Dark Dreams, Pale Horses Read online

  DARK DREAMS, PALE HORSES

  by

  Rio Youers

  PS Showcase #10

  For Emily

  She rides with me

  PURE

  Imagine a shadow, but vague, only slightly darker than the surface onto which it is cast. The light is obscured. The shadow suffers. It is a cataract.

  You can’t see me. I am less than a shadow.

  I am nothing.

  But I am coming.

  THE CARIOCAS PAID HIM NO ATTENTION

  Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. October 18th 2064.

  Desperation had brought him here, and the final strand of what could be called animal instinct. These streets, as crowded as a child’s imagination, once filled with color and vibrancy, but now made gray by clouds of fear; thunderhead of disease. The locals—the cariocas—pressed to get out of the rain, heads down, bodies wet. They did not look at him. They did not question his obvious weakness or the mask he wore. The storm blistered along Delfim Moreira. The palm trees twisted, fronds swaying. He was pushed aside and knocked to the floor. Again and again. The rain rattled off his mask. The cariocas paid him no attention. He picked himself up and followed the meager thread of instinct.

  How long had he been running?

  “Where are you, Avô Vinícius?”

  Every minute was fear. Every second.

  Fernando gazed along Ipanema Beach, a deserted belt of cocoa sand, bullied by the relentless angst of the Atlantic. To the west, Morro Dois Irmãos loomed through bellies of cloud. Its split peaks made it resemble a giant, infected tooth. He felt a pull in that direction. The unguarded aspect of soul registered hope. It was like oxygen. His pulse quickened and he staggered on.

  He was close.

  HIS MASK WAS BUTTERFLY-SHAPED

  It was stained glass, as fragile as his life. The wings covered his eyes and cheeks. He viewed the world through tinted shards. The left eye was green. The color of everything he had known and still hoped for. The color of beginnings. The right eye was smoky-brown. The color of destruction.

  The mask covered his stigma. The word INFECÇÃO (infection) tattooed the left side of his face. His number, 339099, branded the right. A signature of ignominy. All of the infected were marked in this way, and would be until they faded from existence. They were no longer strong. They had been gathered like cattle and quarantined…broken down and weakened over several generations…reduced to little more than substance. His kind was crushed and dying. Flies in the cold.

  If the mask were to slip, or break, if his sickness were to be unveiled, he would be captured within moments. The mask was his savior, as important to him as the blood running through his body. Its colors represented the events of his species, from inception to decay. Its shape represented metamorphosis; flight; beautiful hope.

  Cure.

  Avô Vinícius.

  “Close,” he whispered.

  A scathing gust slammed him as he crossed Rua João Lira. A dramatic pirouette, jacket billowing. He was thrown against the side of a parked truck and fell to his knees, one hand instinctively protecting the mask. The locals hurried past him—almost stepping over him in their haste. He longed for wings to lift him above the storm.

  Fernando got to his feet. Warm rain dripped from his hair. He continued across the street, buffeted by the storm. Sustained thunder damaged the sky. The creature kept his head down. His pale eyes flashed behind the mask.

  THEY EVEN CHASED HIM IN DREAMS

  The only vivid things were his tattoos. He was diluted…watery. His body was a wan rack of bone and sinew. His hair was dead ragweed.

  Heart like cirrus cloud, scattered across the sky of his body.

  All he could feel was the weak beat of his instinct.

  Lightning saturated the afternoon gloom, turning all things to ghosts. The sidewalk shimmered and he saw, in one brilliant frame of time, his reflection: a hunkered thing, as dark as any bad dream. He forced himself to stand straight, and in so doing saw the men walking toward him. His failing instinct, which had brought him this far, warned him that they were not cariocas. They were impervious to the storm. Bound by purpose.

  They were a Polícia do Vírus (the Virus Police), enlisted by the Brazilian government to eradicate infection beyond the quarantines’ barricades. Officially, they were supposed to subdue carriers and return them to the nearest quarantine city, but they were more inclined to blood and torture. They were known throughout South America as Psycho Cowboys.

