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"These studies support the idea that talking to yourself helps you concentrate. Actually saying the words out loud keeps you from getting distracted. It can also change the way people process visual information."
Charles clicks on the button to change the slides. There's something wrong with a projector though. The image blinks out of existence and instead of it, there is only white screen. Bugger.
"The slide, which doesn't want to be seen, tells about a recent study with 22 participants," he says to his audience, offering an apologizing gesture and a smile.
Even while his left hand is trying to wake his laptop from its hang state, he is looking right at the door up in the back of lecture theatre and that's why he sees Jean as soon as she as much as peeks inside. Their eyes meet, distance be neglected, and he announces.
"It seems, you're going to find out about this study on your own. I have to dismiss you a bit early."
It doesn't offend him anymore that there is a plenty of relived faces among the crowd. His lecture being their last class today and all.
Jean reaches the desk, whilst he is collecting his notes.
"I'm sorry for disturbing your class, but they appear so happy to get ten minutes of freedom."
"Yeah, it's only natural."
"Is something the matter?" she quietly asks, aware of some people still hanging behind.
"No, everything's fine," he says mechanically, frowning at the flickering mouse arrow on his laptop display. Some malfunction. Sighing, he just closes the lid. "Why —"
"I tried calling you, but you didn't pick up," she muses as she leans against the desk. "Anyways, Stryker insisted that you come see him. I realize that you'd rather decline and I told him that he could pass any work-related stuff through me. Like he has been doing all the time lately, but he was very, and I underline, very persistent."
Jean, gods bless her, took it upon herself to limit his interactions with the person who, she knew, might bring forth something worse than mere bad memories. There was a part of Charles grateful for this, but this part often had to silence the inner vain voice whispering of unnecessary coddling and overstepping the boundaries. How dares she! However, this was the same voice that always spoke of having another glass. As stood his priorities, Charles was interested in not surrendering the remaining reins of his life to that vile spirit inside him.
"You look better today," says Jean quietly when they are walking up the stairs and Charles wonders, silently, what she means.
He abruptly realizes that he hasn't really looked at himself for a while. Morning shaving and washing up is usually performed without any conscious effort. He neglected trimming his hair since autumn and, with arrival of winter cold, discovered that it warmed his ears and neck rather nicely.
Has anything changed? He will certainly look in the mirror when he gets home, decides Charles.
When he enters the office with half-drawn curtains, first thing that hits him is staleness. As though, it hasn't been aired for ages. Must be wrong, because Stryker likes his lair impeccably clean. Charles doesn't even see the dean as he's shuffling through some folders in the corner cabinet, partially hidden by shadows. He sort of blends in with the greying shadows in a way that makes Charles' skin crawl.
"Ah, Professor Xavier," his snobby voice carries crispiness and a touch of fake surprise, which, Charles thinks, is completely unnecessary.
Charles nods in greeting.
"It was somewhere here," Stryker grumbles and proceeds pulling the folders in and out, as if forgetting about Charles altogether.
By this point, Charles only taps his fingers against his thigh, looking around idly. He launches into cataloguing the differences for the sake of killing time.
Since his last visit, there are fewer pictures on the walls. There was a bronze eagle paper holder on the desk, which he can't see anywhere now. Stryker's computer is a modern, sleek thing. Its red sleep mode indicator is blinking at Charles slowly. Beside it, there rests an empty glass. A few drops can be spotted on a well-polished table-top. Looks like he splashed some, Charles ponders distractedly, and then he knows where the staleness came from. A suffocating fug of too warm, too dry air with a whiff of hangover. He is no stranger to the latter himself.
Stryker hums something and pulls out a thin file, from which Charles deduces that his search has come to a victorious end.
"The request you filed last November," Stryker finds the courtesy to explain. "Free Counseling and Psychological Services for students."
"Well," Charles says. "You declined."
Stryker appears a tad surprised, almost lost. An old, bleak-eyed man, whose suit has become two sizes too big for him and he didn't even manage to notice.
"Goodness… You don't remember," states Charles calmly, though his calm is essentially as genuine as Stryker's earlier surprise at seeing him.
"No, no, I do," he shakes the file for emphasis and returns to his desk.
Charles doesn't have to be hawk-eyed to detect a tremor pulsing through the man's arm as he is trying to hold on to the pen.
"Sir," Charles clears his throat and waits till Stryker raises his head. "Sir, you need help. Have you seen anyone? Any therapist, I mean? Since your wife's death?"
