her face and grinned. "Do we have any wine?"

* * *

Sometime later, with a full-blown storm battering the house and premature night pressing against the windows, the phone rang. Sluggishly, already regretting the half-bottle of wine he'd consumed before taking Melanie to bed for mercifully uninterrupted and frenzied sex, Will strode naked to the phone. Through the staticky crackle on the line, a voice laden with false cheer informed him that his prescription was ready. He hung up, quickly dressed, and hurried out to his car, the wind wrenching and tearing at him, the rain needling his face.

As he drove the short distance to the store, the wipers working frantically to keep the windshield clear, he realized he already felt better. No hallucinations had spoiled he and Melanie's lovemaking, no shadowy specters had risen from their bedroom floor and afterward, when he'd dozed, there hadn't been any nightmares waiting to thrust him back out of sleep. The dirty feeling still clung to his skin, inside and out, however, a repulsive sensation he knew would take much longer than a day to erase.

He allowed himself a sigh and, one hand on the steering wheel, reached over and popped the glovebox. An almost empty pack of Marlboro Lights tumbled out into his waiting hand. He checked the road ahead and fished out a cigarette, then straightened and thumbed the lighter on the dashboard.

Spindly-legged lightning flashed around the car like negative images of dead branches, briefly turning the rain on the windshield to glimmering jewels. Will coughed, cigarette clenched between his teeth, and drummed his fingers on the steering wheel.

To his right, the CVS sailed out of the dark, and he flipped the indicator, letting the car coast to a stop as he reached the intersection.

The lighter clacked its readiness and he reached for it.

Then froze.

The hair rose on the nape of his neck as a chill scurried down his spine.

I didn't, he thought, fingers still poised before the lighter. I didn't see anyone in the mirror.

A gust of wind buffeted the car, rocking it on its axle.

Closing his eyes, but only for a moment for fear unseen hands would grab him from behind, he whispered further reassurances to himself. The trick is to believe you didn't see it, not just to tell yourself, he imagined Don telling him. Force it out of your head, and you'll be okay, bud. Trust me.

Will nodded slightly, as if Don were with him in the car to see the gesture and swallowed as he straightened.

A car honked behind him, making him jump.

"Just a second, you sonovabitch," he muttered.

The rearview mirror was inches from his face, awaiting him like the sheeted body of a loved one in the morgue. He did not want to look, for ignorance granted him the ability to deny what he thought he'd seen, to deny what might be there.

He cleared the knot of anxiety from his throat and wiped a trembling hand over his face, barely heard the rasp of stubble.

Melanie will complain, he thought. She'll have beard rash. He almost smiled, but another angry burst of sound from the car behind him jerked the thought from his mind. Headlights filled the window like glaring eyes, attempting to blind him, as the impatient driver let his car drift closer to Will's fender.

"All right, asshole," Will said, and straightened in his seat, eyes squarely on the rearview mirror.

For a moment, he saw nothing but the white light making fleeting ghosts that fled across the tan upholstery and the pebbled rain on the rear windshield. But then, there was a woman sitting there, as if she had every right to be, as if she'd dashed in for shelter out of the rain and had just forgotten to thank him, or ask his permission to invade the car.

"No," he moaned and yet could not turn away from the horror that exploded within him at the sight of her raising her bony white hands in front of a face that was slowly slipping to the side, as if she were merely nodding off to sleep. He blinked rapidly, demanding his eyelids scrub away the apparition, ghost, hallucination....whatever it was.

But the woman remained, her eyes deep dark hollows in a moon-shaped face. And "helllllp," she whispered, before the angry red wound that circled her neck began to yawn open.

* * *

"Sir, are you okay?"

"Valium...um, Will Chambers...My psych...my doctor called earlier, called in a prescription for me, for...for Valium...Don Webley...Doctor Webley...My name is William Chambers."

"Would you like a glass of water, Mr. Chambers?"

"Please, just the fucking pills, please...I'm sorry. Please hurry."

"Are you going to be all right? Sir? Sir, are you---?"

* * *

I'll get home, he thought in a panic. I'll get home and they'll be in my house. Those men, those things, those animals, and they'll have my beautiful sweet precious Melanie kneeling on the floor before them. They'll have their hands in her hair and a saw to her throat, and I won't be able to stop them. I won't be able to do anything but regret for the rest of my life that I was fucking stupid dumb piece of shit idiot enough to leave her on her own. They tricked me...this is what they wanted...this is what they wanted to do all along...getting inside my head...invading me so I'd leave my wife ripe for them to come and cut her fucking head off...

