Doctor Winters Forgetfulness Clinic- The Man with the Black eyes

The Man with the Black eyes

Doctor Pamela Winter handed the fidgety little man a cup of tea as she sat across from him and committed his smallest details to memory.

She'd met Tyler McDow before when he'd come to do a story on the clinic for the paper. He had been a grinning little creature then, his sarcastic tone letting her know how he felt about what she did here. He was skeptical, plain and simple, and when he had made an appointment, an emergency appointment at that, Winter had been pleasantly surprised.

Mr. McDow was not the sort of man to suddenly believe in what they likely thought of as Hokum.

"So, Mr. McDow, what brings you to my "tacky den of charlatan ideas and pseudoscience"? She asked, smiling with the deepest chagrin.

"Oh, you read the article?" he said nervously, blinking as the steam hit him in the face.

"I've got it pinned up in my office somewhere. It was well written despite its narrow opinion of me."

He laughed, wincing as he took a little sip and found the tea too hot.

"So, what made you change your mind?"

Tyler sat quietly, letting the steam waft into his face as he collected his thoughts.

Winter thought he looked like someone contemplating diving into that tea cup and not coming up till the bubbles stopped.

"I saw something, something I need to forget. I thought it was something I needed to know, a mystery I needed to solve, but now I know some secrets need to stay hidden."

Winter smiled, taking a sip of her own tea as the winter cherry and ginseng wafted over her, "Tell me all about it, Mr. McDow."

* * * * *

Tyler had never been more terrified in his whole life.

All he could think about was the man he'd been following for the past three weeks and the repercussions of his little one-man spy operation. He knew it had been wrong, but he just couldn't help himself. Tyler had been curious since he was a kid. He collected insects in the area, geodes and fossils, read books about nature, and wanted to know so many things. His life's pursuit had been knowledge, but it appeared he had found something beyond even his curiosity.

It had all started that morning in Engels.

That was the first time he had seen the man.

He'd been doing some grocery shopping, stocking up in case of surprise snow storms that sometimes blew in this time of year in North Georgia. Cashmere hadn't had a big dust-up like that in a few years, but the weather report said it was supposed to be cold, and Tyler was taking no chances. Besides, he had some extra cash after the month the paper had been having.

It wasn't every day that six kids went missing in Jeremiah Georgia, and Tyler had been busy working on stories for the Cashmere Intrigue. It made him sound like a vulture, but the overtime he'd racked up in service to the community was astounding. He'd paid the next six months on the apartment he rented, bought more games on the Steam Winter Sale than he'd ever play, and was now about to fill his pantry and enjoy a week's vacation from his supervisor.

He swore under his breath as he dropped the cereal he'd been picking up, his gloves still slick from the rain, and as he bent to get it, someone else was already stooping to pick it up.

"Lemme get that for ya, buddy."

Tyler had opened his mouth to thank the stranger, his crew cut looking straight enough to hold a level, but when he looked up, Tyler felt his stomach take a hard flip.

The man was older, probably in his early fifties, and his crew cut was sprinkled with gray. He proved to be a head taller than Tyler as he stood to his full height, and his chest looked broader than Tyler's whole body. He was dressed normally enough and would have looked perfectly normal if it hadn't been for his perfect onyx eyes.

He didn't mean that the man's irises were dark; he didn't mean that his eyes possessed a dark color.

He meant the man's eyes were nothing but two perfectly black orbs, both of which were staring at him with confusion.

Tyler shook it off, taking the cereal with a shaky hand and muttering "thank you" as he scuttled back to his cart and tried not to look back, lest he start to stare. When he peeked behind him, the man had left, but he still felt like he could see those eyes looking at him. Tyler checked around corners and kept his head on a constant swivel as he tried to avoid seeing the dark-haired man again, but he couldn't seem to get him out of his head. Everywhere he looked, he could see those pitch-black eyes, somehow expressive despite their depth. Tyler got his groceries quickly, thankfully not running into the strange man until he got ready to leave.

As he left the supermarket, he suddenly felt a crawling feeling on the back of his neck.

He turned and saw the man looking at him from the end of an aisle; his beetle-black eyes focused on him intently.

Tyler left the man behind, but he never quite let him lie.

After that, he became aware of the man anytime he saw him around town. He didn't believe he had ever seen him before, but now his eyes seemed to focus on him anytime he found him. In the bank, at the post office, sipping coffee at the cafe on the corner, Tyler saw him everywhere he went. The man's black eyes also seemed to notice him, and Tyler often thought the man looked at him with interest when he crossed his path.

