The Loon
by
Michaelbrent Collings
Smashwords edition
Copyright © 2010 by Michaelbrent Collings
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author. For information send request to L@whoisbillyjones.com.
website: www.michaelbrentcollings.com
email: L@whoisbillyjones.com
cover image © 2010 used under license from Shutterstock.com
DEDICATION
To...
My buds from Paraguay, who provided me with many of my names...
and to Laura, FTAAE.
***
PROLOGUE:
PARTING
***
This is how the man lost his child.
They were together in the park. The sun shone brightly around them, falling lightly down from the sky to kiss them both with soft golden touches. The grass was green, greener than grass had a right to be in the middle of winter, just as the sky was bluer than skies usually were. It was a perfect day, and the man marveled at the sheer beauty of it all.
How could some people say there is no God? he wondered.
The rain had come two days before, and though it was gone – rain rarely stayed long in southern California, when it came at all – it had left behind the sparkling crispness peculiar to rain: a sharpness that hummed with barely restrained electrical energy and heightened one's ability to smell the beautiful odors of nature that usually hid beneath a tough blanket of smog, a rough quilt of hydrocarbons and methane emissions.
The man breathed in deeply, and the air that filled his lungs was reminiscent of the rainy days of his childhood. He could almost feel his mother draping a warm flannel blanket over his shoulders as he walked in from school. He could smell her – Mother always smelled like peppermint and vanilla – and could feel the soft tousle of the fabric as she used it to dry his wet hair after a walk through the rain, whispering softly, "So wet, my baby, where did you go? What did you do, my son?"
He smiled at the thought, and looked at his own son, who waited expectantly some twenty feet away.
So beautiful, my baby, he thought. So lovely, my son.
The boy was five today. He was five, he was beautiful, with a perfect smile of wonderfully crooked baby teeth: a grin that pulled mischievously to one side, as though he were constantly being tugged by pixies who were urging him to run, play, be merry in the Neverland of imagination. His hair was brown. Thick and lustrous, ever windswept in appearance, for the boy was like the wind: never at rest, always on the move, always searching for a place to go next, for something to do. Restless, but not anxious.
No, the man thought, not anxious. He is merely too full of life to stop for even an instant. Like the wind, perhaps if he stopped moving, he would die and that would be the end.
But no chance of that. Even now, when the boy was waiting, his hands were dancing through the air, weaving tiny patterns, conducting silly symphonies of childhood impatience. A touch to his pants, a scratch to his ear, a rub at his cheek. The music his son led was too quiet for the man to hear, but he knew it must be beautiful, for his son was beautiful.
The boy's eyes were blue, like his mother's. They were always moving as well, peering intently into bushes to try and find a lizard, watching the trees for signs of a squirrel, then skipping with a smile across the man's face.
"C'mon, daddy!" shouted the boy, and clapped his hands in excitement. He was five, he was beautiful.
So beautiful, my baby, the man thought again. So lovely, my son. Out loud he laughed, and kicked the soccer ball he held over to his boy. The ball overshot his son slightly, and the child ran after it, small legs pumping with ever-greater speed as he sprinted after the new toy. He laughed, a light merry laugh that warmed the man. The boy was happy, and that was more than enough cause for him to be happy as well.
The mother stood nearby, and the man tore his gaze from his son long enough to look at her for a moment. She stood straight and tall, like a Good Queen from a fairy land. Her hair was black and straight and lustrous. It seemed to pull light in, deep and darker than blackest night. Her skin was as fair as her hair was dark, almost translucent in its purity and perfection. Her lips were thick and full, and always held a cool kiss on one side, and though the whole world could see that the kiss was there, only he was allowed to come and steal it from her.
This the man did often, for he knew that kisses, when stolen by the right person, will only grow back stronger and more fair than before. He had stolen such kisses so many times now that the kisses that remained with her were almost too perfect to bear.
The woman saw him looking at her, and smiled. Her smile was cool, like her kisses. It did not warm the man, but rather refreshed him like a draught of ice water on a hot day. His son threw off heat, his wife touched with cool touches, and the man found himself somewhere in the middle: somewhere perfect.
"You going to stare, or help?" said his wife, and laughed her tinkling laugh, a laugh like a merry bell over a doorway in a small bookstore. Come in, said the laugh, come in and make yourself at home and find my treasures, if you wish.
The man laughed as well. He laughed harder than she, for that was his way, to laugh hard and laugh often. God was easily visible, his son was beautiful, and his wife loved him, so he found it hard to contain what happiness he had. And therefore, when he laughed, it all came rushing out of him in a torrent of mirth. Laughing Paul, some of his friends called him, and he did not mind that because it was true.
He felt something brush his foot. The ball. His son's new soccer ball, given to him this morning, on a day when he was supposed to be in school. But it was his birthday, so the man had taken him out of his kindergarten class at eleven thirty that morning, and brought him here, to the park.
"C'mon, Daddy!" urged his son again.
The man grinned and laughed once more. "I have to help Mommy."
"Then kick one more, 'kay?"
"'Kay, kiddo."
The man booted the soccer ball, and it flew high, over and beyond the boy's head, bouncing softly over grass that was greener than grass had a right to be, and finally settling near the tiny brook that trickled through the park. The boy hooted and whooped, and ran toward the ball.
The man trotted to his lovely wife. She opened her mouth to speak, but before she could, he stole her kiss. It was short and sweet, the way stolen kisses must be, but as quick as he was, as fast as the kiss, by the time it was over he could see that another kiss had already grown to replace the one she had lost. And sure enough, it was lovelier than the one he had stolen.
