A Reminder

The downpour was on its third day straight when she picked him from the Morning Glory cafe. Harry ran out to the cruiser, shielding his frizzy hair from the rain, and quickly climbed into the passenger side. He struggled to fit his massive body into the small seat and had to push himself far down so his head didn’t rub against the ceiling.

The woman at the wheel, his new supervisor, was small with her brown hair tied into a bun. She smiled warmly. “Damn boy. Your mother fed you your greens, huh? You’re going to want to invest in a quality umbrella.”

“It really does rain as much as they say, huh?” said Harry, running his hand through his damp hair.

“Pretty standard for Oregon. Nearly half the year it rains in Eugene. Could be worse. My brother lives in Tillamook. He hasn’t had dry clothing in 20 years.”

They pulled onto the road. “You settling in okay?” she asked. “I didn’t get to see you yesterday, but I know orientation is all kinds of crazy.”

“They had me in the basement doing classes and paperwork all day. Ice cold down there.”

“Downstairs is a dungeon for sure."

He looked outside his window as they drove past a church and a couple of apartment complexes, the cruiser splashing the sidewalk.

“Officer Molina,” he said.

“Ren, please.”

“Ren. Are these disturbance calls regular?”

She shrugged. “There used to be only one every few months. Now I’d say there’s at least three every couple of weeks. It’s good we’re getting you out to one so early. I had to wait two months to catch my first call, ‘course that was five years ago.”

“I see.”

“You’ll be fine. The paperwork is the real pain. After your first case, it gets easy.”

“I sure hope so.”

“This house is out in Bethel so we’ve got some time. Let’s get to know each other a little, seeing as I’m only familiar with the file they handed me.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t sign off on me as your partner?”

Her lips curved into a grin. “Funny how that works huh? Not that I’m particularly worried. None of this work is life or death despite appearances, but I am curious. I saw you had a business degree – kind of an odd detour into criminal justice.”

He turned to the window. “I majored in marketing because it seemed like easy money. Then I graduated and nobody was hiring. Kept applying everywhere for a year while holding down a gig at Pizza Hut to barely pay rent. Nothing. Not even interviews really.”

“That’s tough.”

He looked back at her. “Yeah. But I’ve always been a big guy and people have told me I should work as a cop or a bouncer, so I started applying for police jobs. And this one seemed solid. I mean, I know people talk shit about PIM…no offense.”

“None taken. After all, you’re one of us now, baby.” That grin again.

He continued. “The pay was nice. Full relocation. Minimal danger. Hard to say no.”

“It’s honestly not a bad gig. With cases surging around the country, funding is going bonkers. You missed the ground floor but you’re getting on board at a pretty good time.”

“Feels like there’s a new incident in the news every day. Have they figured out what’s causing it yet?”

“If they have, I doubt they’d tell us.”

“It happened to a friend of mine,” Harry told her. “To his brother.”

“No kidding?”

“What do you think it’s like when it happens to you? You ever asked any of the um…” he struggled for the right word.

“The victims?” She shook her head. “We’re not allowed to. And honestly, I’m good not knowing. I need to be able to sleep at night.”

They drove down the Randy Pape Beltline in silence. After a few minutes, Ren turned them off the highway, toward Bethel-Danebo.

“I’m gonna let you get your feet wet on this one,” she said. “You’ll handle the heavy lifting on-site. I’ll do the report when we get back.”

Harry froze. “What if I screw up?”

Ren shot him a quick, reassuring look. “You’re going to do fine. You just talk. That’s all it is.”

They arrived at rows upon rows of white and gray suburban houses standing solemn beneath an overcast sky. Turning right into a cul-de-sac, they came to a stop in front of a two-story with Venetian blinds. A SWAT car and local news van were parked on the street. People – neighbors, Harry assumed – were gathering behind the yellow tape to gawk at the house. An officer barked at them to stay back while three men decked out in tactical gear and wielding assault rifles stood next to the front door.

Ren let out an exasperated sigh as she shut off the car. “You gotta be kidding me.”

He caught up to her as she ducked under the tape and crossed the yard, shouting to one of the men. “Yo, Wallace! What the hell are you doing?”

The man grimaced in recognition as he clocked this small, loud woman crossing the yard to meet him. “The wife is brandishing a knife,” he announced.

“That’s what the body armor is for,” Ren snapped. “Get away from the door. When we need you and your toys, I’ll be sure to call you.”

Wallace frowned but didn’t argue. Harry got the sense that this was not their first territory dispute. “You heard her,” Wallace told the two men at the door. He locked eyes with Harry as the group stepped away. “If you get sliced, it’s not on me.”

The pair made their way to the front door. Harry could hear loud sobs coming from within the house.

“Mrs. Dawson,” Ren said calmly.

“Go away!” the voice from beyond the door cried. “I have a weapon! I almost cut that guy’s ear off. I’m warning you!”

“Mrs. Dawson, please. We need to speak to him.”