Stryker makes a grimace as if he's ready to spit at him. Only, it's not threatening at all. Charles briefly closes his eyes, before mustering his resolve. Then, he pulls out a chair and sits, coming down to Stryker's eye level.
"For this to work you need to be ready. Nothing in the world could have prepared you for this. You are now alone with your suffering. Even worse: everything you thought you knew about… her. It was all wrong," Charles watches his contorted expression intently, whilst speaking softly, deliberately slowly.
He wants every word to sink in the black hole and emerge on the other side, transformed.
"I'd like to ask you a few questions, sir. You may choose to ignore me. Though, I suggest, you listen. What is the first thing, which comes to mind when you see her picture or when someone mentions her name? And what feeling follows that thought?"
Stryker splutters indignantly. Then, hangs his head. And starts muttering: phrases that don't connect; scrambled sentences with seemingly no meaning.
To ground himself, Charles grabs the armrests very tightly, thinking that it was stupid of him, that he can't help anyone before he helps himself, that he is so not ready.
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Meeting with Stryker ends exactly like it should have ended. He expected to be squeezed and wrung out like a rug and wrung out he was.
On the way home his slow feet lead him to the supermarket. Among eggs, milk, butter and groceries, there appears a bottle in his trolley. It's an expensive one, because, who knows. Maybe, Erik will drop in again.
Whilst Charles is unpacking, a text from Alex arrives. Alex apologizes. He won't be able to drive him to the crime zone tomorrow. That reminds Charles that he still hasn't touched the case folder he's been given.
It's resting on the coffee table next to the sofa in his living room, which has already become something akin to thinking room.
It's either having a dinner or looking through it and maybe having a dinner later. But there is a nudge in the back of his mind, somewhere well beyond his reach, which insists that he should look into it now.
Charles falters for a fraction of second.
"I don't have any choice, right?" he murmurs and goes upstairs to change.
When Charles sags into his favorite armchair, he already has an idea in mind. Pictures carefully pushed aside, he opens the copy of a coroner's report.
"Internal bleeding occurred. Blood vessels inside the body are torn or crushed. Supposedly, this kind of trauma was inflicted by a blunt object."
He swallows hard, but tells himself that it's fine. It is really easier with words than with pictures.
Hemothorax mentioned in the report stands for bleeding around the lungs. Inferior vena cava, which carries blood into the right atrium of the heart, was also torn by fragments of shattered ribs. Liver displays multiple lacerations. The same could be said about the spleen.
Internal bleeding hurts like hell. It would feel as though someone put your insides on fire. Charles thinks of car crash victims and their organs squashed by sudden blunt force. What was done to Mark was no such accident. It was deliberate. Like a slow form of execution. Like death by torture. An idea of stoning is weaving its way into his head; the concept of brutal punishment is what might have driven the attacker. Or attackers. And the insane, poisonous joy of watching a human go down under onslaught, the excitement in making a living being submit to death. That power play.
Charles looks up at the ceiling, as though looking for clues written on white. He is aware that should he let his eyes fall shut, the pictures will spring to mind in all their horrific vibrancy and he wouldn't be able to keep his presence of mind.
"Mark didn't faint at once. He didn't go down with the first blows," he says out loud, feeding grim words to shadows. "He tried to protect himself. Got his hand broken. That," Charles pauses, "that could have made them angrier. Even fiercer."
Somehow Mark was still upright. Maybe, running. Or, trying to. Charles lets his imagination work and scenarios unfold gradually, one worse than the other.
With apprehension, Charles mentally catalogues everything he can imagine and gets up to snatch a pencil. However, instead of writing, he mindlessly twists the pencil in between his fingers as he moves to stand by the window and watch how it starts raining again.
Finally, Mark was down on the cold ground. Everything around him was a pulsing blur of pain; every breath was a torturous challenge. He could taste acid, heavy blood on his tongue, feel that blood being pushed up his throat by a nauseatic paroxysm. He probably coughed it out as it had been staining his mouth. He probably was curled there as his body assumed instinctive protective position, and he was already aware that he was going to die. That overwhelming pain Mark was feeling would have pulled him under just too deep. It was possible, Charles wants to believe so, that he blacked out upon falling down and didn't feel a thing afterwards. Though, something tells him that was not what the attacker would have wanted.
Suddenly, a dark shadow flickers into existence right by the window and Charles snaps the poor pencil in two, startled. The doorbell comes alive too and Charles hangs his head, letting out a nervous huff. Goodness, he thinks, this state of his is really not a joke.