  Fernando wanted to surrender—fall at their feet and let them tie him up and bleed him dry (infamous cruelty; they laughed while they tortured; they donned multicolored garments and smeared their faces with wild paints). He was too weak to run, but salvation was within reach. He would not give up. He would not surrender.

  He cut across the empty parking lot of what had once been a glimmering beachfront hotel, but was now a concrete ghost. Moving as swiftly as he was able, he climbed through one of the shattered windows and into a dark lobby. The walls were smeared with neglect. The front desk had been stripped for firewood. Vagrants huddled amongst the cockroaches and trash.

  He turned, his butterfly mask sparkling, and saw that the Psycho Cowboys were following. They came fast, flowing through the rain. He staggered across the lobby, into a seemingly endless corridor. Doors hung in tatters and mosaics rippled on the walls, depicting the dead color of the city: the Rio of yesteryear. His heart made rain and thunder and he pressed forward. He took a stairway, swollen steps that he struggled to ascend, both hands clinging to the rail.

  He could hear them in the lobby: commotion, raised voices, cries of pain as they checked the vagrants for tattoos. They knew they were close; they could feel him, too.

  Fernando burst into the first floor corridor and reeled toward the elevators. His mind was a battlefield. Everything was green or brown. His single thought was to keep moving.

  The Psycho Cowboys were relentless. They even chased him in dreams, where his imagination gave them clown faces and legs like rainbows. In reality they were grave, almost normal, until they caught you…then the gray suits came off and their true colors were revealed.

  He stumbled…picked himself up. The elevators, directly ahead, yawned open. He heard voices on the stairway and scrambled toward one of the empty shafts, throwing himself inside.

  Falling…spinning. He reached out and grasped the thick cable, the skin ripping from his palm as he broke his fall and halted his descent. The cable whipped and bounced. The counterweight struck a single dull chord and then everything was silent.

  He curled his legs around the cable, placed one hand on the mask to keep it from slipping, and hung upside down. He held his breath and waited, his heart cannonading, his wet jacket falling around his shoulders like wings.

  HE IMAGINED THEM WITH RAINBOW LEGS

  Voices in the corridor above. Footsteps. Fernando closed his eyes and willed his frail body to become absorbed by the darkness. He heard them approach, bullish steps and coarse breathing. They carried guns and batons, but in his mind they wielded blunt torture implements and walked on rainbow legs. He was sure they would hear his heartbeat. The cable creaked and his jacket dripped water to the floor below.

  Long moments passed. He did not move. He barely breathed. The Cowboys thumped and grunted. Six or seven of them, kicking open doors, cursing. He could feel their impatience vibrate through the walls of the shaft.

  His hand covered the mask. He could feel the cable biting into the tender flesh at the backs of his knees.

  “Coming for you.” The voice was keen and cold and too close. He imagined a white face and a deformed, painted smile. “We’ll find you.”

  Less than a shadow.

  The light bleeding thro
ugh the elevator doors flickered.

  “Coming …”

  He sensed the Psycho Cowboy peering into the shaft, eyes gleaming, his clown-grin impossibly long.

  You can’t see me.

  His heart sent small vibrations through the cable. He could hear the Cowboy sucking in greedy breaths. The seconds passed too slowly, and he became convinced that he had been seen—would be caught, tortured and killed—and a part of him welcomed the end of it all. No more running. Nothing, indeed. A single tear dripped from his eye and ran across the inside of the mask, changing color, from green to brown, like a leaf. A strident bell of regret sounded in his mind, and for a moment she was there, suspended in the darkness ahead of him, shimmering. They’ll find you, Fernando. They’ll kill you. He came close to reaching out for her, revealing his pale hand, or his mask. Stay with me. I know how to love you.

  He opened his mouth to respond. Even his words were shadows: But we’re dying. More tears splashed against the inside of the mask.

  She disappeared. His heart found hectic life and pounded furious fists against his chest. The cable creaked. He revolved, slowly, like a voiceless chime.

