The Fading Read online

  Dalton paused in his humming. ‘More wine?’

  ‘I’m good,’ Noel said. ‘Mind if I use your bathroom?’

  Dalton turned and appraised him, wiping his hands with a waffle-textured towel tucked into his tubby waistline. ‘Second door down the hall.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Noel headed through the living room, past the small foyer, down the hall floor of what looked like lacquered bamboo, until he came upon the second white door. He flipped the switch and shut the door behind him. He urinated briefly, but stood there over the toilet longer than was necessary. He hadn’t needed to go that bad, but something about sitting in Dalton’s presence made it difficult to think, to steer his own thoughts, to focus on the more serious business at hand. The condo was on some kind of climate control, but Noel had felt a chill during dinner. Echoes from another apartment that sounded too close. The subtle impression that someone else was watching them, or listening to them, or maybe had left the condo just minutes before Dalton opened the door with a smile and declared, ‘You found it. Welcome to Chez Dalton!’ in a terrible French accent.

  Yes, something was a little off here, but Noel couldn’t figure out what.

  Maybe it was simply the man himself. Dalton was … odd.

  Earlier today at the hot dog stand, the professor had shifted from goofy to cryptic, controlling to enchanted. But tonight he seemed content to offer nothing more than the polite but smothering company of a lonely middle-aged man. Did Dalton really think they were going to become friends? Partners in the calling, the mission, whatever he had called it? The sense that Dalton was lonely and wanting of a … companion of some sort, this was stronger than ever. Noel did not know or care whether the man was gay. He only wanted to avoid implying that he was open to whatever kind of budding apprenticeship Dalton had in mind.

  Noel flushed the toilet and moved to the sink to wash his hands.

  No, we’re not going to be friends, Noel decided. I need information. He’s excited to play teacher. I’m humoring him with my company, but if he wants to keep doling out the instruction manual in tidbits, I’m skating town tonight, taking my money to California, to Julie. The hell of it was, the more time that passed without Dalton bringing it up, the harder it was for Noel to interrupt the fuddy-duddy and ask a direct question for fear of coming off rude.

  Noel dabbed his hands with the towel beside the sink. On a whim, he flipped open the medicine cabinet’s mirrored door. Inside were three glass shelves, stocked with an assortment of the usual over-the-counter reliefs: Aspirin, Excedrine, Vicks Cold & Flu. A pair of nail clippers. No prescription bottles from which he might color in Dalton’s mental health profile. There was one odd item, a bright blue plastic box in the shape of a horseshoe. Noel took it down, inspected the seam around it. There was weight to it, something inside.

  He thumbed the latch and got a pair of dentures smiling back up at him. Not clean ones, either. These were old, the fake gums gone to a milky shade of brown in places, the white teeth slightly yellowed and dry. The antiseptic yet stale scent of their last bath found its way up into his nose and Noel closed the lid, feeling the need to rinse his hands once more. Well, Dalton was not elderly but he was no spring chicken either. He probably had a set of chompers just like these in every one of his apartments around the country, the poor gummy bastard.

  When Noel came out of the bathroom, the lights seemed to have been dimmed. Outside the terrace window, which faced away from the Strip, twilight had passed and the desert was fully dark but for the speckled chain of street lamps and car lights scattered below. A piano concerto tinkled whimsically at low volume. Dalton was seated in the armchair furthest from the kitchen, slouching, his shirt cuffs loose, his eyes sunken and gazing tiredly at his nearly empty wine glass. Noel stood at the edge of the centered rug, hands on his hips, waiting for Dalton to notice him.

  After what might have been half a minute or more, the professor sniffed and looked up with a weak smile. ‘You don’t have to linger,’ he said. ‘I appreciate the chance to entertain you. It’s been a long time since I’ve had anyone over for a meal. I’ve missed cooking.’

  ‘Dinner was great. This is a nice place.’ Noel felt rude standing but wasn’t sure if this was his cue to leave or just a turn of self-pity.

  Dalton surveyed the condo, shrugging. ‘It’s a place, but we really don’t get to make a lasting home, people like us. You try to get a foothold here and there, but …’ Dalton sipped his wine, the opinion either not worth finishing or obvious enough.