He got home and barely thought to put the car in park before he was racing up the driveway and yelling his way into the house, not caring that he was dripping rainwater onto the carpet, not caring that at any moment the lights might go out, the power might fail and he'd be left alone, in the dark, with the monsters who had most certainly slaughtered his wife.

The door clattered against the wall and shuddered its way back.

Then the house gloated with silence.

"Melanie!"

No answer. He put his hands to his face, nails primed to tear the skin away if it turned out that his nightmare had taken his wife away from him, if the poison that had marred his soul had reached out and murdered her, if---

"Honey, what's wrong?"

He almost collapsed with relief. Melanie, eyes narrowed at the light, hair tousled, was slowly coming down the stairs, tying the belt on her robe to hide her nakedness from the cold, or from him, who'd become little more than a terrible phantom standing crazed in the hallway.

"Oh Jesus," he breathed, the relief draining him, the adrenaline slowly ebbing away. He leaned back against the front door. "I thought they'd got you," he whispered and with the admission came a huge whooping sob that set Melanie hurrying to cradle him in her arms. "I thought they'd got you," he wept, trembling.

The tears made the dead woman behind his eyes appear to swim.

* * *

"Don will call to check on you tomorrow."

Will nodded, already feeling drowsy. The Valium would work. It would have to. The alternatives were looking grimmer by the second and the renewed onslaught of gruesome images were now sharing headspace with thoughts of institutionalization and white padded rooms with screams for cushions and dripping faucets for music.

The bed felt soft and eased the rigidity from his muscles. Beside him sat Melanie, one hand propping up her head, the other stroking his hair like a violinist playing a soundless lullaby.

"I'm sorry," he told her, as the shades began to creep down over his mind's window. "I'm so sorry this is happening."

"Hush," she soothed. "It will be better after you've had a good night's sleep. Tomorrow, we can have a nice breakfast and maybe go for a walk. How does that sound, hmm?"

He composed a smile, but it was not heartfelt. "Good," he said, feeling as if a warm tide were rising in his chest, lapping at his throat. "Good."

"Try to sleep now," she whispered, and her whisper had an echo. He wanted to point this out to her, but the tide had reached his tongue and seized it. He was not alarmed, for it felt sweet as honey and he let it fill his throat until he was lost in its thick, comforting folds.

* * *

The phone rang.

Melanie dropped the paperback she'd been valiantly attempting to read in an effort to forget what was happening to Will and hurried into the hallway. With a shaky sigh, she snatched up the receiver. "Hello?"

"Mel. It's Don. Is Will still up?"

"Hi Don. No, he's asleep. Should I wake him?"

"Absolutely not. Let him sleep. He needs it. Besides, it's you I wanted to talk to anyway."

* * *

"Wake up, pig."

Frowning, Will's eyes snapped open and he coughed, wheezed and watched in amazement as what appeared to be dust rolled away across a stone floor. He shivered as a deep chill settled into his bones. Suffused white light pulsed across his vision, quickly followed by an acrid tang that was wholly unfamiliar.

"Where---?"

A sharp blow to his stomach propelled him backward and he yelped in pain as his back collided painfully with a solid wall.

Only then was he truly awake.

Jesus...he thought, the now familiar terror clawing its way through him with icy nails. Jesus, they're here. They came while I was sleeping. Melanie...oh God, where's Melanie? Where am I?

* * *

"You're familiar with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?" Don asked her.

"Yes, it's fairly common in soldiers, right?"

"That's right, but it's actually more common than that. Any victim of shock or trauma can suffer from it. Rape, molestation, accident victims..."

"Okay."

"The reason I mention it is because I'm starting to think that's what Will's suffering from."

* * *

Before him stood a tall thin man, dressed from head to toe in black.

"Who are you?" The questions pushed against Will's tongue like water through a crack in dam. "How did I get here?"

The man said nothing, but despite the headgear he wore, allowing only his eyes and the wide bridge of his nose to be seen, Will knew he was grinning.

"Get up," the man ordered then, in a clipped accent Will thought might be Russian.

"Why am I here?" Will pleaded with him. "Tell me, please. What...what are you going to do to me?" He was trembling so bad he thought he might rattle himself to pieces. The cold gnawed at him---a merciless freezer cold.

