Descent

One of the themes of Deadman is descents into hell. In my previous novel, Broken People, Pam Harmon basically has the world pulled out from under her. We did get some narrative on it, but that was almost all from Will Diaz’s POV. There’s plenty of commentary from others, but almost none of is from her until the end. And even then. . .

In Deadman, we take the ride with her. We get to walk in her shoes as her world falls apart.

Here’s a sample of her hell.

RJ looked up from his book and across the couch at Pam.

     They’d been sitting up reading. It was one of their favorite things to do after Timmy was put to bed. They spent an hour together, reading a favorite book or a book they’d never read and just relax.

    Pam almost always poured herself some peach brandy and he had a beer.

    Then they’d put the books down, smile at each other, and go upstairs to bed.

    But she wasn’t paying attention to the book.

    And she wasn’t looking at him.

    She’d been reading Childhood’s End by Arthur Clarke. She had admitted that it was a novel that captivated her since high school. It wasn’t the first time she’d read it. It wouldn’t be the last either.

    RJ hadn’t ever read it.

   She wasn’t reading it tonight either. The power of Clarke’s words wasn’t casting their magic over her. The book lay in her lap. The Overlords and Humanity’s future were forgotten as she stared at the wall.

    “You okay?” he asked.

    It was a second before Pam said, “Huh?”

    “Are you okay?”

    She smiled and picked up the book again. “Sorry,” she said. “I drifted off for a bit.”

    He nodded. “How’s the arm?”

    “Not bad,” she said. She held up her left arm and fled and unflexed the fingers.

     “Everything works fine. No more pain.”

      She closed the book and picked up her glass of peach brandy.

     “We need to play guitar one evening.”

     “Perhaps,” was all she said.

     “Are you ready for tomorrow?”

     “Going back to work?” she asked. Again, a pause before she answered. “I’m fine.”

    She’d pulled out her duty uniform for the following day, pinned her brass and badge on it, and left it hanging on the closet hook. She often did that. But tonight, it seemed to take longer than usual before she decided it was ready.

    “I’m glad to be getting back to it,” she said.

     “Oh?”

    “Sitting on my butt has given me too much time to think.”

    “About?”

    She shrugged as if she didn’t want to talk about it, but said, “Today?”

    “What about it?”

    “What must Will and Jewell, and Robert and Carol think of what I did today?”

     “I think they’d understand.”

    “RJ,” she said. “I almost ran out of there.”

    “Well, it was noisy. I barely tolerated it.”

     His attempt at placating her didn’t work.

    “They must have thought I’d lost my mind. I’ve been to the Stampede several times, and it never bothered me.”

    “What was different about this time?”

    When she answered, the comment was at least honest. “I hadn’t been shot before.”

    “True.”

    “Before is the defining word here.”

    RJ waited for her to elaborate on it but didn’t push it. Instead, He said, “Baby, you’re still working through this mess.”

    “I know. Jewell warned me that I could expect to have some negative reactions to being wounded.”

    “And?”

    “And she wants to talk?”

    “Are you?”

    “Psychologists! All they want to do is dig around in things they’ve no business digging into.”

    She finished the sifter of brandy. And then to RJs astonishment, she put novel aside, got up, and poured herself another drink.

    Without looking at him, she explained it away by saying, “Been having trouble sleeping.”

    RJ nodded and went back to his book. But he wasn’t reading about hobbits and wizards. Instead, he was thinking of as long as he’d known her, she always had one, and just one brandy before bedtime.

    It had occurred to him it was odd for a member of the LDS church to drink at all. The church had some rather strong words concerning drink.

    But then she drank coffee, another big no-no in that religion.

    And she was sleeping with a man not her husband, a big issue with almost any religion.

    But maybe she looked at it as the dictates of the church ended at her door and she was free to do what she wanted in her own home.

    She came back over, sat down, and took a sip.

    “It’s not the first time I’ve had to see a shrink,” she said.

    RJ put the book down.

    “Before I left the Corps, they made me go see the Squirrel.”

    “The Squirrel?”

    “Division shrink. They made us go see her when we started getting squirrelly.”

     “Really?”

     “Really.”

     “And?”

     “And nothing. I told them they were wasting my time and theirs.”

She took another sip. “And even after I left, they tried to get me to go to the VA for help.”

    “They?”

    “People who should have known to stay the hell of my business.” She picked up her novel again, and after a while, said, “They needed to stay out of my head and stop judging me.”

    She shook her head, frowned, and turned back to her book. “Never mind.”

    They went to bed not long afterwards. In minutes, the brandy had put her to sleep. 