  Noel shifted on his feet. ‘It’s getting late. I should be going soon.’

  Dalton nodded. ‘Back to California, I presume. Before somebody decides to mount up a posse in search of the invisible bandit.’

  ‘Right. Something like that. I wanted to thank you again for everything you told me. About how it works. It’s a huge relief to have some idea.’

  Dalton finished his wine. ‘You would have figured it all out on your own. I’m sure of that. I wish I could help you with the rest, but in this, as in all of life, we are alone. That’s the real shitty of it, Noel. There isn’t anyone who can die of cancer with you, not really. Visiting hours always end and eventually it’s time to fade away.’

  Okay, this was descending into something too maudlin for Noel to deal with right now. He tried to think of something positive to add, something uplifting, but nothing came to him and all he could think about was how to make a graceful exit.

  ‘Listen to me go on,’ Dalton said with a snort. ‘Better yet, don’t. You have time, my young friend. You can do whatever you like to do.’

  ‘I think things will be easier now,’ Noel said. ‘Now that I have a grasp of it. I wish I knew how to practice it. Get better at using it, controlling it.’

  ‘I wish you luck,’ Dalton said. ‘But I fear it controls us. Such is often the case with one’s most dominant characteristics, is it not?’

  Noel patted his pockets as if to search for car keys he did not own. ‘I guess I’ll see you around, then.’

  ‘Maybe so.’

  Noel stood there, waiting for something more from his superior, but Dalton only stared off at the ceiling. He was about to take his leave when something deeper in the apartment thumped on the floor, heavy and muffled, like a book fallen from a shelf.

  Dalton cleared his throat. He looked at Noel.

  Noel raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Well, yes,’ Dalton said with a sigh. ‘We were speaking of the others. The side effects, our necessary visitors.’

  Noel’s skin began to crawl. Something was indeed happening here. Had Dalton been leading up to this?

  ‘Right,’ Noel said again, his voice cracking slightly. ‘We never finished that. It sounds ridiculous now, but, well, I don’t know who else to ask.’

  Dalton straightened himself in the chair. ‘Do you want me to help you learn how to dispatch them? These souls who continue to haunt you?’

  ‘Actually, they haven’t lately. I don’t understand why, but it seems to have stopped. I haven’t had to deal with them for the past ten weeks. Do you see them every time?’

  ‘Every time?’

  ‘Every time you’re in it, or using it? With me it was just before, or during sometimes. But my episodes were spread over longer intervals. I thought maybe for you it would happened inside, like, all the time.’

  Dalton’s eyes widened. ‘Oh, that would be exhausting. Heavens, no. Only once a month or so. More when I’m feeling strong, but it’s getting harder the older I get.’

  ‘Harder?’

  ‘To find the right ones,’ Dalton said. ‘To … how did you put it? To release them, so they can’t make you do it again? I liked that. But the hunt grows tiring. Exhausting.’

  The thumping at the back of the condo came again, this time in a rapid series. Thump-tha-thump-bump. Dalton glanced toward the hall, then smiled at Noel.

  ‘What was that?’ Noel said.

  ‘What could it be? Isn’t this the point of our inqu
iry this evening?’

  It’s easier if I show you, the professor had said earlier today.

  No, Noel thought. Not here. He can’t have one here.

  But then, hadn’t he felt something off in the condo all through dinner? The strange suspicion they were not alone? The feeling of being watched?

  ‘That’s not possible,’ Noel said. ‘You can’t just plan that, right? Keep them around?’

  ‘I can, and I do,’ Dalton said. Before Noel could ask how, he added, ‘Go have a look. See for yourself. It’s a harmless one. I promise.’

  Noel found himself stepping back, toward the front door. ‘This is a joke, right? What is that in there?’

  ‘Part of the deal, Noel. They come with the territory. If you don’t learn how to tame them, to control your visions and exorcise your demons, they will rule you and then they will ruin you.’

  Noel choked out a laugh. ‘You’re insane. I’m not going back there.’