He would have stolen yet another kiss, but she held a hand against his chest and said, "Later, Casanova. Help me with the cake."
She put a shiny party hat on his head, a cardboard cone with glitter and tinsel that said "Happy Birthday" against a background of bright balloons. A thin elastic cord snapped around his chin, holding the party favor tight against his hair. The man knew he must look silly, but did not care. He could afford to be silly, for his family loved him that way.
He took the knife his wife had offered, and moved to cut the cake. It was a small, simple cake, just as their family was small and simple. But like the family, the cake was sweet, and it was enough for anyone. The boy had already blown his candles out, before insisting that the man play ball with him now, and then leaving chocolate behind without a thought in favor of playing with his daddy.
A bear, the small stuffed guardian that had watched over his son since his first birthday, sat next to the cake. It was the boy's favorite toy. It slumped next to the cake as though exhausted; as though resting from its guard duties.
The man removed the burnt-out candles from the cake, like five steadfast wax soldiers that stood more upright than the Queen's guards at Buckingham Palace, and then sliced the cake in neat, even slices. The last cut went through his son's name.
As he made the incision, the man's neck prickled. The knife cut across his son's name, and an icy chill cut him to the bone. Cool tendrils of fear wrapped themselves around his spine, his hands trembled. Why, he could not say, but the man felt something awful in the wind.
"What is it?" asked his wife.
The man did not answer. He did not know the answer. He only knew that he was suddenly afraid. The day, so bright and crisp only a moment ago, now seemed dark and muffled as by a black cotton sheet. The sun had lost its winter warmth and now hid behind a cloud that had not been in the sky only seconds ago. Gloom descended in the man's heart, and the sky darkened with it.
He realized that the bear was the boy's guardian. It should be with the boy. Without it, the boy was alone. Alone and not safe.
He looked around frantically. It had been less than twenty seconds since he kicked the ball, but he could not see his son near the brook. Where could he be?
The grass was no longer greener than grass had a right to be. It was dark, and the fey sky snatched its brightness and replaced it with a somber tone more appropriate to the season and more frightening to the eye.
The man looked to the sandbox. His boy was not there. The jungle gym stood vacant, a boxy skeleton whose cold bones had been stained to a deep gray by thousands of hands pulling children through its ribcage, gripping its fleshless frame and jumping from rib to rib before sliding down its spine. The teeter totter listed to one side, its wooden plank equally devoid of human touch. The swings drifted slowly back and forth, pushed by the wind or by the phantom touch of ghostly children who wished to play but could not quite find the tangible strength to move the swing to its intended heights. Slowly back and forth, the swings were hypnotic and frightening. But the man pulled his gaze away from their mesmerizing drift.
The man looked to his left, and the tendrils of fear sprouted into full-grown horror. His boy had followed his new ball into the street.
"Sammy!" screamed the man, but the boy did not hear him, or perhaps heard but was too intent upon following his toy to heed the man's call.
The man dropped the knife. It fell to the cake, its tip piercing the spongy softness before the handle also fell down, landing in the perfectly-spread frosting without a sound, but marring the cake with grim hostility. The knife handle lay across the frosting balloons, and its weight had levered up the point of the knife while it was still imbedded in the cake, tearing up a great chunk of the "Happy Birthday" and shredding it beyond repair. The boy's name remained as it had been, with a perfect slice down its center, a single deep incision that the man had made himself.
The man ran to his son, screaming his name. Hundred Pines was not a bustling metropolis, it was a small city near the sea. It was not a heavily congested area, and remained blissfully untouched by the thick traffic jams that congested nearby Los Angeles. There was no car in the street where the boy now ran, but the man knew that something horrible was in the air. Fear powered his legs and his screams.
His boy picked up the ball, and now he apparently heard his father, for he faced the man and waved. He smiled his perfect, crooked-tooth smile, and the man could almost see the fairies pulling at the boy's cheek.
He remembered in that instant that fairies were actually monsters, who would lure children to their deaths in a forest; that fairy tales were horror stories told by parents who wished to frighten their sons and daughters into good behavior. The man knew his life was a fairy tale, and like all fairy tales it had to end in death.
"Son!" he screamed, and his voice came out in burning gasps, choking him even as he yelled. He was one hundred feet away, and there was nothing. His boy was alone, his boy was safe. The grass flattened below his heavy footfalls, bending down moistly with each running step. The man did not know if the grass would rise up again after he passed, such was the force of his speed as he pushed himself to go ever faster.
Horror still draped its vines over him, adding its weight to his own, dragging him down, holding him back.
He was fifty feet away, and there was nothing. His boy was alone, his boy was safe. The sky darkened still further, becoming almost a storm-sky, driving away the light and draping everything in a gray funeral shroud. A chill wind swept along the ground, touching the man's forehead with its icy breath, drying the sweat that had beaded upon his brow. It cooled, but did not invigorate. Rather, it cut him with icy razors, pruning the terror that rode him, making it stronger, pushing him down into the ground. The grass blades flattened beneath him, and did not rise after he passed.
He was thirty feet away, and still there was nothing. His boy was alone, his boy was safe. The child was looking at him with something strange in his eyes, something the man had never seen in them before: fear. And the boy was not moving, he was not moving an inch. He had come to rest, and the man pushed his legs even faster, for his boy was like the summer breeze, and could not safely stay at rest.
"Move, son!" screamed the man. He was twenty feet away, and now there was something. His boy was no longer alone, his son was no longer safe.
