A Tear in the Veil Read online

  Felix jokes, “I don’t know, you looked pretty dangerous with them. You sure you’ve never stabbed anyone?”

  Instead of laughing, Siobhán looks genuinely uncomfortable for a moment, then it’s like he didn’t say anything about the knives.

  She asks, “So, how’s your relationship going? You guys pretty serious? Seemed like it.”

  “Yeah, definitely.”

  “You love her?” she asks, genuinely curious.

  “Yes, I do.”

  It’s Felix’s turn to be uncomfortable. Here he was having a laugh pretending he could still flirt with girls and not have his testicles removed without anesthesia by his one and only fair maiden Audrey. He looks down at her book on the counter and sees that the pages are blank. He looks closer and sees rows of tiny bumps.

  Of course…

  “Braille?” he asks.

  Siobhán studies his eyes with that confused look again then catches up by looking down.

  “Oh, yeah. Good eye. Besides my prowess as a simultaneous lover and sociopathic murderer of fish, I’m a substitute teacher at a school for the blind near Concord.”

  “That’s cool. Any special reason?”

  Siobhán says, “I’ve just always been amazed how people take what they see for granted.”

  This statement troubles Felix. He thinks about meeting with Sonja to check out her camera the next day.

  “And it doesn’t hurt that there’s no need for a dress code. Except for being around the other teachers maybe, but they’ve never mentioned anything.” She chuckles softly.

  There’s an awkward silence and Siobhán starts ringing up Felix’s fish food. He takes out his billfold and hands her a twenty.

  As she takes the bill, he sees a small, shiny curved metal piece on the top of the ring finger of her left hand. She makes his change and counts it back. He notices that there’s similar piece on the underside of that finger to give the illusion it goes all the way through. He’s never a seen body mod like that before.

  “Thanks,” Felix says while he puts the money in his billfold.

  “I better send you packing before your woman comes looking for you and they have to call the coroner for little ol’ me.”

  They laugh nervously. She bags the fish food, puts the receipt and a coupon on colorful paper inside the bag, and hands it to him.

  “Yeah… Hey, have a good night,” Felix says.

  “Come in any time. Now that I’m back in town, I’m not going anywhere for a while,” Siobhán says and smiles warmly.

  Felix nods then turns and walks down the center aisle between the bright aquariums toward the door. He hears the chain for the light bulb and looks back over his shoulder.

  Siobhán is in the dark again, already reading her Braille and those fake eyes on the sleep mask seem to watch him leave.

  That night, Felix stands in the bathroom studying the Harmonia pill in his hand. He pours some water and takes it.

  He extends his hand to shut off the light but hesitates. He closes his eyes and slowly closes the medicine cabinet door so that the mirrored surface faces him.

  Felix just stands there with his eyes closed. His hand trembles a bit. He lets out a sharp, quick sigh then shuts off the light and leaves the room without looking toward the mirrored cabinet door.

  14

  Felix has to lean back a bit as he hikes down the super steep part of Hyde. You know, the Rice-A-Roni street. One of them anyway. He hears a cable car coming down the hill behind him and decides to ignore the thrilled tourists’ calling and waving as they pass.

  He comes to a gated doorway displaying the address Sonja gave him and presses the call button.

  While he waits, Felix looks down at the empty JVC camera bag slung around his neck and right shoulder and resting on his left hip. Audrey had stuffed it in the back of a cupboard. His thumb is hooked in the strap where it meets the bag and his arm is resting on it. He drums his fingers on the outer padding. It reminds him of his sling.

  “Felix?” Sonja asks through the callbox.

  “Yep.”

  “Just a moment.”

  A buzzer sounds and Felix opens the gate then climbs a short staircase. Sonja opens the door at the top. She is probably in her late fifties or early sixties.

  Seems tired. Sad maybe?

  “Please come in.”

  Felix says, “Thanks.”

