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THE NEW DAY’S SUN peers out over the
rippling ocean water, its light transforming the waves into an army of wild
horses that pound the shore’s pristine sand. It is so bright that it seems as
if the days will go on like this forever.
From the rear of this gleaming white
landscape rises a sheer cliff. A young girl stands on its precipice, the wind
causing her long red hair to flutter. She gazes out at the deceptively barren
sea, drinking in the wonder of its unknown treasures.
This girl of fourteen knows little
more than the island kingdom she calls home. She was just a baby, an untapped
vessel, when she and her clan arrived. This thought causes her mind to wander.
Though she was too young to remember, the stories her Teacher has told her
paint a vivid picture.
They were delivered to paradise on a
single ship, fifty-four individuals of varying backgrounds, landing on this
very beach. They were alone and afraid, with nothing but their thoughts and
ambition to surge them through each passing day. Yet in spite of their
isolation and the struggle their civilized brains experienced in trying to
adapt to an uncivilized realm, they managed.
The isolation lifted when the others
came. Ship after ship—some large fishing boats like their own, some nothing
more than rafts—drifted in from every direction, lured to Eden
Teacher is full of such
wisdom-filled nuggets.
The young girl licks her lips and
turns toward the docks at the far end of the beach, nestled in a rocky inlet. Vast
arrays of seafaring vessels are anchored there, bobbing up and down with the
waves, just as they have for thirteen years. People hustle about on the rickety
boards, loading the ships with crates of supplies. She sighs, knowing they
won’t aimlessly drift for much longer. She is going to miss this place.
A pair of heavy, comforting hands
fall on her shoulders and she turns around. The two most important people in
her life stand before her, gazing down with loving adoration.
“Hi Mom, hi Dad,” she says.
“Hey there, Izzy,” her father
replies. He bends down and embraces her. His hold is tight but comforting, and
it tells her she doesn’t need to be alone, that she can concede to her doubts
and let someone else be strong for her. She can’t help but think it’s the last
time she’ll feel this way.
Her mother takes her left hand, her
father her right, and together they walk along the sandy path that leads down
the slope of the cliff. At the base the land flattens out. They wander through
a valley where domiciles constructed from palm trees and tropical pines form
the foundation of what had become their town—one of fifteen such settlements
that pepper the island’s surface. This, too, she will miss.
Her mother squeezes her hand. The
girl can sense she is nervous, and with good reason. This is her daughter’s
moment of truth, her time to shine or die trying. No one can blame her for
this, for the girl, herself, is petrified.
She knows what will happen next—or
at least has a vague notion. She has been trained since birth for the coming
events. She understands her place and what she must do. But an empty feeling
eats away at her just the same, a basin of loneliness and distrust that begs to
be satisfied. The looks on the faces of those they pass don’t help. Though she loves her people she can’t help
but feel disdain, as well. They stare at her with equal parts awe and fear, as
if she is some odd and frightening creature that only just now landed in their
midst. She feels alone and vulnerable, distant from their lives and futures,
even though, as Teacher and Mother have told her, their future lies solely with
her. It is a tedious incongruity she has to bear, but she doesn’t have to like
it.
The family reaches the town’s
boundary and they head across the dock. On either side of the wooden planks,
people are busy readying the ships that rest there for launch. At the end of
the pier her father stops and nods to the large, gruff man who stands at the
helm of the lead vessel. The large man’s own daughter stands next to him, four
years Izzy’s elder and her friend for as long as she can remember. Her hair is
short, curly, and brown. The girl on the boat sighs and waves, trying to
stretch her mouth into a smile, and this causes Izzy’s spirits to lift. There
is no apprehension in her friend’s expression as she clings to her father’s
arm, only hope and fear for her safety.
The big man turns to Izzy’s father
then raises his hand to those standing on the deck. Ropes are cast aside and
sails are lifted. The large man—the father of her best friend—offers Izzy’s
father a salute with two fingers, which her father returns. They begin to move
away from the dock, flowing toward the mouth of the inlet. One after another
the boats drift into the open water in a sluggish procession of faith.
Izzy stands with her parents and
watches the people, her friends and neighbors and family, edge out of the bay. Her
mother touches her arm lightly and leads her to the large cabin at the head of
the pier. They enter and the girl spots Teacher, surrounded by a group of very
nervous-looking men. She tries to grin at him, but the intensity on his face
says this is not a time for niceties. Instead he touches his forehead with a
single finger and barks at those within the cabin to disperse, which they do,
and quickly, leaving behind a wake of dust and the echo of their footfalls. Teacher
is the last to leave. His lip quivers as his eyes make contact with hers.