A pickup truck came screeching around the bend of the street, oversized wheels screaming with banshee wails as they grasped for traction on a turn taken too fast for safety. The cries of the tires assaulted the man, and time slowed down as he heard the thick gun of the engine. Each turn of the wheels could be clearly discerned by the man in this slow-time where everything moved through the thick syrup that had suddenly drowned the world in its cloying grasp. Only terror sped along at its normal speed, the vines wrapped around the man's neck pulling tighter, choking him with fear.
The man could see each turn of the wheels, each revolution of the tires as the machine hurtled down the street. The truck was a custom job. In bright light it was probably cherry red, bright and cheerful, but in this murky light it looked like blood, dark and arterial. Its tires stood well over three feet high. A lift kit had been installed, jacking the chassis of the truck up even higher. The top of the vehicle was adorned with a roll cage and powerful lights that stood easily ten feet above the ground.
The man's son was not ten feet tall, he was only three feet from toe to crown. He was barely as tall as the tires, and the truck's driver would not be able to see the child.
The man was ten feet away, and his boy was not alone, his son was not safe.
He could dimly hear his wife screaming behind him, the cool kisses fled from her lips, the translucent perfection of her brow undoubtedly marred by horror. He was screaming, too, or thought he was. He could not be sure, for the air, so thick and dim, tried to steal his breath as it pushed against him, trying to keep him from his son. The man heard a noise, a high-pitched whine: brakes being engaged, but too late. The fairies had pulled his boy into the street, urging him to follow his little ball. Now they laughed as the truck driver saw, not the boy standing motionless before the truck, but the man hurtling at his vehicle from the side. The brake's screams increased in pitch and intensity as the truck laid down black tracks of molten rubber, darker swaths on the dark concrete behind.
Time continued its awkward dilation, slowing down even further as the man ran through air that felt thick as mud, clawed through an atmosphere suddenly hostile and unyielding to reach his son. Every detail of the boy's shocked face imprinted itself on the man's mind, an overexposed photograph etched into his cerebrum. Each hair, each pore, each feature and aspect of the boy hung before him with preternatural detail.
The man's fingers stretched forth, stiff and unyielding, only inches away from the boy, only inches away from the oncoming truck. Only inches away, and his boy was not alone, his son was not safe.
The man knew he could not grab his child and run; knew there was no time to pick him up and move him to safety. So he didn't try. His hand twisted up, palm to the child, and he shoved forward with all his strength. He felt his son's soft, unyielding form as his hands contacted shoulder and chest. He pushed with every ounce of his power, using his own forward momentum to add force and speed to the movement.
Centimeters away from the still-onrushing truck, he saw his boy's mouth open in a wide "O" of shock and pain, and then the boy's face was turned away as he spun out of the truck's path, as he flew to safety, propelled not by fairy wings but by his own father's own strong hands. The truck was millimeters away, but his boy was safe.
Time returned to normal speed, then, and the man did not have the opportunity to do more than half-twist as the truck struck him. It smashed into his hip, and the man felt his pelvis disintegrate, fragment into a thousand pieces in his body. Then the truck moved forward still more, an unstoppable juggernaut powered by the irresistible laws of physics and momentum, and the man's spine was wracked by the thrust of the chrome bumper, twisted and bent. His body flew up, but the truck was so high that he never got higher than the grill, his head smashing into the decorative logo, his ear scorched by the hot metal.
Then downward again, the man's trunk was propelled forward and down as the truck finally came to a halt behind him. He did not stop, however, but continued his trajectory with mind-numbing force, hitting the cool concrete before him, bouncing, flipping over, bouncing again, and then all was black.
And then all was pain. His eyes opened, and the man knew he was in a hospital. He could not move, his body utterly unresponsive, as though frozen in ice, or encased in steel. He could only move his eyes, and the miniscule effort required to use the tiny muscles surrounding those orbs was almost too much for him to bear.
His wife was there. Thank God, he thought, for he knew that no matter what happened, he could bear it with his family's help.
But then he saw something that chilled his heart.
The kiss. That cool, refreshing kiss that waited to be stolen from her lips was gone. It was gone, and in its place was only ice and barrenness. His wife's blue eyes flashed, crackled with electricity.
"You killed my son," she said, and then was gone.
She left, and the man was alone in the room, and the lights in the room were dim, and did not kiss him with golden touches like the sun in the park, and his only sky was a white tile ceiling. The man had lost his child, though he did not know how. He had lost his wife, for her kisses were gone. He was alone, and could not even weep, for his eyes were too tired for tears.
He closed his eyes, and wished for death, and knew that God was dead, and that his wish would not be granted.
Part One: The Calm Before
Dreams brought me to this catacomb
Dank necropolis breathing heavy rot
Through sable soil moldering with age.
Dreams unspeakable - drawn from ancient tomes,
Dark whisperings - brought me here. I wait, caught
Between sleep and madness - in this close cage.
- ...Is Death
Cold beyond white fields it stands,
Empty, lone, outlined
With grey, landscape winter-bland,
Blind façade unlined
By twisted, dead ivy strands.
- In the House Beyond the Field
***
COLD
***
Paul Wiseman stared out between the bars on his window, and shivered.
It was cold outside the Crane Institute. Freezing, in fact. Snow draped the ground in a thick blanket that not only stole all warmth from his view, but somehow added yet another layer of frost to his heart.
A storm was coming.
Sammy was gone.
He momentarily saw his boy's beautiful eyes, his son's crooked smile. Then the vision disappeared, as though the snow outside had the ability to not only blind the eyes, but to cloud the mind. Paul believed that was entirely possible, so thick was the white blanket of frozen water.
