A Tear in the Veil Read online

  Felix stops to watch the spectacle. He’s always been fascinated by b-boying or, think Ray’s penny loafer voice, “breakdancing”.

  He got into it enough to know the basics and make himself look a notch less than completely stupid trying to bust it but he isn’t anywhere near good at it. Definitely not a b-boy himself. He loves to watch it, though. He has the same relationship with skateboarding. Much love, no talent.

  There’s a young Korean b-boy and a cute black b-girl getting ready to battle.

  This should be good. Korea has a real fondness for breaking and from his clothes to his shoes this kid looks fresh off the plane. And she doesn’t look like a slouch either. Maybe they’re on a demo tour or something.

  The b-boy starts, busting out with the old school Up Rock mixed in with his toprock, skipping, jumping, and sliding back and forth several times before doing the Indian step, then dropping down smoothly into a power move combo. He spins on his knees and elbows in different contortions then ends on a move which makes his body looks like the optical illusion ballerina silhouette only upside-down and spinning on his elbow and forearm. Nice. He spins until he starts to slow then comes out of it and takes a few steps back. He makes it look effortless.

  The crowd claps and the cute b-girl mockingly joins in. She slow claps then matches the beat of the music and works it into her toprock, seamlessly going from the relaxed clapping stance into a stuttering body pulse, which quickly becomes boyoing. She hops back and forth, kicking one foot out, crossing over to face away and kicking her other leg out, landing on it, then kicking the first leg out from behind the other. She goes back and forth with this several times then goes into downrock, doing quick footwork while supporting her body and shifting on her hands before going into spins on her elbow pads and ending with a Deadman 90, spinning up into an upside down standing position while rotating on one hand against the linoleum with her other arm tucked against her body for giggles. She comes out of it expertly and steps back, gesturing for him to go again.

  More applause from the tourists and such.

  This is tight but I can’t put it off any more, Felix thinks while he joins in the applause.

  He swivels the viewfinder back down into place in front of his eye and pans the camera around.

  Lots of tourists with shopping bags and cameras. Taxis and cars. There’s nothing obviously strange in this immediate area so he frames the camera shot on the battling breakers and watches some more.

  As the Korean b-boy begins his cutting toprock counter-attack, Felix catches a glimpse of something between the legs of some tourists on the far edge of the spectator circle.

  It looks like a cat.

  The b-boy transitions down into a quick downrock which becomes a spin move where he’s supporting his whole body almost parallel to the ground on just his hands at the end of locked bent elbows and he’s “walking” around on them in a circle.

  That guy has gotta be crazy strong to pull that off.

  He looks at the cat again.

  It’s bright white and sitting on its haunches and has shiny, dark eyes and… it reminds me of the cat…

  No. It is the cat from my dream.

  The obsidian eyes reflect the movement of the dancer.

  Felix is transfixed. The cat isn’t paying any attention to him. It actually seems to be watching the b-boy spin around on his hands.

  The b-boy blocks Felix’s view of the cat by downrocking some footwork and spinning back up to toprock, boyoing big a few times, and flipping his right leg back behind him. His whole body seems to go around with it. It’s a front flip into a suicide finish and he lands flat against the ground on his back. It looks painful but that’s the idea. He undulates against the ground in a kind of upside down caterpillar move which gets wilder and more extreme until he stands again.

  The crowd applauds and cheers and whistles as the panting break battlers squash it and hug respectfully.

  All things equal, she could beat him skill-wise but she’s too tired from the looks of it.

  Hold on, what was I looking at again?

  Wait…

  Dammit!

  Felix leans back and forth trying to find the cat but it’s already gone. He steps out of the spectator circle and walks around looking for it.

  It’s like a fog filled his head and he completely forgot about everything but the dancers.

  There it is! Pattering off toward Pier 39.

  Felix follows from a distance. The cat cruises smoothly between the legs of the tourist throngs as it makes its way onto the pier. Or is it going through their legs? He can’t be sure.