He intuitively knows that it's Erik even before opening the door.
"Erik," he swings the door open and lets in the man.
Outside air, which filters in, is cool and wet and smells like night rain.
"You didn't tell me that Summers got you involved in a case," states Erik flatly, no time for niceties and decorum apparently.
"Well, good to see you again so soon," says Charles sarcastically and turns around. "When you hang your coat by the door, please, come find me in the kitchen."
Erik behaves like Charles owes him explanations. Charles can reluctantly admit that Erik's behaviour used to be finely justifiable in the beginning: Charles unthinkingly opened up a whole new can of worms then and nearly got Erik killed for that matter. Now, though, it's a completely different situation and Erik needs to understand this.
The bourbon, he bought earlier, is conveniently standing on the counter, gleaming dully.
Erik eyes the bottle with a raised eyebrow and rather emotionless face. Honestly, he looks as grey as the sweatshirt he is wearing.
"Would you?" Charles offers him a glass and Erik takes it with little to no hesitation.
"No ice?" he asks.
"Sorry. Nope," Charles brings his own glass to his lips and the inhaled hint of heady aroma makes his head swirl.
He drinks with his eyes shut and when he opens them again, he discovers that Erik is watching him, without having taken a sip of his drink.
"Why would you do that?" grumbles Erik, staring at Charles as if he has forgotten how to blink.
"Do what?" and then Charles catches up. "Agree to help the police? They asked, and, as I mentioned before, my schedule this semester allows me to take up additional jobs."
Erik looks down into his glass, swirling the liquid around slowly.
"I saw you invested in it a bit too much. This is the job for a certain type — "
"Let me guess? I'm not that type," interrupts Charles, for that anger lying dormant inside, leaks free. "Erik, I would be very grateful if no one, nor you, nor someone else, told me what to do. Or undermined my decisions."
Saying it is like poking at torn flesh. Yet, there's something more disturbing. There's something infinitely wrong about having this particular conversation. Erik, coming to reprimand him, because he what? Worries? Erik and he are too close, realizes Charles abruptly. The realization is like a bucket of cold water poured on his head. It's true. They didn't even need that much time to get used to each other. They just did. And Charles would be lying if he claimed that he didn't feel that connection. Not just the hurt of Erik nearly dying or the startling pleasure-ache of seeing him again.
"I'm sorry," Charles says harshly. "You don't need to be on the receiving end of my spectacularly bad day."
"Don't be," Erik finally drinks from his glass. "I'm wrong too."
"When are you going to come back to work?" blurts Charles, partially to fill the silence and also because he's curious.
"If," Erik gives him a one-shoulder shrug. "Physical evaluation is soon and I still can't tighten the grip for more than ten seconds."
Erik looks down at the offending limb with tightly pressed lips.
To do something with his hands Charles snatches a bottle and silently offers to refill Erik's glass.
Erik nods and holds it out for him.
"I'm not you, of course. I haven't got any human researching degrees like you do —"
"I wonder what's yours?"
Erik grins darkly and salutes him with a glass.
"History and Literature Major initially. So, as I was saying, because of my work I learned a lot about people. Unfortunately."
Charles smiles at that.
"But I have experience on my side," adds Erik empathetically and the mood shifts back to solemn. "Summers told me about the kid. It doesn't look good."
"Quite bad, actually," murmurs Charles, frowning at Erik's hardened expression.
"Exactly," nods Erik. "That's why it's too much for you right now. Don't think that I'm undermining your decisions. I'm stating the fact as I see it."
"That's very comforting," mutters Charles and then an idea appears. "I'm not going to quit halfway, but since you're free, you can come with me. To have a look at the crime scene, at least."
"I was going to come with you anyway," says Erik magnanimously and Charles starts having second thoughts about his offer.
Erik's rough audacity is not something he missed, he tells himself, but it rings like self-deception.
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Police tape is wet, with tiny droplets of rain hanging on for dear life. Very soon they will lose a fight with gravity and fall downwards, only to be absorbed by black muddy soil.
Charles tilts his head up to peer at ripe grey clouds hanging low over the woodland. Unlike Erik, he's not wearing rain boots, and that means that should the sky burst with rain, his suede shoes will not stand a chance.
Erik is standing by the tree Mark was found under and he is looking at the ground. There's not a trace of snow as far as Charles can see. All whiteness is already soaked within greedy ground. Beneath their feet there is a very sticky carpet of last year's foliage.