"Stop asking question." It emerged as: 'Stup asging kess-chun'. The man leveled the large assault rifle strapped across his chest in Will's direction. Distantly Will found the fact that he could discern not even the slightest tremble in the man's hands incredibly disturbing. It suggested a callousness only obtained by familiarity with violence. Whoever the man behind the mask was, this was a role he had played often.

Will moved, slowly, toward the man, and as he did so, he realized he was wearing clothes he'd never seen before, and certainly hadn't donned himself---a shapeless, ill-fitting suit of the kind he'd only ever seen on the news. Prisoners in penitentiaries wore them. His heart thumped in his throat hard enough to make his head hurt, eyes brimming with tears.

"How did I get here? Please...tell me."

"Stand," said the man. "Stand now!"

Will quickly obeyed, the dusty floor ice-cold against the soles of his bare feet, making his toes curl. I'm dreaming, he thought. Those pills did something to me and I'm dreaming. But he knew, though he wished he didn't, that whatever was happening now was the proper end for whatever horror he'd been suffering until now, that this was where it had been leading him. And that it was no dream.

I'm going to die, he realized and felt his legs threaten to buckle beneath him.

The armed man nodded his satisfaction and thrust a hand in the center of Will's chest, knocking him back against the wall. Will, winded, looked around at the small room, at the fall of dust motes illuminated by cold white sunlight that slanted through the bars of the room's sole window.

The man spoke something unintelligible and a narrow door opened at the far side of the room.

Three men entered. All of them were dressed the same as the gunman. One of them held a video camera by his side; another held a pistol.

Will felt his skin crawl.

The third man held a saw.

* * *

"The symptoms of PTSD are numerous," Don told her, "hallucinations, anxiety attacks, night terrors, memory loss, insomnia, erratic moods, lapses in concentration, depression...sound like anyone we know?"

Melanie sagged. "So what do we do about it? Is there a way to treat it that doesn't involve a tight jacket and a cushioned room?"

"Of course. There are Neuro-Emotional Techniques, a relatively new form of 'power therapy' that have proved far more effective than 'talk therapy.' It targets the mind through the body using systems borrowed from the Chi---"

Melanie rolled her eyes. "Don."

"Sorry. But that's your answer. There are numerous treatments available." He sighed heavily. "What I think happened Will is that after seeing that video, he almost immediately began to visualize the murder, only with him in that woman's place. You can imagine what persistent visualizations like that can do to the nerves. Sooner or later the brain can become convinced that it's really suffering the agonies the eyes have only witnessed. It can even start reproducing the sensations associated with such a death."

* * *

"Oh no," Will moaned, his body vibrating with fear as the tall man lunged forward and grabbed him by the collar of his jumpsuit. "Now!" he barked into Will's face and flung him toward the others, who had stopped in the center of the room. The one with the pistol pointed it at Will's head and said something in his own language.

The video man busied himself with setting up the camera, his ministrations oddly calm---he could have been fixing the machine for a kindly old lady, instead of preparing it to film an execution. And Will had no doubt that was exactly what was happening. What was going to happen, and that in a few days or weeks, his death would be appearing on a sleazy website he'd once had the misfortune to visit. A horrendous snuff site that justified its existence by claiming it had a responsibility to show the world what they were trying so hard not to see, that they had no business seeing, when in actual fact, it had a far more sinister purpose.

Will knew that now.

What he didn't know was how it had been done---how he had gone to sleep beside his loving wife and woken up in a strange place surrounded by masked men who spoke a foreign language.

He supposed it didn't matter now.

He was shoved to his knees, but on the way down, he caught a glimpse of the world beyond the window, and it was not his world at all, but a cold, stark landscape of faltering buildings and slush-laden roads.

Not my world at all, he thought with a flicker of calm. Not my world. I'm not here. They can't hurt me they won't hurt me they can't.

A surer voice rose like a bloated corpse to the surface of his mind.

But they will.

He thought of Melanie, stroking his hair last night, and felt a debilitating wave of sorrow at the thought of never seeing her again, of her never knowing how or why her husband had died.

I love you, baby, he thought, willing the words to cross time and space and distance so she would hear them. So very much.

They bound his wrists and ankles with thick heavy rope that smelled vaguely of motor oil.