  He follows her into the large townhouse. They reach the living room and she gestures for him to sit on a large couch. He does.

  “I’ll go get the camera. Would you like anything to drink?”

  “No thanks.”

  She leaves down a hallway.

  Felix casually scans the room. Cooking, style, and home magazines on the coffee table. Tasteful but expensive furniture and decoration. There’s a large chair across from where he sits. Felix can see steam rising up out of a fresh cup of tea on a small table next to the chair.

  Smells like orange spice.

  In one corner there is what looks to be a small shrine with a teenage boy’s photograph as its centerpiece.

  Sonja returns with an HDV-426 box and hands it to Felix then crosses to the large chair and sits.

  “It’s all there. Practically brand new,” she says.

  “Do you mind if I–”

  “Please do. I’m sorry, of course. Inspect as thoroughly as you need to. I charged it last night so that you could. I had to read the manual just to do that simple thing. I’m so bad with technology.”

  Felix opens the box and takes a quick look at all the accessories and the camera.

  Sonja continues, “I am techno illiterate. What do they call it? ‘Technophobic’ I think.”

  Felix smiles and says, “Nothing wrong with that if it’s not what you’re into. I’m more of a film person myself but video’s cheaper and easier so I do more stuff with it at this point.”

  He turns on the main power.

  “Really? My expertise with film only went as far as popping in the cartridge,” she says.

  “Super eight?” Felix asks, always curious about the home movie period before video.

  “Yes, I believe that was the name. I couldn’t even make the projector work with it. My husband had to thread it. I guess I have always been a bit technophobic. Now, cooking I understand. I know that sounds mighty old fashioned but it just makes more sense. To me that is.”

  Felix checks all the wheels, then the buttons. All but that one on the lens.

  “That’s at least as complex. I can boil water and chop stuff. My girlfriend doesn’t even trust me to chop by myself, actually.”

  They both chuckle. Sonja seems happy to have company, even just for this. Realizing this, Felix feels a little guilty as he packs the box back up and closes it.

  He says, “Everything seems to be in perfect working order. I have to ask, though. Why so cheap?”

  Sonja looks out the window and the slight sadness Felix noticed before blossoms into obvious heartache.

  He cautiously continues, “It’s just that… I mean you could sell this for ten times what–”

  “I know what it is worth. It isn’t about money. I’m not worried about money.”

  She looks over at the shrine and her lower lip and chin quiver. She looks down at her tea.

  “There is nothing wrong with the camera. I just don’t want it here anymore. I was going to just throw it from a bridge… But I decided that if it can be put to some good use that would be better. You seem like you could put it to good use. That is more important to me.”

  Sonja tears up.

  “I didn’t mean to upset you,” Felix says.

  “Just be careful.”

  “I’m very careful with cameras.”

  “I don’t mean the camera,” she says and looks out the window again.

  “My grandson James saved for a long while to get a camera like that one. He mowed lawns, washed cars, and worked at a movie theater on Van Ness Avenue. He was almost finished with high school and planned to go
to film school near Los Angeles. He had already been accepted and offered scholarships for his short video movies.”

  Felix looks down at the box.

  “He finally saved enough for the camera that was perfect for him…”

  She locks her hollow gaze on Felix and he meets it reluctantly.

  Sonja says, “I am not generally a superstitious person…”

  She looks at the shrine again and Felix is a bit relieved.

  “Within a week of having that perfect camera, he became very strange. Anti-social. Noticeably agitated and paranoid. I thought it was some form of bad flu because he was having a lot of stomach sickness at first. He wouldn’t let me take him to a doctor. Halfway through the second week, he took an entire bottle of my sleeping pills and went into a coma. If I hadn’t found him…”

  Felix fights the thoughts that are desperately trying to fit what she’s telling him in with his own fears.

  “I am so sorry.”

  She looks at him again.

  “Three hundred dollars is all I will take. Just do something good with that awful thing.”

  Felix walks down the stairwell and steps out on to the street, closing the gate behind him.