  The wind is picking up and the big Pier 39 flags flap in it.

  Felix keeps his distance but paces the little cat. It helps that it’s so bright.

  Lots of tourists and maybe a few locals here and there are laughing and shopping in the stores and eating and walking around.

  A fat man with huge, entirely blue eyes and a large, glowing leech bulb thing on the back of his neck and upper back passes Felix. He watches the man exhale blue mist in big huffing clouds.

  As Felix watches the man lumber away, something else catches his attention. A woman is sitting on a bench consoling her little daughter who seems to be pouting.

  Dark, translucent centipede-like creatures crawl into and out of her mouth, nose, and ears. Some burrow into her skin and disappear, only to reappear from a different part of her face or neck.

  Felix zooms in.

  They glow like the spiderflies and each have at least two dozen long, thin legs and there are tiny eyes of different sizes all over what has to be the head area of their long, bulbous bodies which are filled with pumping little organs like the spiderfly. The body sections are not uniform in size and only roughly in shape.

  “Burrowpedes” seems to suit them, Felix decides. Or maybe “bedes”? Might as well call the serpent ones “slints” short for “slither serpents” while I’m at it. Actually slints isn’t bad. Reminds me of something. I’ll go with slints and burrowpedes for now.

  Dark, reddish fluid oozes from the little girl’s eyes and mouth which she obviously doesn’t notice. The little creatures seem to feed on the ooze?

  A spiderfly– yeah, we’ll stick with spiderfly– a spiderfly buzzes into the shot and most of the burrowpedes dig into the girl’s face and hide. The few that don’t notice the spiderfly swoop-bobbing in are quickly preyed upon.

  The spiderfly’s mouth area breaks apart and a slimy stalk of tendrils whips out, snatching the smaller creatures up in quick succession as the spiderfly crawls across the girl’s face. The spiderfly catches one last spiderpede as it’s trying to burrow for freedom and pulls it out after a struggle and sucks it into the slimy tendril stalk.

  The girl starts to whine and cry for unrelated reasons but the synchronicity of the events has Felix practically hypnotized. He’s just glad she can’t feel that for real.

  Damn! Lost the cat again!

  Felix looks all over the first level of the pier but can’t find it. He rushes up the stairs; careful not to trip and break his only way of seeing these things he doesn’t really want to see.

  The cat is nowhere to be seen on the second floor. He looks down at the first floor, hoping to catch it pattering through the crowd.

  Nothing. It’s gone.

  Shit.

  He sees a bench near the railing on the bay side. Might as well rest for a minute and think this through. He crosses to it and sits. Could it actually be a practical joke or something? Maybe by a disgruntled or crazy designer or worker at the company or manufacturing plant?

  It could be an incredibly elaborate Augmented Reality experiment, like a guerilla art piece.

  He shakes his head and leans back against the bench and looks up at the thick, dark clouds.

  “Or are you really just too bat-shit crazy for the meds to work right?” Felix hears the sounds of sea lions snortling and honking on the short floating docks in the little artificial harbor in the bay and looks do
wn at them.

  Well, at least the sea lions haven’t joined forces with the sloths yet. On that day, humanity’s reign is at an end, Felix thinks and chuckles.

  He adjusts the camera on his lap so that it’s pointing down at the sea lions. It’s still zoomed in from searching the first floor from the second and the shot is pretty tight on one of the floating docks.

  The sea lions are just splayed out. One keeps arching its head up and harassing or just responding to one or all of the others. Felix isn’t real familiar with sea lion behavior but that’s what it seems like. There’s a weird distortion on the edge of the frame. Felix zooms out some. Crouched on a dock near one group of sea lions is an impossibly dark figure.

  Any playfulness Felix felt is instantly gone and that now familiar chill goes through him. Like a cocktail of disbelief and profound terror downed on an empty stomach.