The more he thought about it, the more he realized that the man was an outsider. Cashmere wasn't a big place. The whole town was home to maybe five thousand people, and most everyone knew everyone. A man with black eyes would have stood out, especially in a place like Cashmere, but Tyler had never seen him before that day in the grocery store. He started asking around to see if anyone knew him, but no one seemed to know what he was talking about.

"If there was a guy in town with black eyes, I think I'd have noticed him." his editor said when he called him, "You sure you're feelin alright, Ty? Not working too hard, are you?"

It wasn't that he was the only one who could see him; he wasn't crazy.

People had seen the older fellow with the crew cut, but they all agreed that his eyes had been a perfectly normal icy blue.

"Maybe a little intense," Dale, the cashier at Engels, had said, "but certainly not midnight black."

Asking around, Tyler learned that the man's name was Gary Lodge. He was a retired military man, though no one seemed to know which war he had fought in. Old Ralph said he'd claimed it was Vietnam, but Mark Kitchrell had argued it was the Gulf War. Randy Markey told them they were both full of shit, and the man had said he was a Sergeant in the Iraq War, and Tyler had to get their attention before they could start yelling at each other. They had been sitting on the porch of Paps, a gas station that had sat on the edge of Cashmere since the end of the great depression, and the three old gaffers looked as if they had been sitting here five years before that, just waiting for the station to spring up around them.

"Did he say what branch he belonged to?" Tyler asked, already guessing the answer.

"Army," Ralph said confidently.

"Navy, of course," Mark said simultaneously.

"Marines, hoorah!" exclaimed Randy in chorus.

They all took a second to look at each other before beginning their argument again.

Tyler left before it became too heated.

That was how it all began, his obsession with the man named Gary Lodge.

It started out with questions. He asked people what they knew about the man, what he'd told them, what he'd done before, and reports varied wildly. Some said he'd been a trucker before retiring to the mountains. Some said he was an ex-cop from Atlanta who wanted something a little quieter. Others said he was ex-military who was seeking solitude. He lived in the mountains near the town, though no one seemed to know which one. All agreed that he drove an old green jeep with canvas covering the roof, and Tyler had seen it parked outside various establishments in town.

Tyler spent the better part of five days asking people about him, but the more he discovered, the less he actually knew.

A background check netted him nothing but a trip after his tail. He couldn't find a Gary Lodge that owned anything in the area, his jeep was unregistered in the county, and no one named Gary Lodge had so much as a bank account, credit card, or library card that tied him to Cashmere. He got nothing back when he tried to search for his service record, no work history, rental history, or credit history either. Either he was using an alias, or he was a ghost, and Tyler didn't believe in ghosts.

These should have been red flags, signs to let it alone, but Tyler couldn't.

You see, even when he slept, it seemed he couldn't escape Gary Lodge.

Every night since that first meeting, Tyler had been plagued by the same dream. He was running through the woods, seeing the same pines and oaks that he'd climbed and sat beneath as a child, his eyes darting as something hunted him. He would catch a glimpse of the black eyes man as he ran, his body twisting as it slid through the gaps in the trees like a shadow. He was hunting him, stalking him through the familiar woodlands, and no matter how far he ran, he was unable to escape the phantom who pursued him.

It only got worse after he saw him in the alley two weeks after their first meeting.

Tyler had been leaving the office, waving to Gerald, the janitor, as he made his way to his car.

"Knocking off early, Mr. Dunkan?"

Tyler nodded, "Can't seem to focus today. I guess I'm just not in the mood to burn the midnight oil."

Gerald laughed, but Tyler knew it was more than simple focus. He was feeling close to burnout; the dreams beginning to take a toll on him. When he woke up from the dreams, he felt exhausted, his mind having spun itself out, and he wasn't sure how much longer he could do this and stay sane. He had walked to his car, intending to climb in and try to get some unhaunted sleep, but changed his mind as the keys slid into the door lock. At that moment, a soft electric sound could be heard from the nearby bar on the square. Tyler decided that instead of going home, he would go have a few drinks and maybe fall asleep to some dreams that didn't involve the black-eyed man. He left his car in the parking lot, figuring he could get an Uber home and then another to work the next day.

He had gone about a block and a half up when he heard something that stopped him in his tracks.