  The light flickered again and he heard the Cowboy retreat, bouncing on his rainbow legs. Relief swarmed Fernando’s ailing body, but he did not move. The Psycho Cowboys continued their search—tearing through all floors, all rooms—for a loud, interminable passage of time. Fernando clutched the cable and waited. His body ached. His shadow/soul withered. When he was sure that the Psycho Cowboys were gone, he adjusted his position. The cable rippled and the counterweight played several sad notes. He waited a little longer before emerging from the shaft. He crawled, and then collapsed. Painful breaths sagged from his lungs. He lay in the corridor, unnoticed by the world, like a charred piece of paper; broken furniture; a curled, damp strip of carpet.

  Rain fell through the shattered windows.

  THE REASON YOU LOOK AWAY

  It was a cold pain, as if a January wind were blowing through all the joints and tendons of his body. He staggered into the lobby and looked at the shapes of the vagrants huddled against the walls. They were rags. Breathing, bleeding rags. Specimens of a ruined city. The reason you look away. Fernando moved toward a lowly shape, embraced by shadow: a man, swaddled in moldering newspaper, whose beard made the top half of his face appear too thin. Veins ticked beneath the membranous skin of his eyelids. His temples could have been hollowed out with spoons.

  Fernando crouched next to the man. He removed his mask. The butterfly appeared, for a moment, to be suspended in the dimness, captured in flight. The vagrant opened his eyes: preternatural instinct; the core of survival. He saw the tattoo— INFECÇÃO—and the minutia of his face responded: the dry skin of his upper lip stretching and cracking; his pupils contracting; the creases around his eyes thinning; the hairs in his nostrils quivering. He managed only a fraction of his final breath before Fernando’s hand was pressed to his mouth, forcing his head back, exposing the vulnerable meat of his throat. A discerning eye may have detected a hint of resignation in the half-second before Fernando went for his jugular. A softening in the pupil, perhaps, or the fine crease appearing at the bridge of his nose. Then he was dying. Blood sprayed into Fernando’s mouth. The vagrant’s body was rigid for slow seconds, and then slumped all at once, as if some central support cable had snapped. His left leg twitched. His shoe came off and was buried in a drift of trash.

  A pall of nausea draped over Fernando. He pressed his fist to his mouth to keep from vomiting. The lobby wavered and he fell across the dead vagrant like a lover. His kind had developed an intolerance for human blood. It was a thick, sickening taste, but he needed the nourishment. His body was failing. He would die if he didn’t find Avô Vinícius soon.

  The mask fluttered to his face. The world became brown and green, but his mouth was splashed with red.

  O CRISTO REDENTOR

  He emerged from the hotel to find that the rain had stopped, but that the wind persisted. Thick droplets were blown from palm fronds and window ledges, pattering off his shoulders with heavy sounds. Sacks of cloud dragged across the sky.

  He sensed the sunset and looked west, toward Morro Dois Irmãos. Lights glinted in the surrounding hillsides, glimpsed through stained cloud. His sick heart dared to hope…to believe. He was, after all, so close.

  No sign of the Psycho Cowboys. He looked in all directions. Fernando lowered his head and moved on, ignoring the car horns, the jostling cariocas, and the occasional bursts of samba music heard in crowded apartments. His mind echoed with prayers.

  Genuflection: he dropped to one knee at the intersection of Rua Mário Ribeiro and felt all the energy in his body gather between his shoulder blades and then erupt, breaking through his skin, hovering in the air above him like wings. He was lifted. Nothing mattered. There was no pain. His invisible wings rippled.

  Seen through a diamond-shaped rift in the clouds, Christ the Redeemer looked down on him. The magnificent statue shimmered. Nothing of the mountain could be seen—only the pale, cruciform image, hanging in the heavens. Fernando threw out his arms in imitation, supplication, and exaltation. His imaginary wings made a sound like music.

  “Save me,” he whispered. His mask glittered.