     RJ stretched, closed his eyes and drifted off, thinking, no making out tonight. To bad, he thought, and the last thing he thought about was they hadn’t made love since before she was wounded.

    Guess she’s working through that, too, he thought.

     He drifted off to sleep.

     And he woke up and looked around the bedroom.

     It was still dark.

     But then, it should be. RJ knew he’d gone to sleep not long before and it was unlike him to wake up for no reason at all in the middle of the night.

    Oh, there were the usual things to wake a man up, like the need to go to the bathroom. Or a car with a loud stereo outside.

    But not tonight. Something had changed, and he wasn’t sure what.

    He looked around the room. The only light was the cold, filtered light of a full moon that drifted through the curtains and created a square of light in the middle of the bedroom.

     There was one source of light in the room. Pam had an old clock on the nightstand. It wasn’t one of the newer digital models, but an older one with hands. It had a light in and in the darkness; it shone with an orange back light to the clock hands and numbers.

    The clock also hummed. It wasn’t supposed to, but it did. Pam had told him it was one of the few things from her childhood she still had, and over the years, the gears had ground down and the motor was wearing out. But it lost only a minute a month, and Pam kept it accurate.

     It reported accurately that the time was 1:36 AM. There was nothing that said AM on the clock. That was just inferred by the darkness outside and that it was early in the morning.

    But it wasn’t the humming that woke him up. If anything, it had served as a soothing sound that lulled him to sleep.

    What woke me up? He wondered.

   “Pam?’ he asked into the darkness.

    Nothing.

    He reached over to her side of the bed. She wasn’t there. The blanket had been tossed back, and the sheets were rumpled. Her pillow still held the indent of her head. But the sheets were cool. She’d left the bed long enough ago for her body warmth to drift away.

     He sat up and listened. Aside from the humming of the clock, the house was quiet.

     “Honey?” No answer.

     He tossed the bed covers off and sat up. When did she get up, he wondered. Any motion usually woke him up, but not tonight.

    He swung his legs out of bed and slipped on his slippers. RJ was wearing pajamas, and the cool night chill of the house caused him to shiver a little. He reached for his robe and slipped it on.

    Pam’s robe was draped over the rocking chair in the bedroom. The house was cool, and she was always lecturing him about getting up and walking around at night without it. She said he was inviting a cold.

    As RJ walked across the floor, his slippers made little whispering swishes on the carpet. The door to the bedroom was ajar, and he opened it. The old hinges groaned a little, reminding him they needed a little oil.

     He stepped out into the hall.

     Maybe she’s in Timmy’s room, he thought.

     He opened the door to the boy’s room, wondering if maybe he’d cried out in the night and she was comforting him there.

    But Timmy was fast asleep, and Pam was not in the room.

    Only the whisper of his slippers on the wood floor in the hall was heard and RJ went downstairs to the living room. He was halfway down when the grandfather clock struck the hour. Unlike the room clock, it was off, but the almost gentle gonging was comforting in a strange situation.

    As he came down the stairs, he saw her.

    Pam stood silhouetted against the moonlit window. Her hands were up and she was touching the glass. For a moment, RJ stood, entranced by her beauty as the moonlight filtered through her nightgown and showed off her athletic figure.

    But something was wrong about the way she was standing was odd. It was almost as if she were against a wall waiting to be frisked. Of maybe she was simply giving up.

   He walked towards her without making a sound. He was careful as he walked past the coffee table where his empty beer bottle and her empty brandy sifter sat.

     All he needed was to knock them over, he thought.

     He drew even with her and studied her face. She was staring out into the yard, her gaze unflinching.

     He knew the look.

     His dad had it once in a while.

    Will had it now and again.

     Both men called it the thousand-meter stare. And occasionally they’d both just sit and gaze into the face of nothing. Dad had told him he was just remembering. Will had said he was looking into the faces of ghosts.

     But Pam’s stare into the night didn’t end at a thousand meters. More like a thousand kilometers, and maybe more. And there was nothing in that gaze to say she was remembering anything, or if anything was haunting her.

     Her face was just empty.

    Ice princess, he thought. A girl with her emotions frozen deep down.

     RJ glanced out the window, half expecting to see some vaporous shadow drift past. A ghost paying her a visit on the light of the moon.

    But there was only the moonlight, the yard, and shadows.

     In the early morning hours, Pam Harmon stood looking out a window and into the face of infinity and eternity. And there was no clue what she was seeing.

    “Honey?” he asked quietly.

     From some other place and time, Pam heard.

    She turned her gaze towards him and, without blinking or smiling, said, “RJ? What are you doing here?”

   Then she turned, went back upstairs, and went back to bed.

   The next morning, she denied any memory of her midnight walk.