She has never seen Teacher scared. It
isn’t a pretty sight.
They are finally alone. “Are you
ready, Izzy?” her father asks. Izzy gazes at him and nods. He looks tortured
and frightened, yet the compassion he gives her is palpable. She knows he loves
her more than anything in the world, even mother. All of which makes what he
now has to sacrifice all the more disheartening.
“The lookout gave the signal,” he
says. “There’re ships approaching from the other side of the island. Big ones.
We have to go. It’s time.”
She leans forward and kisses him on
the lips. When she pulls back there are tears in his eyes. She wants to tell
him not to worry, that all will be fine, but she can’t. There are no guarantees
for them any longer. This she understands completely.
They exit the hut, this tight-knit
family of three, and allow the rising sun to bathe them for what might be the
last time. The girl closes her eyes and steps ahead of her parents, allowing
the brisk wind to make puppet strings of her hair. She doesn’t know what the
day’s conclusion will be, but takes solace in the fact that, no matter the
outcome, the nightmares will stop. The empty feeling in her gullet will
disappear and the voices in her head will cease their chatter. She will be
whole for the first time, or she will be dust.
Either way, this translates to
peace.
CHAPTER 1
THE DISCOVERY
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN you’re not coming,
James?”
“Sorry, Ken,” the man on the other
end of the phone said. “Cynthia’s having contractions.”
Ken grunted. “Contractions? She’s
not due for another month. It’s most likely false labor. Don’t go.”
“Sorry, bloke, but she wants me home,
so our plan’s taken a bit of a diversion.”
“That’s just fantastic.”
“Again, I apologize, Ken. Listen, I’m
at the airport right now. Flight’s getting ready to take off. I have to go.”
“Fine. Call me when you land. What’s
that, nine hours from now?”
“I think.”
“So I should be done with the
inspection by then.”
“You’re going ahead with it anyway?”
“Of course. I’m not going to miss the
opportunity of a lifetime.”
“Very well. Be careful. And wish me
luck.”
“Why?”
“The only flights to London I could
get on such short notice land in Gatwick.”
Ken snapped his cell phone shut
without laughing, wiped sweat from his forehead, and checked his watch. It was
nine o’clock in the morning, and it had to be close to a hundred degrees
already. Steam rose from the adobe buildings lining the dirt road. There were
no adults to be found, but a great many children had gathered, playing
stickball and eyeing him with suspicion. He stood out in this impoverished sea
of brown flesh with his lily-white skin, sandy blonde hair, and sweat-covered
khaki shorts. He puffed out his cheeks and checked his watch again. Raul—the
guide hired to bring he and James to the excavation site—was ten minutes late. The
way people seemed to lack any respect for punctuality and the plans of others
annoyed Ken more than anything, and that included associates who backed out of
once-in-a-lifetime opportunities.
An archeologist by trade and
cultural anthropologist by passion, Dr. Ken Trudeau had spent much of the past
twenty-five years traversing the globe, hoping to further his understanding of
cultures long lost to the rest of the civilized world. He scoured most every
corner of Europe and Asia, and even spent a few years residing among the
aboriginal tribes of New
Guinea
Yet, despite all he’d seen, all he’d
experienced, what lay ahead of him now was the culmination of a dream.
The ancient Mayans were Ken’s
obsession, and had been for the majority of his forty-seven years. The sudden
disappearance of their culture became the study that intrigued him most. With
their virtually preternatural understanding of astronomy and the passage of
time, which far exceeded the erudition of their contemporaries, it seemed
unlikely that they would suddenly up and vanish. What happened? Did famine
overtake them? Disease? Did the rivers overrun and flood the land, leaving them
no other choice but to scatter and integrate into surrounding cultures? To
these queries Ken still found himself in the dark, waiting for someone to shine
a beacon and draw him forward.
That beacon was news of the
excavation.
In an archetypal flash of irony, an
underground fissure had been uncovered when the Honduran government blasted
through the rainforest in order to construct a new freeway that would lead to a
soon-to-be-completed eastern waterway. After local scientists poked their noses
around, it was discovered the chasm led to the interior of an ancient Mayan
temple. It was a priceless piece of history, found during man’s attempt to wipe
the past from the face of the earth in the name of urban development.