“GO AWAY,” the woman shrieked.

Ren looked at Harry and mouthed the words it's okay and turned back to the door. “You have a child, Mrs. Dawson. We need to be calm here. If we’re not calm, there’s a chance someone might get hurt, including your little girl. We don’t want that.”

“You’re threatening me!”

“No, we’re here to help.”

“You’re gonna kill us as soon as I open the door.”

“No one is going to harm you.”

Behind them, Harry could hear the reporter talking to the cameraman. “And we have two officers from the PIM department arriving on the scene….”

Ren continued to calmly negotiate. “Angela, listen. Deep down, I believe you have to know that what you’ve got in that basement is unnatural.”

“He’s not.” The sobbing grew louder.

“Listen to me. I know it’s hard. But that thing down there is not what you think it is.”

“He’s mine,” the woman said weakly. “He came back.” There was a thud against the door.

“That’s not how life works,” Ren said patiently.

Silence. It seemed to go on forever. And then, at long last: “I know.”

Relief flooded Harry’s body but Ren’s expression had not changed an iota. This was not her first rodeo. “Angela, can you open the door?”

“Yes,” came the defeated reply.

“Please put the knife on the floor before you do.”

“I will. I promise.”

“We’re here to help ma’am,” Harry answered, thinking he should say something to show he too meant no harm.

They heard the bolt slide, and then the door slowly opened to reveal a pale woman with blonde hair.

Ren smiled gently at her. “Hi Angela. Is it okay if just me and my partner come in?”

“Promise?” she asked, like a small child.

Ren nodded. The pair entered delicately and Harry gently shut the door behind them.

Peering into the living room, he saw the little girl sitting on the sofa. She had her arms wrapped around her knees, a pair of big green eyes peering above those arms out at him.

“Is it going to hurt?” Angela asked.

“No,” said Ren. “They don’t feel anything.”

She nodded listlessly.

“When did your husband come back?” Ren asked.

“A week ago.”

“And Keira hasn’t said anything to anyone?”

“No. I told her not to.”

Harry stooped down to the girl named Keira and gave a gentle smile. If she was scared, she didn’t show it. “Are you hungry?”

She shook her head. “No, mama made me a grilled cheese.”

“That’s good. Are you hurt or scared?”

The girl shook her head again. “Mama is scared.”

“Of what?”

“That you’re coming to take daddy away.”

Before he could answer, Ren called him over to her.

“It’ll be okay sweetie,” he told Keira before returning to his supervisor. She took him out to the hallway, away from Angela, and lowered her voice to a whisper.

“He’s in the basement. I’m going to get these two taken care of. You go downstairs and handle it.” She pointed at a door beneath the stairs in the hallway.

“I’ve never done this.”

“You remember orientation?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Then you’ve got all the details you need. Just remember to be gentle.”

He nodded. “Gentle.”

“You’ve got this,” she said one last time before returning to the living room. Sighing, he turned to the door beneath the staircase. It loomed over him like an ominous mountain. He reached out and gripped the handle, turning and pushing. Floating above the darkness before him was a dusty string that danced gently in the breeze of the AC. He pulled it and a bulb coughed to life, revealing a dimly lit staircase leading down.

As he descended the stairs, he suddenly regretted having applied to the PIM department. Everything about this felt sick and wrong, and he wondered if he was complicit in some brutality far beyond forgiveness. Was this how evil happened? Did people like himself truly stumble headlong into atrocity and keep going?

Had he already passed the event horizon, he wondered, as his foot left the bottom stair and touched the stone floor. Before he could answer himself, there was a voice out in the darkness.

Hello?

Harry reached out, fumbling for a switch, and found it on the wall. A second later the gray basement popped into view, and there was a man sitting at the dead center of it in a cheap-looking steel chair. Harry saw a bed, a small refrigerator, a smaller room in the back that he assumed was a bathroom. His eyes turned back to the man in the chair. He was pale and looked rather sickly. His black hair stuck wet to his scalp.

“Mister Dawson,” Harry said. “Patrick?”

“I suppose you’re the police.”

“Yes sir.” Harry noticed that Patrick was not restrained to the chair with any rope or duct tape but sat as though he was a hostage nonetheless.

“My wife…has she done something wrong? She’s been acting strangely lately, saying I can’t go out.” The man coughed and then went on. “I did go outside once, just to get some air and Sarah Laurelle from across the way saw me. She screamed. I thought it was pretty rude to be honest.”

Harry pulled another nearby steel chair over and unfolded it, taking a seat directly in front of the man.

Patrick continued. “Angela went to go talk to her but came back upset. She was pissed that I’d gone outside. Of all things to be angry at someone about.”

“Do you know why she was angry, Mr. Dawson?”

“I haven't the faintest clue. It feels like she’s angry with me all the time. She’s always talking to me like I’m some small child now.”

Harry swallowed the spit collecting at the back of his throat. “What’s the earliest thing you remember, Mr. Dawson?”