  ‘You will,’ Dalton said. ‘If you want to take control of your life. If you want to harness the power you were born with. Don’t you want that? I thought you wanted that very badly.’

  Noel stepped into the foyer and peered down the hall. At the end, another white door faced him. It was closed, but the light in the room behind it showed at the seam near the floor.

  He turned back to Dalton. ‘How does it work? What am I supposed to do?’

  Dalton remained seated. ‘There’s no great secret about it. You stand before it and let go of your fear. Let them know who is master and who is dog. The rest will come to you.’

  ‘The last ones I got close to scratched my face. They fucked me up, man. I think they got inside my head.’

  ‘It’s all in your head,’ Dalton countered. ‘That’s why the power is in your hands. We are superior to them. We have nothing to fear. They can’t hurt us unless we allow them to stay.’

  Noel was curious, no doubt, but he didn’t trust Theodore Dalton and he didn’t trust himself to resist whatever it was they could do to him.

  ‘You have to go now,’ Dalton said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’ve opened my home to you and you now share the burden.’

  ‘If something happens to me—’ Noel began.

  ‘I will come to your aid,’ Dalton finished.

  Sweating now, heart racing, Noel took several deep breaths and walked with as much confidence as he could muster to the end of the hall and, without pausing, opened the door.

  32

  Behind the white door was a bedroom without a bed.

  A wide dark dresser stood against the far wall, adjacent to a set of windows with the shades drawn. Closer, against the nearest wall, was a smaller table with a short lamp (the source of the glow under the door and the only lighting in the room). A manila floor mat of some six by ten feet lay spread across the center of the lacquered wood floor. The space was quiet, as bare and tranquil as a Japanese tea room.

  There were no bookshelves, nothing lying on the floor to explain the thumps from a minute ago. Whatever he had been expecting – and he was prepared to find just about anything – it wasn’t here. He stood still a moment, waiting for the obvious sign, a voice, an apparition to ooze from the walls. Nothing happened.

  He realized he had been holding his breath since entering and now almost coughed with the sudden need for air. His lips parted and he drew several deep breaths, blinking, waiting, his tension subsiding.

  There was a smell, or maybe a scent. One so subtle he had not noticed it until now. Soft, faintly woody, and perhaps a bit sweet, like moist cedar decking after a rainstorm. It was a nice smell, clean and pure.

  He thought of turning around and calling back to Dalton, to call the man’s bluff or inform him that his pet ghost or whatever was supposed to be waiting in here had decided to move on. But he didn’t turn and he didn’t speak. Something like constrictive boredom prevented him from doing anything at all. He felt tired, dulled. The possibility that Dalton would drug him had crossed his mind earlier in the evening, but he had dismissed that by now. And anyway, he hadn’t had more than a courtesy sip of the wine.

  This wasn’t like being drugged or drunk. Noel’s thoughts were lucid, if a bit slow. His body felt late in responding, but to prove nothing was wrong, he waved a hand before his own face, flexed his fingers, and everything was working fine. Emboldened, he walked a few steps deeper into the room, crossing the mat with the steady but patient gait of a real estate prospect who doesn’t wish to appear too eager. He was looking toward the blinds over the window, thinking of the view from here, when the air stirred behind him and a warm draft brushed the side of his arm.

  Noel pivoted, tilting off balance a moment before regaining his position. He peered from left to right, to the floor and up into the corners of the room, even though the current had shifted less than two steps from where he now stood.

  Nothing had changed. The room was still empty.

  Had there been a sound, too? Something like a sigh? Maybe it had been the exhale of the air-conditioning unit. Climate control.

  Don’t be afraid, he reminded himself. It’s all in your head, according to Dalton. Maybe if he refused to give in and be afraid of what was in here – it was nothing, nothing was in here – his conviction would assert its own reality to keep it this way.

  Hmmm-hhhmmmeeeemmmhhh.

  The whimper came from his right, a few paces in front of him. Sounded like someone breathing into a pillow, a half-moan against sealed lips.

  Noel backed into the window shades, rattling them slightly, the noise making him jump. The muffled sound came again, this time with greater urgency, distress. It was human. It had reacted to his collision with the blinds, which meant it was aware of his presence in the room.