"Please don't," he pleaded, trying in vain to shuffle away from them. "I didn't do anything to you. I don't even know who you are." Tears spilled down his cheeks. "Please. I have a wife..." Terror unlike anything he'd ever known swept through him.

Somewhere beyond the room, a church bell tolled.

Cold steel bit the skin on the back of his neck.

"Don't..." he sobbed, as he struggled.

The camera began to whirr.

* * *

"Don. Why are you telling me this? Nothing like that is going to happen to Will."

"I know, I know. I'm not saying it will. I use it only to illustrate what the mind can do to someone when it manages to convince itself it's what the body deserves. Atonement for not being able to prevent someone else's suffering. It's a remarkable and tragic condition, but all the seeds are showing themselves in Will, and that's why we have to monitor him closely. You need to stay with him. He needs you now, Mel. You're the only link he has left to the outside world."

"Outside world?"

"Yeah, the real world, because to all intents and purposes it would appear he's losing his grasp on it at a frightening rate. Either that, or whatever dark alternative world he envisions in his head is tightening its hold on him."

* * *

Melanie hung up, and hugged herself against the unmerciful cold that Don's phone call had left with her. My God, could it really be so bad? Could she wake up one day to find Will had utterly and completely lost his mind? What would she do? How could she save him?

No, she decided, brushing a single tear from her eye. She would never let that happen. Never. She was stronger than that and she knew Will was too. She'd help him climb his way back from the dark valley into which he'd stumbled.

As she made her way to the bedroom, she brushed the chill from her shoulders. It almost seemed as if the house itself had grown colder. She guessed it was her imagination but told herself to check the thermostat anyway when she returned from checking on Will. A fat lot of good she'd do her husband if she let the heating go berserk.

She cracked open the bedroom door, slicing a wedge of yellow light from the dark inside. "Honey?" she whispered.

Will didn't answer, but she fancied if she strained her ears she could hear him breathing deeply, though it was hard to tell with the rain drumming on the roof. Nevertheless, she allowed herself a slight sigh of relief. It was fiercely encouraging to see that he wasn't tossing, turning or screaming at ghosts. Perhaps the pills would do the trick after all. She prayed they would.

She opened the door a little wider and entered the room. Will was lying on his back, facing the ceiling, eyes closed. Slowly, she lowered herself down on her side of the bed, wincing at the faint squeak from the mattress springs.

I do love you, she thought, reaching over to stroke his hair. More than you know. Her fingers found the soft curls and lightly brushed over them.

He turned his head toward her, eyes still closed, and she quickly withdrew her hand, cursing herself for disturbing him.

"Hush," she whispered.

And watched in stunned, numb horror as Will's face met the pillow and blood began to flow from his partly open mouth.

"Will?" She quickly stood, and shook him. "Oh Jesus, Will?"

His head rolled free of his body, tumbling down beneath the covers on her side of the bed. Melanie gasped, clutched both hands to her chest as if fearing her heart would burst through it at any moment, and felt the strength leave her.

"Will?" she croaked, staggering back, away from the bed and the ragged bleeding neck still poking up from the covers. She collided with a dresser and fell heavily to the floor, a trembling hand rising to her mouth. Briefly she tried to get up, a scream trapped like angry wasps in her throat, unable to break free. And then the world went black and she fell willingly into its soporific depths.

* * *

Melanie stared into her coffee, the steam rising like sinuous ghosts from a black pond, and remembered Don's words, spoken over the phone on the last night she'd awoken from yet another hideous and terrifying nightmare.

This has to be more than a coincidence, Don. What's happening to me?

Her fingers trembled as she traced a line around the rim of the cup.

Cold white sunlight pressed against the windows of the kitchen. From the television in the living room came the sound of a solemn voice relating the details of another atrocity. Melanie put her palms to her face and closed her eyes.

An impassive, bloodless, familiar face shrieked at her in the dark.

She jerked upright in the chair and looked at her hands, at the intensified trembling in them and stifled a sob. Will was dead. Almost five weeks had passed and still she expected him to come waltzing into the kitchen, unshaven and yawning with a dopey smile on his face. She missed him so much, missed the smell of him in the house, the feel of him in the house.

Gone. And she couldn't understand why, no more than she could understand the sudden, soul-freezing fear that had possessed her over the last week or so.

Trauma, Mel. The reason it seems so familiar is because it is. It can manifest itself in different ways, but essentially it's the exact same thing Will went through.