The popular theory was that the
temple had been swallowed by the earth in the aftermath of some great
earthquake, but Ken didn’t care about the reasons for its existence. That it
existed at all was all that mattered to him. It served as the possible answer
to his dreams. He smiled at the thought.
A tan Jeep tore around the corner,
almost striking the stickball-playing children and careening into a fruit
seller’s cart. Mangoes and oranges flew through the air, splattering when they
hit the ground. The man behind the wheel of the Jeep wore an expression on his
face that reeked of youthful ineptitude. He waved at Ken with one hand and spun
the wheel with the other. The automobile screeched to a halt curbside, fifteen
feet away.
“Hola, doctor,” Raul slurred when the
vehicle stopped rocking. Ken approached it. The man’s body odor stunk of stale
liquor. “Where’s the other one?”
“You’re late,” Ken snapped, “and it’s
only me today.” He threw his bags over the headrest and climbed into the
passenger seat. Raul started to ramble, offering an endless succession of
excuses, but Ken stopped him with a wave of his hand.
“No bullshit, let’s just go,” he
said. “I’m on a schedule here.”
*
* *
The Jeep lurched as the tires struck
the roots and vines cluttering the thin layer of dirt that passed for a jungle
road. Sweat covered Ken’s body and mosquitoes persisted in hovering about his
head despite the speed at which Raul drove. He itched all over but didn’t care.
The inherent beauty of the rainforest moved any discomfort to the back of his
mind. It seemed such a difficult proposition for people to live in conditions
such as these. The humidity, the insects, the predators—all these natural
dangers forced one to be on top of their game to simply survive. To Ken this
fact brimmed with splendor. It echoed the heights humans could reach—did
reach—before technology caused universal laziness to wash over the globe.
Two hours after the journey began,
they entered a clearing. The vision of the site awoke a tinge of sadness within
Ken. The soothing embrace of nature in its purest form was ripped away,
revealing the ugly beginnings of humanity’s pursuit of uniformity. Rubble from
the excavation had been carelessly placed in random piles, creating a rocky
maze so thin in some places that stone tore into the Jeep on both sides when
they passed through.
They drove across the winding
stretch of flattened grass that weaved through the debris and stopped at what
looked like a giant mouth cut into the landscape. Ken stepped out, pulled his
travel case from the back, and removed from it his harness, a coil of thick
cable as wide as his torso, as well as his tool belt. He took a clasp and
fastened it to the Jeep’s tow hitch. Then he tossed the cord over the edge of
the pit, and a second or so later there came a dull thud. He whistled between
his teeth. Judging by how long it took to reach the bottom, it had to be at
least seventy feet deep. A cold, nervous sweat dribbled down his neck as he
fastened the tool belt around his waist, wiggled into the harness, locked its
catch around the line, and put on his gloves. He crawled to the lip and peered
over.
“Bugger, that’s deep,” he whispered. Then,
his resolve returning, he turned to Raul and said, “Wait for me up here.”
While bracing his feet on the rim of
the crater, he pulled the cable taut, took a deep breath, and plunged into the
void.
A rush of cold, wet air greeted him.
His arms ached as he lowered himself down one hand at a time; his leg muscles
stiffened from squeezing his feet against the rope. Had James been there he
would have used the second support lead, which he should have done anyway, just
in case. Now, if he fell, there’d be nothing to break his fall but the ground
below. He shivered and tried to force thoughts of his carelessness to the back
of his mind, which proved a simple task seeing as his anticipation bubbled over
any other invading emotion like foam at the crest of an ocean wave.
Still farther he descended. No light
penetrated the opening up above, leaving him in the black. Barbs scraped his
bare elbows when he swung too close to the cracked tunnel walls. He considered
for a moment how the walls themselves seemed much too round, the plunge much
too straight, to be the happenstance creation of wayward dynamite. He thought
it possible the channel had been created, and then pushed that thought to the
storage space in the deep recesses of his brain. There will be no conjecture
here, he thought. There is only observation. Gather the data. The time for
assumptions and analysis comes later.