He had passed an alley between a pharmacy and a convenience store and heard a scuffle from farther back. Tyler paused in the mouth of the alleyway and thought about just pressing on. It was probably just a couple of drunks arguing, maybe a few homeless people squabbling over a choice sleeping spot, and it had nothing to do with him. He could've just headed to the bar, got his beer, and just headed home a little bit sloshed later that night. But his curious nature, something that had taken him far in his career of choice, drove him to go investigate. With every step he took into the dirty alley, he felt more and more sure that this was not something he wanted to investigate. It sounded less like a fight and more like something more intimate. He wanted to turn around, but if something less than consensual was going on, he felt it was his duty to inform the authorities about it.

What he found was, indeed, less than consensual.

In the small alley behind the convenience store, two people were scuffling as one of them tried to tie the other one up. Tyler peaked around the edge, not entirely sure what he was looking at. It appeared to be two men, one of them vigorously declining being tied up while the other one paid him no attention. It was hard to tell from the single light on the pole behind the convenience store, but something appeared to be wrong with the man who was being bound. It almost looked like his skin was bubbling, and parts of him seemed to lengthen and shorten at will. He was still wildly insisting that the man had the wrong guy, the fella needed to just let him go, but his captor paid no attention to him. He was a beefy guy, wearing old camouflage pants and the gray jacket that he had on looked ready for the rag bag. As he finished restraining him, he pushed him into the corner. The man wept as the other pulled out a large handgun and pointed it at him.

That was when Tyler realized this was more than just a little bit of foreplay.

The man told the weeper to shut up as he held the gun on him, and Tyler watched him cock his head as if you were listening for something. When he turned his head, the light hit him just right, and Tyler saw the neat crew cut and solid black eyes of the man who had haunted his dreams.

The tied man looked up at him, spitting blood from his lip as Gary Lodge seemed to wait for just the right moment to end him. All at once, though, the man began to shift, and his body began to grow. His head took on a distinctly dog-like cast, and his body elongated. The man with the crew cut seemed torn about whether or not to just go ahead and shoot him or wait for whatever signal he was waiting on. Tyler could see the wolf man beginning to flex at the bonds, the ropes groaning angrily, and thought Gary's time might be up.

That was when the band who had been preparing to start at the bar that Tyler should've been drinking at struck up their first song, a loud honky tonk number that would've probably covered the rapture, and the man with the crew cut shot the other right between the eyes. The half-man died mid-transformation, his body stuck somewhere between as he bled onto the concrete. Gary looked around, his ears raised as he listened for alarms being sounded as he slid the gun away.

Tyler stood transfixed for a moment, trying to make sense of all of us. He had just watched the black-eyed man murder someone. More than that, he had watched him murder someone who may not have been entirely human. As the man with the crew cut bent down to pick up his victim, Tyler realized that this would be his time to run. As the band in the bar hit the high point of a boozy little number, he lit out towards the newspaper parking lot. His plan to get a little tipsy completely evacuated him as he ran, nearly bumping into the old green jeep that was parked beside the alley. He didn't stop running until he got to his car and sped out of the parking lot.

The next time he saw Gary, he was reminded of that incident in the alleyway.

The next time he saw the black-eyed man, he thought he was about to be on the receiving end of that single gunshot.

It happened about two days after the incident in the alley. Tyler has been living those days in a constant state of fear. He'd been calling out of work and only leaving his apartment if it was absolutely necessary. On the second day, something absolutely necessary came up. His editor had needed him to come in and sign something that just couldn't wait. Tyler had tried to wiggle out from under it, but the man was insistent that it needed to go to payroll by Friday, and there was no ifs, ands, or butts about it. It turned out to be his expense report from the story he had done in Jeremiah. Tyler had signed them, insisting that he had to go after he was done, and went quickly for his vehicle.

He's been digging his keys out of his pocket, looking around fitfully, when the man with the crew cut came quickly from around the back of Tyler's car.

Tyler felt his breath catching his throat, certain that he was about to be a squib in his one town's newspaper.

"Beloved writer killed in senseless daylight shooting."

Unlikely to be the headline, but one could hope.

"Heard you've been asking a lot of questions about me," The man said, and his voice was nowhere near as friendly as it had been the first time.

He stood leaning against Tyler's SUV with all the cool carelessness of a hunting cat.

"Asking questions is kind of my job?" Tyler answered, stuttering over most of his words and sounding much less assured of himself than he had hoped.