She rubbed her fingers over her temples, chewed her lower lip.

So this is what he had to suffer. You know...I wished for his pain. When he was sick, I wished I could take it from him. Now I don't want it. What kind of a person does that make me?

Human, Don had assured her. These days she felt anything but.

Next to her coffee cup sat an unopened pack of cigarettes. She quickly tore the plastic off, discarded the foil that was all that stood between her and the panacea of nicotine, and quickly withdrew one. She lit it and inhaled deeply. She considered calling Don again, but resisted. Sooner or later she would have to conquer the fear on her own, and maybe it was better to start weaning herself off his aid now before she grew to depend on him so much he tired of her constant phone calls, and referred her to someone else. Someone less caring. Someone who didn't understand what had happened her husband.

I've thought long and hard about it, Mel, Don had told her a few weeks after the funeral. And it all keeps pointing to the same thing, though professional skepticism prevents me from buying it outright. She hadn't wanted to hear it, but let him continue. Closure, she knew, was needed, or she would forever be haunted by the mystery of Will's death. Would never be able to stop blaming herself unless someone offered proof that it hadn't been her fault. An irrational need, perhaps, but very little about her life these days was rational.

You've heard of stigmata, right? When people, usually religious folks, start showing the wounds of Christ on their bodies? Bleeding feet and palms, and all that jazz?

She'd told him she had and he'd proceeded to inform her of various examples in which ordinary people had suffered extraordinary tortures, with no apparent cause.

There was a colleague of mine in Washington who documented a case in which an eight year old boy, after witnessing his mother's arm being torn off by a Rottweiler, almost immediately began to develop bruises and small wounds, consistent with bite marks, on his own arm, the same one his mother had lost, though he'd been nowhere near a dog. Three weeks later, the arm was hanging on by strings of flesh and little else, with no physiological explanation for why it had done so. In the end, psychiatrists were brought in to study the boy; they concluded that the boy's trauma at what had happened to his beloved mother was so great, it somehow lent him the ability to experience her pain, by subconsciously willing her wounds onto himself. I imagine if a boy can 'borrow' his mother's wounds to punish himself, then a devout follower of Jesus Christ could conceivably do the same.

The phone rang, jarring the thoughts from Melanie's head. She ignored the persistent shrilling and finished her cigarette. As she'd hoped, it had calmed her, but not nearly enough. She rose and went to the bathroom, locking the door behind her out of habit. As she tugged down her panties and sat on the cold oval of the toilet, she pondered Don's theory, and, as she had when he'd first proposed it, decided it was impossible. But then, wasn't the manner of Will's death also impossible? No matter which way she looked at it, something unnatural had occurred in their bedroom that night, and yet she couldn't force herself to believe that her husband had willed his own death. Trauma could be overcome. Shock would always fade, and people didn't just decapitate themselves in the dark without a weapon.

Nothing more sinister than empathy.

She covered her face with her hands and moaned. Her body ached, the muscles in her back like taut wires beneath a trembling sheet. There had to be a rational answer to her nightmare but she was no longer sure she wanted to know it. Perhaps there was safety in mystery. At some point, somehow, she would have to start rebuilding her life, even though the mere thought of it felt like a betrayal of Will. Shaking her head, she opened her eyes.

There was a man standing before her, his shadow thick and cold.

Melanie's breath caught in her throat and she looked up, tears threatening to blur her vision, fear like a snare around her throat, tightening, tightening.

Something hit the floor, and rolled and when at last she gathered the courage to look upon it, she found herself staring into her husband's glassy eyes.

She screamed and grabbed her hair, her nails digging, then dragging down her face, drawing blood, as all the horror, the loss, and the grief erupted, spewing from her open mouth as she slid from the toilet to her knees, even as instinct tried to tug her away from the head on the floor and the still, silent form of the dead man it belonged to.

And still she screamed.

And screamed.

Until the scream became a tortured gurgle as a slim but deep wound began to draw its way across her throat.

# # #

About the Author

Kealan Patrick Burke is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Turtle Boy, The Hides, Vessels, Kin, Midlisters, Master of the Moors, Ravenous Ghosts, The Number 121 to Pennsylvania & Others, Currency of Souls, Seldom Seen in August, Jack & Jill, and Theater Macabre.

Visit him on the web at: http://www.kealanpatrickburke.com or www.facebook.com/kealan.burke

Table of Contents

Empathy