  You’d think calling it “dark” would do it justice, but it doesn’t. It also seems redundant to say that it isn’t just dark but its form is cut from a lack of light, but it’s not. It even seems to suck light in and distort it at the edges of its vague, humanoid form. A warped, living silhouette defined by its gaping maw of absence.

  The figure stands. As it does, it takes on the form of every shape it creates in space as it moves at once, becoming a tall, amorphous blob of impossible negative space before the movement catches up and absorbs the multiple shapes and reforms into its humanoid silhouette.

  Felix zooms in on what would be its head area.

  It seems to notice somehow and it “looks” directly at Felix. The view goes black. He looks at the camera nervously. He was almost okay until he couldn’t see the thing. Like a nasty looking spider crawling behind something out of sight you just know is going to get you later.

  What the hell is wrong with this stupid thing?

  He checks dials and settings. Everything’s the same. It’s still on. The battery life and other info are still displayed in the remote viewfinder attachment. It’s just totally black past that.

  He tilts the camera up to look at the lens with his uncovered eye but what he sees in the remote viewfinder is what helps him understand.

  The camera is fine.

  The dark figure is standing directly in front of him.

  Even this close, there is no definition or discernable features but from its outline it seems to be looking down at him.

  Felix jolts and almost drops the camera. It wobbles in his hands and he steadies it then shuts it off and practically rips the viewfinder piece from his eye and ear.

  Slow and cautious with a shaking hand, he swipes the air in front of him.

  A little boy passing with his hand in his father’s says, “Dad, a mime! Can we watch?”

  Felix gets up and quickly walks away.

  15

  Felix was off Pier 39, down the Embarcadero, and almost to Pier 27 before he even considered slowing his pace. As he did slow, though, his hunger came back.

  Well, he had thought, if that damn thing wanted to hurt me, it would have. He hadn’t accounted for the possibility that it was toying with him but that occurred to him later.

  So now he’s in the Fog City Diner eating a big burger with a fried egg and bacon on it and downing a six dollar chocolate malt. ‘Cause fuck it, right? You probably only live once and who knows when a tall, dark “Nothing Man” is gonna sweep you off your feet and decide to eat you or whatever? Anyway… Sorry, Moz. That was too much for me and I need some selfish, evil comfort at the moment.

  His hands are still shaking but he’s making do. This isn’t the best burger he’s ever had but after what he just saw you’d be hard pressed to convince Felix of that. Tastes like unicorn meat on an ambrosia bun to him.

  He finishes the burger and eagerly sucks down the malt refill in the metal mixing cup with only a bit of that annoying suction sound.

  Felix steps out of the diner and walks down the sidewalk. He sees Coit Tower up on Telegraph Hill and stops. The hill is like a protective barrier between him and home right on the other side. ‘Protective’ because he doesn’t want to think too hard about the implications of any of this being real.

  If it is real… what is Audrey?

  He walks a little further down the sidewalk and thinks. He tries to. Now that he’s attached this silly function to Telegraph Hill, he can’t help day dreaming about the “World Famous” Parrots of Telegraph Hill that sometimes hang out in the trees over a path and stairwell which runs down its east side. He pictures the feral, squawking birds flying up out of the trees to combat a Godzilla-big Crazyface Audrey looking over the hill from the west side or at least confuse her by pecking at her backyard satellite dish sized shark eyes.

  He crosses the street and paces in front of Pier 23 for a bit, fighting himself to stay on task and come to terms with the implications of what he’s just seen.

  Even though the pier is closed right now he realizes he must look pretty crazy just pacing and thinking hard so he stops and leans against the big pier roll up door. He gently but firmly bangs the back of his head against it a few times. No one answers.

  Felix takes out his phone and navigates through the contact list. He finds the personal contact number Doctor Fleischmann emailed him for use in case of issues. Another one of those ‘the man himself’ moments. Why is he so hands on if he’s such a big shot?

  Felix’s thumb hovers over the touchscreen. He closes his eyes and sighs long and slow. He backs out of the contact list and shakes his head when he realizes what he’s going to do.