“What?”

“The first memory you can recall.”

“That seems like a rather silly question.”

“I’d request your indulgence.”

The man nodded slowly in spite of the confusion in his eyes. “I was standing in the shower…wait…” he stopped, fixed an anxious stare upon Harry. “That can’t be right? Why…why can’t I remember further than that?”

“When was this?”

“What?”

“When were you in the shower?”

“A week ago, I think.”

“Were you naked or clothed?”

Patrick laughed. “I was in the shower… of course I was….” His face fell. “I was fully clothed.”

Harry nodded and gripped his own knee for support as panic danced across Patrick’s face.

“Officer, what’s going on?”

“I think you know deep down, Mr. Dawson.”

The man’s face twitched. “I’m trying to cry.”

“But you can’t, right?”

Patrick was quiet for a time and then uttered one word: “How?”

“Two years ago, Mr. Dawson. You were visiting your sister in Chicago during the winter. A fuel truck hit a patch of black ice, toppled, crashing into your car and the car next to you. Four people died, including you.”

A tremor ran through the man’s body as he took a breath. Is he breathing? Harry thought. Or is it just an illusion?

“So…what happens now?”

“You’ve realized what happened, so now you go back.”

“To whatever lies after all of this,” he said, waving his pale hand around.

Harry nodded, feeling helpless that the comfort of his words and actions amounted to nothing. “I’m really sorry about all this, Mr. Dawson. If I had my way, you could stay.”

“Why can’t I?”

“I don’t know. I’m just the guy who makes sure the rules are followed.”

“Even if the rules are cruel?”

“Someone has to.”

If Patrick thought the answer was a hollow one, he didn’t suggest so. “Angela and Keira…will someone look after them?”

“Our program will pay for their emotional recovery and bestow a stipend to help them for a while.”

“That’s good at least. Hell, I hate to think I’ve hurt them by…I love them both so mu –” The man blinked, shifting the subject. “How long do I have?”

“Probably another two minutes until The Correction.”

“Is that what going back is called?”

“Yes.”

“I see. Can I ask something of you, Officer…”

“Brauns. Harry Brauns.”

“Officer Brauns. Will you sit here with me? I just don’t want to be alone.” Patrick stuck out his hand.

“Of course.” Harry reached out and grasped the hand. He was surprised to find it was warm; the sensation reminded him of holding his grandmother’s hands at family reunions in the summer when he was a child.

“Thank you,” Patrick said, looking down, closing his eyes to brace for the inevitable.

They sat for another minute or so and then, without warning, Harry watched as the man in the chair disappeared. No fading. No loud pop. He was there one moment and then gone the next – clothes and all, like a dissipated memory. Harry looked down and ran his fingers through the air where the man’s hand had been. Then he went back upstairs.

Ren was waiting outside the basement door by herself, texting on her phone.

“How’d it go?” she asked.

“He’s gone. The wife and kid?”

They walked to the front door.

“They’re with medical services. Gonna get a psych eval and some counseling. Then we’ll get them signed up for assisted living while Angela recovers emotionally.”

“Will she recover?”

“I’ve seen it go both ways.”

Harry didn’t ask what she meant; he supposed he’d find out in due time.

Stepping outside, they found the three officers were still there, standing next to the SWAT van. Harry could see the reporter was also still around, talking to the cameraman. “And the two officers are leaving the scene now,” she was saying. “Another closed case for Eugene’s Post-Life Interruption Management department.”

Ren looked over at the SWAT officers. “You boulderheads can get out of here! The shade’s gone.” Wallace flipped them off.

“Charming,” Ren said.

Harry followed her back to the cruiser. They pulled out of the cul-de-sac and started back in the direction of the city proper.

He couldn’t feel anything below his neck, but Ren seemed back to her cheery self. “Quite the first shift. How’d you feel about it?”

“It was frightening at first,” he admitted. “But I came around to it in the end. I think I gave him some peace.”

“This line of work isn’t for everyone. But that feeling you’re talking about, it keeps me going on the rough days.”

“What happens now?”

“Now we go to the station and I tell you all about the paperwork while I fill it out, so next time you can do it. And then we’ll grab lunch at The Cornbread Cafe, my treat.”

Harry leaned back as much as he could in the seat. The rain pounded the roof of the cruiser as Ren told him about all the superb food they’d be stuffing their bellies with for lunch, but his mind drifted back to Patrick Dawson.

Where had the man gone? How had he – and countless other shades – come back from the great beyond? And why? How had it happened, this fracture in the by and by? The knot in Harry’s stomach tightened as he looked out at the wet gloom all around.

He had done the right thing. If he was in that situation, he hoped that someone would perform the same service for him. It was an act of mercy, he decided with a measure of uncertainty.

Harry looked down at his own hand and rubbed his fingers together, still feeling that uncanny warmth. He wondered if the sensation would ever leave him.