This part of the world was far from the temperate zones of southern California, and winter here was more than just a date on the calendar. Unlike the "seasons" of Hundred Pines near the Pacific Ocean, the seasons in Dayton County, Montana, were real things, beautiful, ever-changing, potentially deadly. Snow was not something made by machines on a mountain, it was a constant companion from as early as August, and could remain on the ground as late as April or even May. It could soothe the soul with its spare beauty, or could kill the body with its biting touch.
Once, a few days before Paul had come to this place, he had found a deer on the side of the road. It was dead, but no marks, either from gunshots or from impact with a passing car, were visible on its coat. When Paul had put forth his hand to touch the animal, he felt only an unyielding shape, rather than the soft, pliant form of death. The deer had frozen to death, and lay as a block of ice beside the country highway.
The snow was a constant companion, but not necessarily a friend.
Paul sat down on his small chair. The room he spent most of his time in was as small and Spartan as any other cell in this massive penitentiary: only a few items were personal in nature. The rest had been given him upon his entering this institution, and would be taken from him if and when he left.
He did not know when that would be. Some days he longed to walk out of this place. Others days he knew it was the only comfort he had left, to know that at least he belonged somewhere. Those were the dark days, the black days, the days when he felt bitterness rising up within him like a bilious, hideous beast. Those were the days he missed Sammy, and missed the life he had once led.
A picture of his boy sat nearby. A picture from a happier time, the boy clutching at his bear, the bear that had protected him for so many years until a day when it rested for just a moment...and the moment was just a moment too long.
Paul took the picture in trembling hands, and ran his fingers slowly over the glass protecting the photo from the elements. The glass was smudged and smeared, for he often touched it in this manner, as though the frame were a talisman, a magic lamp that could grant wishes if properly rubbed.
It was not, of course, and Paul knew it. Because if it had been possessed of such powers, he would long ago have been returned to the company of his son.
He put the frame down and stared out the window. The sky was gray, thick, roiling. Pregnant storm clouds hung low, and he knew it was only a matter of time before the threatened storm began. When it did, life would get very dangerous around this place. It always did during a storm. The inmates of any prison could be goaded into violence by the electricity of a severe storm, but in this place it was worse than that.
The Crane Institute was a prison, but its inmates were far from being run-of-the-mill thugs or robbers. Severe weather of any kind always urged the inhabitants of this singular fortress into worse-than-usual activity levels. And considering that most of them were people the Menendez brothers would have felt uncomfortable around, that was saying a lot.
Still, for Paul the storm and its attendant dangers were of only secondary importance. As much as he dreaded the possible threats to life and limb that were coming, he dreaded the conversation he was about to have still more.
Marsha. He was going to have to call her, he knew. Neither he nor she wanted the call to happen, but both knew it would. He was aware of her deep hatred of him, and his own self-revulsion reared up powerfully whenever he spoke to her. Sometimes, he could almost forget what had happened. His son was gone, but occasionally he could forget that fact as he buried himself in work and study and survival. He could never forget when he was speaking to Marsha, though. She reminded him without speaking of what had happened, of what he had done.
Of the fact that he had killed their son.
Paul hitched in his breath, drawing the cold air of this frigid room deep into his lungs, feeling the chill seep deeply into his bones before he exhaled. His fingers tingled in the cold, but were not – unfortunately – too numb to make the call.
He picked up the telephone that sat on his desk and dialed the number. The dial tone went through immediately, which was something of a surprise and a disappointment: Paul had been hoping that phone communications would be knocked out by now. It would have been a good excuse. But no, the dial tone was strong and clear. One, two, three, four rings and then Marsha's answering machine picked up.
"Leave . . . a . . . message," said the machine, its sexless tones as perfectly straight and cheerless as his ex-wife's smiles. Marsha never recorded her own messages. Normally the phone message would have bothered Paul, would have made him feel strangely uncomfortable with its lack of humanity. Today, however, the voice was sweet to him. Marsha wasn't home, so the discomfort he felt on this day would not be sharpened even more by her silent remonstrances.
The machine beeped. "Hi, Marsha, it's me," he said. It had been almost five years, but he continued to announce himself that way every time he spoke to her. She would not – could not – ever forget his voice, any more than he would ever forget hers. "It's Sammy's birthday," he continued. "You're probably at the cemetery, but I . . . I just wanted to call and see how you are. It's been awhile."
That last sentence sounded lame, even to his own ears. It had indeed been awhile. Exactly one year, in fact. Since Sammy's last birthday. He strove to think of something that would make up for his feeble speech, but all he could think to say was, "The storm might keep me here for a day or two, but I'll call again when I get back home if I don't hear from you before then."
Paul's mouth hung open for another moment, as though trying to push out a few more words, but nothing came. At last he closed his mouth and then hung up the phone. He missed the cradle, pinching his finger between the receiver and the base. The cold air made the contact more painful, and he cried out slightly, slipping his finger into his mouth and sucking it for a moment before hopping up onto his desk.
He stood and unlatched the large vent on the ceiling. The heating vent was almost two feet across, designed to deliver massive amounts of heat to counteract the Arctic temperatures outside. Currently, however, it was doing nothing, a gawking hole in his ceiling that served no purpose except to provide plenty of comfortable space for rats to breed.
The vent's removal exposed a dark void. Paul knew from experience that the hole led to a large duct which wound throughout the staff compound, making its way gradually to the basement, where a gas heater was supposed to work around the clock to keep everyone from freezing to death.
"Hey," he shouted into dark maw above him. "How about some heat? I'm getting hypothermia!"
He waited a moment, then repeated, "It's too damn cold, I'm freezing! You hear me?"