  Holy shit what a bummer. Okay, let’s get to work not seeing anything that will make me want to top myself.

  He walks further down the hill out of sight of Sonja’s place since he figures she should be left without any reminders of what she’s been through. He sees a recycling can and hikes down to it. He opens the camera bag and takes the small bottle of Pepto Bismol out of it and tucks it in his back pocket.

  Felix figures there won’t be any need for the packaging since he couldn’t return it now if he wanted to, so he takes the camera and all its attachments and such out and puts them neatly into his camera bag in their respective spots. He opens the recycling can and tosses the empty box in. After opening and swigging half the Pepto bottle, Felix returns it to his back pocket and starts down the hill. He comes to the Bay intersection and stops.

  There’s a lot of people around. This should be as good a place as any.

  Felix takes the camera out of the bag. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath then lets it out slowly and opens them. He presses the recessed button on the lens and winces slightly at the weird feedback vibration or shock. At least he expected it this time. He raises the viewfinder to his eye.

  People walking by with dogs, children, grocery bags, etc. Cars driving. People riding bikes.

  All normal. So far, so good.

  He continues down the hill. A cable car passes. Nothing strange about the driver or passengers. He passes a rental place for bike tours and little tourist “GOCARS” with a decent amount of people in and around it but doesn’t see anything odd.

  Good stuff.

  Felix continues down the hill and it starts to flatten out quickly as he approaches Jefferson and the Fisherman’s Wharf area.

  Oh that will totally settle this. There are tons of people around this area today, no doubt. If there was going to be weird stuff, which there’s not, my chances of seeing it would be in dense groups probably. Right? Right.

  The Wharf is an interesting blend of utilitarian for the fishermen and faux-thentic for the tourists. He passes locked gates and fences leading to the real docks and piers and themed seafood restaurants and tourist shops full of postcards, camera supplies, and “Pier 39” and “Fisherman’s Wharf” imprinted clothing. There’s even a wax museum if he remembers right. He only comes here to use the ferry at this point.

  Touristy or not, it would probably seem weird for him to just be pointing his camera at random people, so Felix decides to attach the wireless viewfinder earpiece. After he finishes that, he moves on down Jefferson, looking casual and shooting from the hip.

  He passes the “IN-N-OUT” burger and moans.

  Smells so good. Veggies can skip this part. Audrey doesn’t eat red meat so he avoids it. When he does try to sneak it, it’s like she knows somehow. She says she can smell it on him.

  It sucks because I loves me a tasty burger now and then. Or a thick, rare-ish prime rib with horseradish on the side. Or… or…

  Felix is really hungry. He hasn’t seen a single weird thing yet and he’s pointed his camera at a few hundred people already. He decides to grab a bite and start again before ultimately giving up and accepting happily that he wasted his money.

  Okay, so the burger wouldn’t be worth the harassment. What else would be good? Maybe a bread bowl or crab or something? Sounds good.

  He keeps the camera on and carries it by the top handle, just in case, as he cruises down the sidewalk. He crosses the street and walks through the Tarantino’s overhang to the smaller fisherman vendors stalls. He gets in line at his favorite and casually pans the camera around while he waits. There’s an argument at the next vendor stall. Felix listens in, which isn’t hard because the vendor is getting louder quick, and pans the camera over from his hip.

  The vendor says, “I told you, Bizmark! You ordered two chowda bread bowls and two drinks. You gave me a twenty. That’s four bucks change!”

  Woah. Oh no…

  As the thin, gaunt vendor gets more upset, his eyes pulse red and wisps of something like dark smoke come out of his mouth.

  The German tourist responds, “I gave you a fifty dollar bill.”

  “The hell you did!”

  The vendor’s eyes are all red now and as his voice rises, jet-black smoke billows from his mouth. The voice is odd but nothing like Audrey’s was. There’s also a strange glowing thing pulsating behind his ear.