  The statue hovered in the sky.

  The cariocas paid him no attention.

  To feel the final beats of your heart…and then to have hope, that wonderful, sweeping arc of hope, lifting everything inside you. The world becomes infinitesimal. You move with the stars. An endless, shining entity.

  But I am still a shadow. That is the irony. I am still nothing.

  You can’t see me.

  Yet.

  TRANSLATION TAKEN FROM THE JOURNAL OF VINÍCIUS ARAÚJO VALENTIM

  (Date unknown.)

  I don’t know how long I have been here. There is a great void in my mind that no thought can fill, although I remember the crash clearly. One moment the world was bright. The sky was an undying shade of blue with the beautiful greens of Amazonia stretched below us. I remember looking down on a flickering formation of sun parakeets, and how they seemed to map our shadow on the trees. And then I heard an ominous clunking sound from the engine and all at once the cockpit was filled with smoke. This was terrifying enough, yet I could not accept that we were going down. It seemed too surreal. The idea that I was going to die within the next few moments refused to compute. That was when my pilot started to scream. It was an awful sound.

  My life did not flash before my eyes. I thought, absurdly, about my camera—such an expensive and delicate piece of equipment that would be destroyed in the crash. I thought about the pictures on the film that would never be seen: a sunset blistering through the branches of a kapok tree; a Mirity-tapuya child poised with a fishing spear; a multicolored waterfall arcing into the Rio Negro. I thought about my studio in São Paulo, and what would happen to my work. My final moments felt terribly lonely.

  We broke through the canopy and I heard the aircraft coming apart. Searing heat pushed me from behind and I felt a moment of euphoria (I think, now, that it was acceptance). There was nothing else. No thought or feeling. Not even blackness.

  I awoke here, in this cave…days, months, perhaps even years later. My eyes opened to unnerving darkness. I could not move; my muscles were like wet straw. I could only lie in that void listening to the sounds of the deep earth. But I soon came to realize that there was something else in there with me…that I was not alone.

  Scratching and shuffling. The sound was all around me.

  I didn’t have the strength to scream.

  I wish I could explain the fear, but there are no words. I am a professional photographer; I would have more success pointing my camera at a cancer cell or a dying child—some terrible thing that would turn your heart into a miserable weight and drag you to your knees. I became certain in those first dreadful hours that I had died in the crash and been thrown into hell. The scratching sounds grew louder. I could hear inhuman chattering an
d flapping. At one point something moist and fleshy dragged across my prone body. My throat contracted. I imagined my eyes bulging in the darkness.

  I cannot explain the fear.

  My pounding heart assured me that I was not dead. Feeling returned to my body, albeit gradually. A pain in my ribs. My spine sending blunt signals to my limbs. I could feel the rock beneath me. I was naked. I tried to shut out the scratching and flapping sounds and throw all my energy into moving my body. I had no concept of time. It was eternity, measured only in beats of pain. I am sure I passed out several times, but eventually the fingers on my right hand were twitching, and then flexing. I could feel a shift in the air pattern as something large moved beside me. Its breath was warm and bitter, but I closed my eyes and ignored it—swam through waves of consciousness and agony—and then I moved my legs. I could bend my knees and wriggle my toes. I arched my back and tried to roll onto my side, but it was too much, too soon. The pain was immense and I cried out—the first sound I had made. This disturbed the creatures with which I shared the darkness. There was a flurry of movement and agitated whooping sounds. I could hear something to my right. My eyes, slowly adjusting, sensed a pale shape clambering along the cave wall.

  Gasping breaths. The air tasted of alkaline and salt. I cried and prayed. I tried to move my left arm but couldn’t. More darkness, more time passing. I touched my face, hoping to judge from the length of my beard how long I had been there.

  My left arm was missing, severed at the shoulder.

  I thought about my camera, burned and twisted out of shape, with the film (so many wonderful pictures) melted to the spool. I was my camera: a ruined thing in a lost place. I blinked dreams that would never be fulfilled.