A moment later, a voice responded to his cries: "Don't get your panties in a knot!"
The voice belonged to Vincent, who was supposed to be in the basement fixing the heater. Apparently that was what he was doing, because the heating ducts carried sound from the basement like Dixie cups and string. Paul thought about asking how long it was going to be before the prison had heat again, but realized that Vincent's repairs would not be hurried along by such needless verbiage. The guard who doubled as a general maintenance technician was operating under the same pressure they all felt: heat would mean the difference between life and death over the next few days.
So Paul stepped down off his desk. He looked at the nameplate that sat on the table: "Dr. Paul Wiseman, chief of staff." Paul almost laughed when he saw that. Such a fancy title, he thought, considering that I'm little more than an inmate myself. Don't want to stay, but can't leave. Chief of staff indeed.
He actually did chuckle a bit, but the sound was cheerless. Laughter was not a thing that would come easy on a day like today. The storm was too close, and the past was all-too present.
He looked again at the picture of his son.
"Happy birthday, kiddo," he said. "I love you, you know?"
His son's eyes peered back at him from behind the glass. As always, though, there was no reply to Paul's words. He stared for a long moment at the photo, then turned it face-down next to his overturned nameplate.
He pulled a post-it note from under a pile of papers on his desk. "No reply from Hales, call again," it said.
Paul had never met Jack Hales in person. The actual hiring of guards was not something he was generally involved in, but Paul did have to train them when they arrived, so he knew that Hales was scheduled to start work today. Normally that would be a good thing, but today that was bad news.
The prison was a dangerous, even deadly place. And the level of danger went up exponentially during severe storms, so now would not be a good time to break in new help. Paul had left several messages for the man over the last few days, telling him not to come in until further notice, but had not received any return calls to acknowledge his instructions.
He quickly dialed the new employee's number again. As before, the machine picked up after only two rings. "Hi," said a pleasant young baritone. "This is Jack. Leave a message or I'll kill you."
Paul smiled tightly. "Mr. Hales," he said after the beep, "This is Dr. Wiseman, the chief of staff and head psychiatrist at the Crane Institute. I hope you've gotten my preceding messages, but haven't yet heard back from you. We'll probably lose communications here in the next few hours, so someone from the Institute will call you to reschedule your orientation as soon as the weather permits. Maybe late tomorrow or the next day. I probably won't be able to call again before the white-out hits, so I'll have to assume you've gotten my messages."
As if to reinforce his guess that communications with the outside world would soon be lost, a sudden gust hit his window. The double-paned glass shook and rattled slightly, and when the quivering died down the low ghost-whistle of the wind could still be heard clearly.
A "white-out" was what the prison staff called a storm that knocked power and phone capability. This one coming up looked like it would also probably keep them from having CB capability, either. Cell-phones were also not an option, as apparently Ma Bell had decided a population that averaged one eighth of a person per square mile wasn't enough to make providing coverage cost-effective. The prison was about to be effectively cut off from the rest of the world, and Paul didn't need some new guy coming in and getting himself or anyone else killed.
He continued the message. "So like I say, hopefully you've gotten my messages. Just settle down and enjoy a last day off, and we'll be in contact soon. Bye." Paul hung up the receiver, this time managing not to smash his fingers in the process, and once again looked out the window. The bars were still there, but somehow he felt less safe than he usually did; more exposed. It was the storm, he knew. Hard to feel safe when you were so completely and utterly at the mercy of mother nature. The banshee wind moaned slightly, a deep song of ice and terror.
The storm was coming.
***
TIO
***
Rachel de los Santos Taylor lay on the bed and looked up at her husband.
Tommy Taylor was a big man, thick and powerful from years working on construction crews, operating heavy rigs and digging ditches. His wrists were almost thicker than her upper arms, and he could easily wrap one hand around her neck. He had done that often when they were dating, and she had thrilled at the warmth of his touch, and at the time his strength had provided her with a sense of security and protection she had not felt since she was a young child.
Rachel's parents were immigrants. They came to the United States illegally when she was only four years old, leaving their small town in Mexico on foot and gradually traveling to the border and crossing over with her and her brother Jorge in tow. They had eked a bare existence for several years, her father taking whatever jobs he could and her mother doing the same. In Mexico they had been fairly educated people: both were teachers at the local school. In the United States, however, they were little more than animals, forced to do the demeaning work that no employer could convince a white person to do.
Still, neither of them complained, not even on the day when her father broke his back. He was picking oranges in one of the fields outside San Diego, standing on a rickety ladder that had probably been carved out of balsa wood by some miserly ladder-maker in the mid eighteen hundreds. The ladder snapped beneath him, cracking to pieces under his weight and sending him plummeting to the ground below. He landed on a root, fracturing three vertebrae.
Suddenly the family had even less income, and hospital bills they had no hope of paying. Rachel – only she was not Rachel then, but Raquel – had vivid memories of her mother going to the bathroom, the only semi-private place in the studio apartment where the family stayed. Mother would spend hours in that room, flushing the toilet over and over again in an effort to cover up the sound of her weeping. But of course in that room in the barrio, where the walls were so thin that they cracked under the weight of the roaches that crawled on them, mere flushing of a toilet could not hope to hide the devastating sound of a mother's tears.
Soon it looked though the family would have to flee again, but this time they would be running back to Mexico. The bills were coming faster and faster, and finally there was no more money, no job, no hope.
That was why Tío had seemed like such a blessing to the family. Miguel was Raquel's uncle, her mother's youngest brother. He was living in Los Angeles, and had made money running a Xeroxing business, servicing lawyers and architects, people who needed massive amounts of documentation copied and processed. Enough money, in fact, that he offered to pay off their hospital bills and move them out to Los Angeles to live with him.