"I don't like it," said the man as his black eyes bore into Tyler, "I don't like people asking questions about me. I hear any more people say you've been asking questions, or I get another ping that you've been looking for me online, and I'll come visit you again. Rest assured, that's one visit you don't want, little man."

He didn't wait for Tyler to say anything. He just walked away, heading back up the street in the direction Tyler assumed he had come from. Tyler watched him go, still shaking at his words. He hadn't felt quite that scared since the football players had roughed him up in high school, and the feeling kindled something else in him too. Guy was no different from those meatheads on the football team, the ones who had thrown his book on the floor and pushed him into lockers. He was a bully, and Tyler didn't have to put up with bullies anymore. He was an adult, and he could do something about bullies now.

He wanted to find out more, wanted to know everything, and so when he'd seen the green jeep in traffic a few days later, he pulled in behind him without thinking about it. His guts were a mass of snakes, anxiously writhing over each other as he followed him out of Cashmere. He had no proof that he was going to his house, no one even knew where he lived, but as Tyler followed him, his gut told him the old jeep was heading home. Guy must have seen him, had to have recognized him, but Tyler didn't care. Plus, if he asked, he could always just tell him that he had business out in this direction. This was the road that led to the interstate, after all, and the interstate was pretty much needed to go anywhere in this part of Georgia.

He had followed him for about twenty minutes, sure that he was going to discover nothing but the onramp when Guy put his blinker on and turned down an access road that was all but invisible.

Tyler watched him turn, rebelling against every instinct he had to turn in behind him, and proceeded instead towards the interstate.

Once he was sure that the jeep was out of sight, he turned into a driveway at the edge of the interstate and wheeled back around. The couple on the porch lifted their hands to him, and Tyler lifted his in return. They were clearly used to being the city's turnabout, and as he left, he wondered if they would tell anyone he'd been here? Once he considered that they might have no idea who he was, this thought made him feel nothing but like a paranoid mess, and he went back to the access road he'd seen the jeep go down.

I wanted to drive down the road, but Tyler knew that could be a bad idea.

Instead, he pulled off to the side, driving his car in between the trees so it wouldn't be readily seen. He popped the trunk and took a knapsack. Tyler had carried a "bug out bag" for years, a lot of people did, and it had everything he might need to live out in the woods for a few days. It was too much for what he had in mind, but it did have a few things he wanted. Binoculars, a flashlight, a hunting knife, some food in case he got lost…

He slung it on before he could think better of the plan and set off into the woods.

He used the road as a guide, making his way through the woods as he kept that concrete serpent always to his right. He expected to see other roads, perhaps some other houses, but all that was here was more road. As he went, Tyler started to feel a sense of deja vu. He had never been to these woods before, but the farther in he went, the more it began to feel like a waking dream. He kept looking over his shoulder, expecting to see the form of his stalker as he kept a close eye on him. It was like the dream all over again, and it sent a chill up his spine as he expected to run into his monster with every step.

He'd been walking for about forty-five minutes when Tyler found the last thing he'd expected.

He found a fence surrounding a collection of little buildings and a sign declaring it to be Site 9. One of the buildings was clearly a warehouse, long and tall, with a slight mechanical hum coming from it. The other two were squat concrete boxes that looked like living quarters, and the jeep was pulled up outside of one. Tyler dug his binoculars out and swept the grounds, looking for any sign of Guy, but he didn't have far to look.

The closest of the concrete boxes was no more than twenty feet from the fence, and when Guy's voice preceded him by only a few seconds, Tyler nearly dropped his binoculars.

"I think the townies are onto me." he said, and Tyler got as low as he could without making noise, "there's a reporter sniffing around, and I think he's marked me."

He put his back to the concrete box and listened to whoever was talking on the phone.

"I wouldn't be so worried, TJ, if it wasn't a damn reporter. Ya, I know my backtrail is covered up, but it's still a little spooky. He's asking questions, and I don't want him guessing anything about the Black Sites."

He listened, nodding along, and Tyler realized he was talking about him. How angry would he be if he realized the subject of his worry was less than thirty feet away and listening to his conversation. He laughed suddenly, and Tyler had to tense up to stop from jumping.

"Loyalty? TJ, I could give a rat's ass if all these freak shows burned to the ground. If this guy finds out about the sites, there are two bullets that are gonna fire, and only one of them is for him. I'm grateful to you guys for helping with my psychosis from the war, but I'm not about to find myself at site 7, so I can eat a bullet for that."

