A Questionable Shape by Bennett Sims Read Free Book Online Page A

myself reduced me to, as I waited for the jogger to sound its unearthly moan. 21

    But he never did moan. For a while, in fact, he didn’t do anything. He swayed there, and I stood and watched him sway. Above me a breeze passed through the oak trees’ leaves, and I watched as a current of rustle traveled up the block, live oak by live oak, in a line of thrashing branches. Eventually they reached the infected’s far white figure, overtaking him. As the branches between us swayed, their shadows swished atop the intervening concrete, and I could see that all of the street leading up to the infected was shaded: the pavement roiled with movement—with black turmoil—as if being buckled by an earthquake of shadows. Down at my feet some of its tremors swished over my shoes. And raising my eyes from my feet, moving my eyes slowly along the length of the street, one patch of thrashing shadow at a time, I could almost believe that I was following just a single tremor in motion, one black seism traveling up the block. This shockwave, beginning at my shoes, seemed to ripple outward, breaking over itself in crests and troughs until it broke over the feet of the infected. His white shape stayed in place, being lapped at by the blackness. I lifted my arm at him, as if in a wave, then actually waved both arms. He didn’t respond, and I let my arms drop to my sides. The tree shadows continued cascading toward him, in flurries of movement that threw his motionlessness into relief. Why didn’t he move? Even as he stood there, he seemed to exist on another plane. His stillness—his total unresponsiveness to everything around him: the wind, the shadows, me—seemed ghostly, as though he occupied some sublime interstice between life and death, and nothing in this world could touch him. Could he perceive any of this? There
was a great vacancy in his staring. He was present, but only as the manifestation of an absence. Neither here, nor not here. Neither a brain-damaged human, nor a murderous corpse. Nor even, quite, some indeterminate mixture between the two. It seemed in that moment as if I could go on accreting neithers like this all night—as if I could stand here, all night, frozen in apophatic paralysis—and still be no nearer an understanding of what he was. Of what it would be like to be like him. 22
    I remember wishing I could see his eyes. The way he was staring, he seemed to be gazing into the sublime, or at the face of Death. And so too did sublimity and Death—gazing out into our world through those eyes—seem to be seeing me. I felt something like the awe that the visitant must feel, in the presence of the archangel, or the alien, and I knew then that I would do anything to understand.
    I stood opposite him for I don’t know how long, watching. And when finally he turned his back to me and departed, I watched him wander, somnolently, into someone’s front yard, where he glanced left and right in seeming disorientation before disappearing in the alleyway between two houses. Just like that. There was even this hush lingering in the air behind him.
    For how many minutes did I remain there, waiting to see
him again or another one? Ten, at most. Then I phoned the police and walked home. I woke Rachel coming in, and told her, when she asked where I’d been, that I wasn’t afraid of outside anymore. She was right, I said: I did need to get out of the apartment.
    It wasn’t long after this that Mazoch emailed about the search.

TUESDAY

    THIS MORNING RACHEL WAKES EARLY, AN HOUR or two before she usually leaves for the shelter, and waits with me in the kitchen while I wait for Mazoch.
    Last night I told her about the traces he had found (the broken window, the plaid cloth), and also about his conviction that we were ‘closing in.’ She pursed her lips and repeated, ‘Closing in.’ That was all she said on the subject, and her tone was hard to read. But I