Of course, Raquel's parents accepted his generous offer, and the family moved to the City of Angels to start over yet again. Her father helped Miguel in the office however he could, Mother worked at a fast food establishment, and all was perfect. For a while, at least.
When things changed, it was very gradual. Raquel would be playing with Jorge, and Miguel would come into her room and watch them. It made her feel safe and protected, to have her big strong uncle watching over them – watching over her – so very closely. Soon, he came into the room to play, too. And after they were finished playing, he would sweep them into his arms, hold them tight, and whisper that he loved them. "Les quiero," he would say, and kiss them.
One day, Raquel was playing alone. Jorge was at the office with her father, and she was playing with her dolls, dressing them, and gradually became aware that Miguel was watching her.
"Hello, tío," she said.
"Hola, linda," he replied. Hello beautiful.
He sat by her as always, and played with her as she made believe that her dolls were famous movie stars come to spend the day with her. Before long, however, Miguel stopped playing. He stared at her, then said he was tired, and sat back against her bed, the bed he had purchased for her when they moved in.
He pulled her to him, and held her, and said, "Te quiero," as he had always done. But this time, the words left her cold inside. His touch was different, too. His hands and arms were sweaty, and his breath, usually smelling pleasantly of mint and coffee, was foul.
He kissed her then, not on the cheek, but on the lips. "Te quiero," he whispered again. It meant "I love you." Then he said, "Te amo," which also meant "I love you." But it was strange to hear those words. The richly emotive language of Spanish had many different words for love, and the ones he had chosen were generally reserved for lovers, for passionate moments that a girl Raquel's age could not yet really comprehend.
"I love you, my lover," was the feel of his words.
But it wasn't love. He was different now, and from that day forth Raquel noticed him more and more, standing in her doorway, watching her play. His kisses were more frequent, his touches more hesitant and yet somehow more intrusive. The pattern continued until she was eight, and at last he came to her room on a night no one else was home. He came to her, and held her, and then hurt her in a way she had never dreamed possible, proclaiming his love all the while, and then telling her that if she told anyone of what had happened, she would burn forever en el infierno, in hell, and her parents and she would be sent back to Mexico, and Jorge sold as a slave to rich Americans.
She told no one. Her father died when she was ten, and she told no one. She turned twelve, and took Holy Communion at the church, and felt the burning shame of impurity before God, but told no one. Finally, when she was sixteen, and had been raped and molested repeatedly for almost a decade, Miguel was killed with her mother in a car crash. She wept, for her mother was gone, but she also laughed on the night of the funeral, for she could sleep at last without fear that he would come to her bed before the night was over.
Soon after that, she petitioned for adult status, got Jorge put under her legal guardianship, and used the money she received as a beneficiary under Miguel's life insurance policy to move them as far as she could from the house that she had suffered in for most of her life. She moved to Montana, for no other reason than that it was far away from Los Angeles. She no longer believed in angels, and so could not live in a city named for them.
She came with Jorge, who went through high school and college and eventually got a job working as a security guard at the Crane Institute, a prison for crazies thirty miles away from the small town of Stonetree, where she lived. She changed her name to Rachel, and vowed she would have a new life, a good life.
She met Tommy, who could wrap his hand around her neck and make her feel safe. She married him, because he was good and kind, and promised to love her forever.
And then one day she came home and found that he had lost his job. He was drunk, and swaying, and his breath stank, and his hands were sweaty as he clumsily tried to take off her clothes, and when she resisted, he hit her.
Both of them were surprised, and his eyes filled with tears. He sank to his knees and begged her forgiveness and promised it would never happen again. But it did. More and more often, and now she looked up at him, looming over her as she lay on the bed, and wondered if this would be the time that he finally killed her.
One of his fingers, short and thick, powerful appendages that were as heavy and hard as hammerheads, pointed at her. He weaved a bit as he prepared to speak, and when he did, it was in that slurred voice that she now knew so well.
"You never, ever touch my wallet," he said. His eyes shone dully, like lights covered in Vaseline.
"I'm sorry," Rachel whispered. "So sorry, I didn't mean anything. Just the landlord came and you were asleep and I didn't have the mon -"
Tommy lifted his hand. Rachel cringed as best she could, a small cry escaping her lips. She wanted to stand up to him, to fight back. But every time she tried, she thought she could hear her uncle, standing behind her, whispering, "Te quiero, te amo," and her knees would go weak. She was powerless against men like this, men who would hurt you for their pleasure, who would use you and throw you away at a whim. And so she was powerless against all men. She hated it, but all she could do was cry.
"Shut up," said Tommy. His voice was thick, he was even more drunk than usual, it seemed. Rachel closed her eyes, and would have prayed if she thought it would do any good. But the saints and the virgin were long dead, and God no longer listened to prayers, if ever he had. So instead she tried to think of nothing, of a darkness so perfect and absolute that she could hide in it and never be found.
"What're you lookin' at?" said Tommy.
That made no sense to Rachel, but then she realized who Tommy was talking to. Her eyes snapped open, no longer merely frightened now but panicked as she realized that Becky was watching them from the doorway.
Her daughter was dark of hair and skin, like her mother. She was strong and beautiful, too, with eyes so large and luminous that they engendered instant affection in nearly everyone who met her. She was only eight years old, but her eyes were wise.
Now, however, Rachel could see that her daughter's lovely eyes were clouded with fear as she watched Tommy beating her: as she watched her father hurting her mother.