  ‘I’m not afraid of you,’ Noel said in the calmest voice he was capable of. ‘You can’t bother me now. I have my own hands and I’m not falling for it, okay? If you want to scratch something, go scratch yourself.’

  Silence followed, lasting perhaps a minute.

  Then a different sound began to fill the room, a trickling, almost drumming sound of falling beads or sand. Noel looked up at the ceiling, half expecting to find a water stain spreading and leaking through the drywall. He scanned the walls, and then the floor, and then—

  The floor. A dark stain was spreading on the floor, about four feet in front of him. Colorless but for the darkening in the manila floor mat as it absorbed some type of liquid, like a water stain on carpet. The spot was blossoming, then elongating like a small river, following the lower grade of the flooring.

  A new smell. This the acrid smell of urine.

  ‘What the …’ Noel whispered, feeling somehow duped and primally alert.

  ‘Therein lies your ghost,’ Dalton said from the hall. ‘Are you ready to set it free?’

  Noel turned to see the professor standing a few feet back from the doorway. His shirt sleeves had been rolled to the elbows again and he was wearing some kind of gloves. Noel could not make them out in the dim hallway, but they were too thick to be dishwashing gloves.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Noel said, edging toward the door. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Some of us think of them more as demons. But that’s beside the point. Are you ready?’

  ‘Ready for what?’

  The whimpering came again, along with heavy breathing. The breaths were stifled still, plunging and sucking in quick bursts of panic.

  Noel turned from Dalton to the room, back to Dalton, back to the room. He couldn’t see anything yet, only the stains.

  ‘You wanted to know if it worked on other things,’ Dalton said, stepping closer to the doorway. The gloves were leather, fuzzy. Suede work gloves. ‘Do you understand now? Do you see the potential?’

  Noel’s heart was galloping in place. His temples began to throb. He felt on the verge of unlocking something he no longer wished to unlock.

  Dalton took another step. ‘The ability to take away their sight is the ultim
ate power, Noel. If they don’t see it, it doesn’t exist.’

  ‘What are you doing?’ Noel said, but some part deep inside of him knew the answer already. ‘This isn’t a vision. This isn’t what I meant.’

  ‘We tell ourselves the things we need to in order to live with what we have done,’ Dalton said. ‘Behaviour adjusts attitude and belief. It’s okay. He can’t hurt you.’

  He?

  Noel stared into the empty air inside the bedroom.

  ‘Concentrate loosely,’ Dalton said. ‘It’s like an optical illusion. It’s difficult to see, but once you see it, you won’t be able to unsee it.’

  Noel didn’t want to see it, but he could not look away. His mind raced for an answer to Dalton’s riddle – what was this? what could it be? – until he realized the answer was Dalton himself. What he was. What he could do.

  They made me do it.

  The hunt grows tiring. Exhausting.

  Only once a month or so. More when I’m feeling strong, but it’s getting harder the older I get.

  Noel understood. Dalton was in command of his fade. He had the power to blind others. He had been living with this for a long time. He had developed odd tastes.

  He’s blinding me right now.

  With that thought, the pressure in Noel’s mind relented. The pain in his temples, the sluggishness of his thoughts, his heavy body, and something intangible – all unknotted itself and released him. It did so without a fight, as if this too had been planned, and the full scale of what Dalton had done tonight sent waves of terror through him as the professor withdrew his blinding shroud as swiftly as a magician yanking a tablecloth from beneath the setting.

  I once was blind but now I can see.

  The young man was somewhere between his late teens and early twenties, pale skinned and well muscled, with shorn stubbly black hair. He was sleepy-eyed, only now rousing from whatever Dalton had given him to render him pliable and willing enough to follow the professor home. He was bound with black rope or rubber cord, arms at his sides, feet together, constricting him nearly everywhere to a wooden post bolted to the ceiling and through the floor mat. His white Adidas track pants were stained with piss, his bare feet wet. His eyes opened wide and lowered sleepily before widening again, and Noel knew the guy was waging some kind of war to regain full consciousness.