  Felix raises the camera and zooms in. The vendor notices.

  “Hey! You gonna order somethin’ over here, cameraman?!”

  The smoke pours toward Felix and what look like small translucent black serpents with eyes like spiders slither from his face and neck then burrow into another part of them.

  “N-no,” Felix stammers.

  “My sog card’s all full so you gotta fuckin’ pay to film me, awright?!”

  The little spider serpents burst out of him this time, squirming and twitching obscenely before burrowing back in.

  Felix steps back and bumps into someone in line behind him.

  The vendor at the stall Felix is waiting at says, “It’s SAG card, moron, and there’s kids here for Christ sake.”

  “You know what I meant, jagoff!”

  Felix turns to the person he bumped into and says, “Sorry.”

  The track-suited Midwesterner says, “That’s alright, honey,” but her look is more like “Stupid shithead.”

  There are translucent, glowing sacks on her neck, which pulse like slugs or huge, nasty amoebas. Her eyes are oozing a greenish iridescent… fluid? Does she feel that?

  The German tourist starts back in, “I want thirty-four dollars now please!” “You gave me twen-ty!”

  Felix is getting a bit queasy and his vision is blurring. He leaves the line and rushes through the rest of the vendor stall area, not stopping until he’s across Taylor and halfway through the parking lot on the other side.

  He takes a few deep breaths and tries to calm down.

  I wasn’t supposed to see anything! This is bad.

  He’s sweating now and his head hurts a little. The nausea and head pain are tame compared to the Audrey thing at least. The Pepto’s probably helping too.

  A one-man reggae band busker watches Felix recover as he sets up his equipment for a show.

  Back at the vendor stalls, there seems to be a new argument about the spider serpent vendor costing the other one a customer. Felix raises the camera and zooms in all the way. The nasty little snake things are still wriggling and tunneling back into the thin, jerky vendor while he yells. Something buzzes through his zoomed in shot. He zooms out and, after a struggle, gets it in frame. It’s blurry and hard to see clearly until he accidentally lets his eye relax and get a little out of focus like a stereogram. Well, a stereogram in mono. With his eye relaxed and not focusing too hard, he
can make out a lot of detail.

  Its head resembles the serpents’ in that both resemble a spider’s. Multiple groups of bulbous hemispheres of varying sizes. They aren’t as symmetrical as a spider’s, though.

  The wings flap fast enough to buzz but it’s more sporadic than say a hummingbird. It makes the thing kind of bob around in the air and thin, glowing tendrils below the start of its long tails flutter and seem to keep it up and steer it.

  The outer body is similar to a dragonfly’s but he can see tiny organs rhythmically pumping inside that he’s pretty sure dragonflies don’t have. I guess it’s silly to apply normal insect biology to something that isn’t even real…

  But wait. If the camera is making me see these things even with his medicine fully functioning, are these things actually there?

  The vendor and Midwesterner obviously don’t notice them. Is it a question of reality or perception?

  Or are we back to insanity? Do I need a stronger prescription?

  I still feel completely normal.

  The… spiderfly? moves closer to Felix, bobs up and down in front of the camera curiously, then the one-man reggae band starts up with his one-two chords and the creature jolts and flies off south toward the buildings.

  It becomes really blurry as it gets further away but it looks like it joins a small swarm of similar blurry creatures and they all disappear up over the Shell Vacations Club building.

  “Woah.”

  Felix rotates the viewfinder up on its swivel and it locks in place over part of his forehead. He lowers the camera and moves on through the parking lot. He doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry or pull his hair out and scream. His hopeful bravado is completely gone and he’s missing it already. Confused and more than a little dazed, his gait is languid as he passes through the long, roughly triangular strip of a parking lot along the hypotenuse to the north.

  As he reaches the intersection of Jefferson and The Embarcadero at the acute angle tip, he notices a group of b-boys and girls breaking on a big rectangle of linoleum on the sidewalk.