"You hear me?" said Tommy, his voice growing in volume and raising in pitch. His drunken anger was quickly becoming rage. "What are you lookin' at?"
Becky did not answer, but instead ran out of the room, no doubt trying to get away from the nightmare that she lived in daily.
Just like me, thought Rachel. Becky is just like her mother, living in hell with no one to protect her.
She looked back at Tommy. His nostrils were flaring and his hands tightened into thick fists. He stepped away from Rachel, swiveling to face the doorway their daughter had run through.
"Wh . . . what are you doing?" asked Rachel.
Tommy glanced back at her. He smiled at her, and the smile was almost tender. That frightened Rachel more than anything: he was growing so cruel that he no longer felt guilt at his abuses, merely pleasure and satisfaction.
"Shut your face, woman," he said dreamily. He swayed again, then took a step toward the door.
"Where are you going?" she said.
Tommy continued smiling as he turned back to her. He flipped her over, and she felt his belt smash against her back. She cried out, bit her lip to keep from screaming, and felt blood run across her tongue.
Three hard whips with his belt, and she felt skin ripping off her back. She cried, and the salt of her tears mingled with the salty blood on her lip.
"When I tell you to shut your face, you do it," he said.
She rolled over agonizingly, turning back to face him, her fear at what would come next overcoming the terror she felt at seeing his face. She did not speak, but he chose to answer her earlier question.
"Where am I going?" he said. His smile grew even wider, his eyes grew dreamy, (and she could hear Miguel in her mind, saying, "Te amo") as Tommy said, "I'm going to teach our daughter a lesson in manners."
***
HEATER
***
Paul walked down the stairs, clanking heavily on the metal plates beneath his feet, and entered the basement. He had taken no particular pains to mask his entry, walking heavily the entire way, but in spite of his lack of stealth, the basement's two other occupants were apparently unaware of him.
Vincent Marcuzzi was laying on the floor, the upper half of his body inside the ventilation shaft that opened into the basement at floor level. Donald Hicks stood nearby, his back to the other guard, tightening a gauge on the huge gas heater that took up nearly one quarter of the basement space.
Before Paul could speak and announce his presence to the two men, Vincent's voice, high and whining, emerged from the shaft where he had ensconced himself. "Mr. Smartypants should try working for a change. That'd warm Wiseman up without us having to be stuck in this hole."
Without turning around, Donald mumbled, "He's working, Vince."
"Right. One day, Don, Mr. Ph.D. is gonna need us for something more important than fixing the heater. And on that day I'm gonna enjoy laughing in his face and then walking out on him."
There was a moment of silence, and then Paul heard a high-pitched shriek and Vincent threw himself backward out of the vent shaft, flopping like a trout on the concrete floor. His contortions would have been funny had not they been so obviously the product of terror. Even so, his coworker obviously found them hysterical, for Donald doubled over in silent laughter.
Donald was a short man, this around the middle, seeming almost as wide as he was tall, with a black mustache that didn't match the auburn tones of his hair. Paul remembered asking him about it once, inquiring whether it was dyed that color. Donald had laughed and said slowly, "My gramps was Irish, go figure," leaving Paul without a solid answer.
That was not an atypical response for Donald, as Paul came to learn. If two words could describe Donald, they would be round and slow. Round of body, slow to speak. Donald spoke so slowly and so little, in fact, that Paul had thought for a time that Donald had a developmental disability, finally dismissing the theory for the simple reason that no one with such a challenge could have remained as long at The Loon as Donald – over a decade; only Hip-Hop and Dr. Crane had been here longer – and survived. Finally, only last year, Paul had discovered something that explained three things about Donald: his almost painfully retiring manner, his slow speech, and his thick black mustache.
While doing a routine check on some old paperwork, Paul had discovered that Donald had been born with both a cleft lip and a cleft palate. Either defect alone was not medically strange: just around one in seven hundred people had some degree of cleft lip or cleft palate. But the degree to which the roof of Donald's mouth had been unfinished and deformed had been unusually severe. Whereas most people with the condition had a slight notch in their lips, or the roofs of their mouths had a small gap, Donald had been born with a lip that was split in completely in half, only coming together at his nose. The soft roof of his mouth had also had a fissure that ran its length, a potentially dangerous physical condition that often led to death in less-developed countries.
According to the medical papers that were a part of his personnel file, Donald had had to undergo over a dozen major and minor surgeries: sewing the lips and mouth together properly, skin grafts, even a rhinoplasty to repair the parts of Donald's nose that were affected by the condition. As a result, Donald had not spoken at all until he was six, and only after a decade of speech therapy had he managed to speak well.
With a condition such as his, one that was visible, audible, and – to many people – highly disturbing, Paul imagined that Donald had likely been the brunt of many unkind words at school and perhaps even in his home. Small surprise, then, that he had grown a mustache to cover the scars, and that he was still reticent to speak.
At least Donald would speak to him, however. Not so Vincent, who obviously resented Paul for reasons he had never been able to discern. Vincent was in his late twenties, a clean-cut Italian who tried to exude Mob-boss toughness. However, that tough projection ultimately petered out into the false bravado of a coward. Paul didn't like Vincent, and the feeling was mutual. In spades.
Now, however, Vincent's wrath was not focused on Paul, but on Donald, who still laughed his near-silent laugh as Vincent got to his feet and dusted off his uniform.
"Shut up," hissed Vincent. He beat at his trousers, sending clouds of dust into the air. The dust motes hung suspended in the dim light of the basement, then slowly floated downward to the floor. "Goddam rats hibernating in the vents. Scared shit out of me."