"That damn snowfall has ruined it for forensics," states Erik brusquely. "It helped preserve the body, more or less, but otherwise…"
"Erik, what do you think about the clothes?"
"Clothes may be our trump card. If that's some kind of fetishist, there's a solid chance that he kept it. What do you think?"
"I'm not sure. Not yet."
The place is too bleak — that is the only thing that comes to mind when he looks around. Rows upon rows of bare aspen trees resemble needles sticking out of the ground, as though they are a part of an elaborate trap with multiple pointy teeth.
That's right.
These are not just woods. It was someone's hunting ground.
Charles circles the tree Erik is now leaning on one more time.
"He could have gotten here by bus, by car, or by bike," says Erik. "There's a bus stop on demand by the crossroads. Summers said that he already talked to bus drivers. Nothing. No one remembers the boy."
"If there was a car, police won't be able find out what car it was. On the other hand, the bike," Charles pauses. "Come to think of it, plenty of children own bikes in here. Lots of students too."
"Yes, this town is very eco-friendly," Erik grunts in agreement. "Come on, Charles. Let's go back."
Whilst the road is closing in, Charles is counting the steps from the spot where the body was found to the road. He gets about twenty.
"I wonder," he asks out loud, "was it possible for him to escape?"
"Not likely."
Erik is right, of course.
When they get in the car, light drizzle begins. Charles starts the car and looks in the side mirror; he discovers that the mirror is fogged up and cranes his neck to check the road.
"You didn't find what you were looking for," observes Erik.
Charles turns to reply and that's then, through a passenger's window on Erik's side, he sees a boy. The boy in the bright red jacket is standing on the opposite side of the road.
"Charles?"
"I think, I found something," Charles blinks and the phantom disappears.
"Care to share?"
"I couldn't picture Mark up till now," explains Charles, meeting Erik's eyes. "I couldn't see him properly if you will."
"I'm not sure I understand, but fine," says Erik slowly.
They drive back in silence until Charles can't help himself anymore. At the road lights he clears his throat.
"Erik, please, don't get me wrong. I don't want to question you needlessly," he feels that it's necessary to specify this.
"What's with the prelude? If you want to ask, just ask."
"What are you planning to do? With your job, I mean. I know that you only moved here recently —"
"You're asking me whether I'm going to leave or stay?"
Charles takes a quick look at Erik's profile, nicely outlined by falling darkness.
"I probably won't leave. But I can't go on enjoying injury leave on full pay any more," he smirks ruefully. "I asked to be allowed to undergo standard evaluation like the rest. I guess, I wanted to set a deadline for myself, to get back into shape sooner."
"And now you see that it won't work out," finishes Charles for him.
"Well spotted."
Maybe it is wrong to smile, but Charles does it, thinking that warm relief he's feeling now was worth that earlier portion of awkwardness.
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Apartment complex where Miss Evans lives is near the park, which circles University. The building is one of the oldest in the area and it shows. Stairs leading to entrance doors are in need of a good sweep, notices Charles. Cigarette butts and candy wraps are prudently gathered in the corners. A pink bubble gum is sticking to the door just on his eye level.
"Huh? No, I'm pressing it alright," Alex says, holding the phone between his ear and shoulder. His other hand is occupied with a thick folder.
He pushes a button on the intercom again, wearing an impressive scowl.
"Are you sure it's working, mam?"
Someone pushes the door open from the other side. An old lady comes out. She has a tiny dog on the leash. On seeing Charles the dog rushes to him and he has to take a step back.
"Never mind, that's alright," hurries to say Alex. "We're coming. What floor is it, again?"
The stairs are poorly lit. Charles abstains from giving local smells their appropriate names.
Instead, he pictures Mark running down the same stairs in the morning and climbing up late in the afternoon. Charles spent yesterday's evening reading the school reports, which described Mark as a generally quiet kid with some unauthorised absence accidents. His grades were getting worse recently, so his mother was going to come to school, but she didn't manage to. Being a teacher himself, Charles understands that he has, unwillingly or not, become a part of conspiracy. Because there's a little secret the generations of educators are unwilling to divulge to youngsters: grades don't matter. It's often the people with the audacity not to care about them, who come to the top. Mark, in spite of his academic failure, might have been one of those.
Alex rings the door bell and a short pale woman in a baggy sweater and ripped jeans opens it. The only colourful thing on her face is her thick, black mascara, which makes her dull eyes almost offensively outlined. She and Mark have the same sandy hair. That's where the similarities end.