  “CALL HISTORY” it is then. He finds the number that came up when Rudy called him in the Sushi Boat and steels himself. He presses that number and puts the phone to his ear.

  Dial tone…

  You’re going to regret this.

  Dial tone…

  This is a bad idea.

  Dial tone…

  You should hang up and call the doctor.

  Dial t–

  The line opens and a young woman says, “Speak.”

  “Hi. I’m… uh… I’m trying to reach Rudy?”

  “How do you know him?” she asks pointedly.

  Felix frowns and thinks fast.

  “Uh… from school.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  He decides to bluff.

  “Yeah. Why? Who are you?”

  She pulls the phone away some.

  “Ty! It’s your boyfriend! Tell him to clean up after himself next time. That’s nasty when it’s like dried on.”

  Further from the phone Rudy says, “Lacy, what the fuck are you talkin’ about?”

  Lacy says, “I am so fuckin’ baked,” and laughs then, “Just take it. Here.”

  There’s muffled shuffling.

  “Why do you always answer my phone, girl? Fuckin’ paranoid, man.”

  Now she’s further from the phone.

  “‘Cause you’re so sexy. Whatever, I was just playing with you.”

  “Whatever yourself,” Rudy says to Lacy then, “Who is this?” into the phone.

  “Rudy?”

  “No, that’s me. Once again, who is this?”

  “Felix. It’s Felix.”

  “Felix? I don’t know a Felix. Who are you?”

  “We met at–”

  “I’m just fuckin’ with you. So what’s up? You gonna talk some more sense into me?”

  Felix says, “No. Actually, I… saw some more stuff. I got a new camera and–”

  “Hold up. Baby, could you get me some Oreos? And milk.”

  Felix hears shuffling sounds as Lacy gets up.

  Her voice gets further away as she says, “Lazy ass. Does sound good, though.” She laughs.

  “You know Union Square?” Rudy asks.

  “Yeah.”

  “What time can you make it there?”

  “Any time.”

  “Then leave now. Late.”

  Rudy hangs up.

  Felix ends the call and puts his phone away. He bangs his head back agai
nst the roll up door one more time and keeps it there while he looks up at Coit Tower.

  Muffled by the door, someone inside says, “Can you quit that shit please?!”

  Felix hops off the F Market at Kearny and cruises down Geary to Union Square. As he climbs some steps up to the square proper, he studies the Victoria Monument. It’s a statue of the goddess Victoria atop a high column in the center of the square.

  He has never been sure what she’s holding. Well, her left hand holds a trident for some reason but her right has something like a wreath. But she’s just kind of holding it? He’s not great with Greco-Roman stuff.

  There’s an open bench so he crosses to it and sits, setting the camera bag down gently. He looks around for Rudy but doesn’t see him.

  He’ll probably call when he gets here.

  Felix takes out his phone. It was on vibrate so it’s possible he could have missed a call or text with the streetcar shuttering like it was.

  No messages or missed calls.

  Might as well kill some time and take my mind off this all for a minute.

  He takes out his phone and loads up a game. He’s beat it twice already now but it’s really addicting once you get used to the touch controls. He combines pieces of cartoon sushi into groups of three or more to clear a circular area. He gets a good run going and he’s on his way to a new high score–

  “Boo!”

  Felix all but jumps in his seat and exclaims, “Shit!” before whipping around to see Rudy grinning mischievously down over his shoulder.

  Rudy says, “Damn, fool. Relax.”

  “It’s not my fault you’re like a fuckin’ ninja!”

  “Just wanted to feel out your nerves. Guess I did.”

  Felix grumbles, “Whatever. Don’t do that shit again.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Rudy says and sits next to Felix, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees before looking around. Casually, some might call it.

  “Alright, so… what did you see?” Rudy asks, his voice lower now.

  “A bunch. This guy bitches me out and black smoke comes out of his mouth and little like snakes with spider eyes pop out of his face.”

  Rudy says, “Uh-huh.”