Tyler had started trying to walk backward on his fingertips, slowly making his way away from the fence. He had learned all he needed to, all he thought he needed to at least, and now he simply wanted to disappear before Mr. McGreggor happened to notice there was a rabbit in his garden. He came up short, however, when he realized he was caught on a branch.

"Yeah, I'm still tracking the crypt. No, not a sniff for the last two weeks. She's old and wiley, but I'll get her. This place is like a safari anyway. I don't know what it is about this state, but there are critters everywhere. Just last week, I found an honest to god lycanthrope. I haven't seen one of those since Wales, TJ. I didn't even know there were real ones in America. Ya, ya ya, but they don't count. Those are mutts. This one was a pedigree werewolf. He," but he stopped and looked to the fence line.

Tyler winced. He'd heard the snap, too, as he tried to get the pack free. It had been loud enough to hear back at his car, he'd warrant. As Guy stared in his direction, he stayed absolutely still, those black eyes boring into the trees where he hunkered. Tyler wasn't religious, had been agnostic since he was fifteen, but he prayed now that this black-eyed devil would overlook him so he could get away.

"Call you back, TJ. Na, not for long." he hung up the phone and disappeared back into the concrete box, Tyler taking the opportunity to shimmy back as he got unstuck and lit out. He ran away from the fence, never looking back as he tried his best to get away from the monster he had startled. It was like his dream all over again, and Tyler expected to turn his head and see those black eyes tracking him. He thought he heard someone trailing him, dogging his heels, but when he made it back to the main road, he threw his backpack in the car and hopped behind the wheel of his car.

As he cranked the engine, he looked out to see Guy stalking the woods, a long rifle in hand.

Tyler cranked the engine, watching Guy glance at the car, and threw it in reverse as he fled back up the road.

No hail of bullets followed him, no eruption of glass as his back window exploded.

Just Guy as he stood in the road and watched him go, a knowing smile stretching across his face.

* * * * *

"What did you do then?" Winter asked, taking a sip of tea.

His cup was nearly empty, and she could see his chest hitching a little like he had a throat full of phlegm.

"I went home and prayed that he hadn't had time to read my license plate. It was a work car, thankfully, but I've been getting calls from them for the past three days, letting me know he keeps showing up to ask questions about me. He found the car in the parking lot, and someone told him I was driving it. I think he knows that if I go missing, they'll connect him to the incident, but I don't know how much longer that's going to stop him."

"But how will you know to avoid him if you forget him?"

"I don’t know," he said, his face resolved as he looked down at his tea, "but I can't live like this. I'm a coward, Mrs. Winter, but if I don't know I'm supposed to be afraid, then maybe I can die with some dignity. For once in my life, I'd rather not face adversity with fear in my belly. Whether he kills me in my sleep or kills me on the street, I'd rather go out blissfully unaware. And who knows, maybe when he sees that I have no idea who he is or what he's doing, he'll leave me alone. It's worth a shot, right?"

He gagged suddenly, and Winter watched as a thick, round something fell wetly into his cup.

He sat it down, looking around in confusion before locking eyes with Winter from across the table.

"Doctor Winter?" he said, his smile seeming embarrassed to be here, "what am I doing here?"

Winter exhaled, setting her own cup down, "You came for a follow-up interview, something your editor wanted. I told you no, however, and when you got up to leave, you got light-headed and sat down for a bit."

"I did?" Tyler asked, looking sheepish as he rubbed the back of his neck, "that's a first for me. Oh well, I must get back to the office now. Good luck in your…" he didn't seem to be able to come up with a word, so he just spun his hand at her office and left.

Winter took his cup and put it in the cabinet.

They were such odd creatures, humans. They were capable of great bravery, though they often had to be tricked into it. Amidst his terror, Tyler Debrow had found a splinter of courage. Winter hoped it would be enough to get him through what was likely to come next. She dumped the lumpy thing he had coughed up into a mason jar, where it bobbed and glowed slightly as she screwed the lid on. It was a perfect sky blue when it pulsed, and that made Winter smile. She liked the blue ones; they were her favorite.

A shot rang out from the sidewalk in front of her office, and she heard people cry out as they called for the police.

"Someone come quick," Winter heard a particularly shrill oldster yell, "this young man's been shot!"

Winter sighed.

Possessed of great bravery and great stupidity.