All three of them shuffle in a small kitchen, where, on the table next to the open window, a miserable cigarette is still burning, laid on the saucer. There are four pots with what seems like violets on the wide windowsill. The lone cactus plant looks like it has survived a fall. Its clay pot happens to be cracked.
Alex jumpstarts a conversation, pulling out the papers from his folder and spreading them on the table. He needs these and those signed and he is sorry for bothering her again. Someone in the registration office has misplaced the originals. She just nods and takes the offered pen.
Charles is not the only one who registers a thud and something like a groan just behind the wall. Alex perks up too.
"Excuse me," she puts the pen down and slides past dubious Charles.
"She is taking care of her old mother," mutters Alex, scanning the paper with his eyes. "That's all. I also need to make a few phone calls. Will be down in the car."
"You don't need to wait for me."
"Are you sure?"
"Definitely. You must be busy, so I'd hate occupying your time."
"You have no idea," Alex looks up. "Ah, miss Evans, thank you very much. We're done. If you don't mind, Professor Xavier would like to ask you a few questions."
"I don't," she slides back into kitchen, carrying a tray with dirty dishes, which she dumps in the sink.
After Alex leaves, and she and Charles are alone in her cramped kitchen, Charles lets the silence stretch: not because he aims for tension, but because he wants her to take the reins.
"I think, I read about you somewhere," she utters flatly. "Missing girls. The Mayor getting shot. Cops cutting down people. You don't believe that shit like that can happen in your neighborhood until it happens. What do you need to know?"
"I'd like to know who Mark's friends were. Did he ride a bike? Collected anything? Personal stuff?" Charles glances around the kitchen. "He was, perhaps, a tad temperamental lately. I'll take a risk to presume that you were relieved at times when he stayed over at his friend's house. That makes… No, I'd say, made you experience extreme surges of guilt and self-loathing, which transformed into apathy."
"I don't know: should I tell you to get out or not…"
"You should start taking antidepressants for starters," Charles picks up the pen Alex has forgotten in a rush. "A piece of paper? May I?"
Out of a paper bag she digs up a leaflet, offering a discount on special days, and Charles writes down a phone number on the corner.
"Please, call this number as soon as you can. This help-line is absolutely free and anonymous. You need to take care of yourself," he offers the leaflet and waits, patiently, until she lifts a hand to take it back.
"Why give this to me?" she asks in the same flat tone, but quieter.
"There is no right answer. Maybe, because you're alive and suffering and this is the kind of pain you can't deal with on your own," as Charles realizes what he is saying, he stops. For he's been talking to her, but, it appears, he's been talking to himself as well.
She stares at the number as though processing what he said is hard.
"I, um… I'll bring you his scrap-book," with this she disappears again, but Charles is glad that she folds the leaflet carefully and takes it with her. She might use it, after all.
What she calls the scrap-book is a sketch book, which belonged to Mark. It's full of clumsy sketches of a bigfoot and a kraken and other amazing things, which might just share the planet with humans. Cryptozoology is a very interesting pseudoscience, indeed. Amazed at multiple fantastic creatures and the imagination that brought them to life, Charles turns page after page.
"These days we don't have picture albums. Everything's online," she says and puts a photo on the table.
Charles immediately recognizes Mark, because he's the only fair-haired boy in the picture. He is one of a few kids standing in a lobby of some sort.
"That was a class trip to, uh, some museum. I honestly don't recall which. This is Daniel Smith," Mark's mother taps a finger on the chest of a lanky boy, who is almost out of the frame.
"His friend?"
"It seemed so," replies she and then darts a sharp glance Charles' way. "Why did you ask about the bike?"
"Just curious," he gazes back, but she doesn't want to meet his eyes and turns away.
"Someone stole his bike. Before that snowfall? Yes, before. Like a week before cold came back."
"How did it happen?"
"He said, he left it chained by the bench, when I… I sent him to the supermarket. I don't really remember."
The decision to walk was a good one, seeing that Friday evening was surprisingly warm and rainless for a change. Charles could practically smell the spring taking over the last winter strongholds. The sunset visible through the gaps between the trees is magnificent.
While searching for clues among Mark's things was fruitful, he now tries to withdraw his mind from a repetitive circle of chanting hostile, aggression, trigger, pleasure, punishment. But, no matter how hard he tries to silence his buzzing mind, it doesn't work well.
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