Donald slowly stopped laughing, and said the longest sentence Paul had ever heard him utter: "Can't blame 'em, Vince: the air shafts are the warmest place around."
Donald turned back to the heater, chuckling again as he put the wrench back to the valve he had been working on before Vincent began his frantic wormcrawl across the floor. Paul, still unobserved by the two men, saw Vincent open his mouth – no doubt to say something singularly nasty. But instead of speaking, he shocked Paul by screaming semi-hysterically and launching himself physically at Donald. Vincent body-checked the older man, and the two went down in a thrashing pile.
Paul felt himself travel the distance between the two men in an instant. He had semi-consciously expected Vincent to snap at some point, but had not expected that he would choose Donald – the only person who seemed to genuinely like the Mafia wannabe – as his object of attack when it happened.
Paul reached down and yanked Vincent upward by the collar of his jacket. He expected to get dragged down into the fight, but Vincent came up without resistance, surprisingly light under Paul's pull.
"Shitforbrains!" yelled Vincent.
"Sorry, sorry, sorry," Donald was mumbling, still laying on the ground with a stunned look on his face.
"Hey!" shouted Paul. Vincent didn't seem to hear him.
"Stupid sonofa –" said Vincent.
"HEY!" Paul cut him off with what was almost a shriek. He felt himself grow enraged. In the back of his mind he knew that thinking about Donald as a child had made him think of Sammy again, of his own son who would have been strong and bright and good and who would never have made fun of a child like Donald. In the back of his mind he knew that he was not nearly as angry at Vincent as he was at the universe; at God. But he couldn't grab God, couldn't pull God up by His shirt collar and throttle Him a bit, couldn't shout at His face and see shock in His eyes.
He could do those things to Vincent though.
"What the hell are you doing, Marcuzzi?" Paul hollered, quietly reveling at the hint of fear he saw in the man's eyes. Paul normally didn't even raise his voice, let alone scream like this. It had to be a surprise to Vincent Marcuzzi that there was someone else at The Loon who could match his vocal ferocity. "You want me to kick your ass out into the snow?"
Vincent blinked, and Paul thought he looked unsure: as though he couldn't comprehend why Paul could possibly be yelling at him.
Just like any other bully, thought Paul. The universe revolves around you, Vincent, doesn't it? At least in your head.
Then Paul's own universe tilted as comprehension came into Vincent's eyes and the younger man screamed back at him, "Fine, you jackass! Next time I'll just let dumb Donald blow us up!"
Paul felt his grip loosen of its own accord. "What?" he said.
Vincent pulled his jacket out of Paul's slack fingers with a too-violent jerk. Paul felt one of his fingers twist, and grunted. It felt like Vincent's explosive movement had probably just sprained one of Paul's fingers.
But Paul didn't have a chance to say anything. Vincent glared down at Donald, who was still cringing on the basement floor. Then Vincent murmured, "Idiot," before turning to a large red valve on the side of the heater that Donald had been about to start working on. Marcuzzi turned the valve a quarter turn. "You turn off the gas before you work on the pipe, Don," he said in a quietly angry voice.
"Sorry," mumbled Donald, clearly cowed by his friend's anger.
"More sorry if a spark flew down here," answered Vincent. Then the young man turned to Paul. "Or didn't you know that, Mr. Ph.D.?"
"Know what?" snapped Paul.
Vincent pointed at the red lever. "I'll say it in Smartypants language so you can understand: gas main. Gas main plus spark on main heater equals ka-boom."
Paul glared back at Vincent for a moment, but his heart was no longer in it. The sudden rage that had gripped him had passed as quickly as it came. Leaving behind only…
(Grief. Sadness. Pain. Sammy is dead. I killed my son.)
…a sense of exhaustion. He didn't want to deal with Vincent. Not now. Especially not when the man had just stopped Donald from potentially blowing them all to pieces. Vincent-as-hero was not an image that Paul wanted to contemplate.
Paul turned away from the two men.
"What, leaving so soon?" snapped Vincent. "Why don't you stick around for a while? Maybe you and dumb Donald here can find some new and interesting way to kill everyone. Whaddya say?"
Paul sighed. "Not today, Vincent," he said.
"'Not today' what?" retorted the other man. Without waiting for a response, he turned to Donald and pulled the man to his feet. "Get up, Don," he hissed. Then turned back to Paul again, demanding a reply with an impudent, "Well?"
"Just not today," said Paul again.
He walked away from the two men, ignoring Vincent's whisper of "Thanks for the visit, Dr. Smartypants" and Donald's too-quiet-to-hear reply.
The men went back to their work as Paul tramped back up the metal stairs to the main level. Warm air suddenly began blasting out of the nearest vent as he reached the hallway. But Paul didn't feel warmed by it. A chill crept through his bones, as real and as cold as the collected snow outside.
I killed Sammy.
***
LATE
***
Jacky Hales cursed as his tires lost traction for the umpteenth time. The wheel spun beneath his hands and the car lurched sickeningly to one side before he was able to tighten his grip and regain a modicum of control. Not for the first time, he wished he could afford a big four-wheel-drive sport utility vehicle. Maybe a Lincoln Navigator or a Ford Expedition. Instead, however, he was stuck in his 1995 Toyota Corolla, which weighed about seven pounds when wet and provided almost enough traction to stay on the road. Almost.
It wasn't snowing, not yet, but in spite of that fact, snow was all the Jacky could see. The featureless terrain stretched endlessly from horizon to horizon, nothing apparent on this wasteland but single shroud of snow, which coated everything and left all hidden and mysterious.