After what seemed like much too long
a time, he felt a breeze. The mugginess surrounding him disappeared—the
revealing sign of the end of the channel. He remembered the warning Fuad
Cerrano, the director of the Nicaraguan National Institute, had left on his
cellular—Take it slow once you hit the open, you will have the urge to drop
quickly; don’t do that, the plummet is far, yet the floor still seems to come
at you in a hurry, and the first two men we sent down broke bones in their
legs—and he heeded that advice, placing one hand beneath the other even slower
than before.
Amazingly, it took just as long for
his toes to brush the ground as it had to enter the chamber from the tunnel. He
rolled his feet flat from ball to heel, steadying himself as if he’d spent the
last year in zero gravity. He disengaged clamp from cable, took off his gloves,
and felt for the line’s end. There it was, right at his fingertips, which meant
the depth of this chasm was very close to the line’s full hundred feet. A
whistle escaped his lips, pierced the silence around him, and bounced back two
fold.
He grabbed the flashlight from its
place in his belt and clicked it on. A blazing cone of yellow light cut a
streak through the darkness. Ken looked around in amazement, trying to take in
each thing the narrow beam revealed. He stood in the middle of a huge, square
room—fifty or so feet from wall to wall, by his best estimation. Hieroglyphs
covered those walls for as far up as he could see. Six crudely built wooden
tables stood against the wall he faced. He marched slowly toward one of them. A
thick layer of white dust—Ken thought it most likely the granular remains of
bones—covered the top of its flat slab. He pulled a brush and plastic bag from
his belt and stepped forward, intent on sweeping in a sample for later testing.
His foot struck a vagrant stone and
he fell, barely getting his hands up in time to stop his face from striking the
edge of the table. He glanced up at the opening he’d come through, now a
glowing dinner plate in the middle of the black. Again that feeling of
foolishness washed over him. He had to be careful.
He paced along the edge of the room,
attempting to decipher some of the more interesting symbols. What he saw was
both beautiful and terrifying, a tale of harmony and discord, birth and demise,
life and death. A common theme Ken hadn’t seen before was interspersed between
each set of pictograms—a single flame beside a primitively painted skull with
no jaw. He tried to wrap his mind around the images. He’d seen pictograms such
as these over the years, but they always seemed to flow smoothly, always told a
story. The invading skull and flame didn’t make sense.
That lack of logic shot a spike of
enthusiasm up his spine. If there had been a Black Death here, or a period of
religious cleansing like the Crusades, the messages printed on these walls
might be the only record. This is the place, his mind blabbered in excitement.
The answer, the missing piece of the puzzle!
With renewed vigor, Ken worked at a
much faster pace. He turned where one wall met another and carried on much as
before, eyeing his discovery with the nervous glee of a child at Christmas. His
pace quickened again and he passed to the third wall, then the fourth. That was
where he stopped.
An arched portal appeared in the
middle of that fourth wall, standing only five feet high. Ken bent and flashed
his light inside to get a look at what lay beyond.
It was a passageway. The barrier at
the end of the tunnel looked to be made of a strange, milky substance, like a
sponge. The walls leading down contained nothing as elegant as hieroglyphs—only
smooth rock with nary a crack. It took a moment for Ken to realize that nowhere
in the temple interior did he see so much as a seam. This place hadn’t been
built with the customary adobe bricks. To the contrary, it seemed to have been
borne from the earth itself.
A soft clacking reached his ears and
he aimed the flashlight at the floor of the tunnel, revealing a scurrying sea
of insects. The bugs didn’t enter the main chamber, though there was nothing to
stop them. They simply clawed and scurried all over each other, as if to leave
the safety of the passageway would bring an immediate end to their short lives.
Ken let out a sigh. He could stand the proposition of squatting through the
burrow with those things under his feet, but he hadn’t brought a change of
pants or socks, which meant he’d most likely be stuck with their gummy innards
all over him until he arrived back at the hotel. “Small sacrifice,” he
whispered, then crouched beneath the stone arch. Insects crunched beneath his
soles and he had to fight off the itch to purge his morning meal of poached
eggs and blood sausage when they began crawling over his boots and up his leg. He
held his breath and went on regardless.
The insect-and-dust-filled corridor
ended after only twenty-two steps. The milky substance turned out to be thick
tangles of spider webs. Ken brushed them aside, exposing the wall, and stared
into the eyes of a monster.
It was a painting of a decaying man,
hunched over and grinning with a lipless sneer. The care that must have gone
into creating this morbid work of art was astounding. He could clearly see the
flesh hanging from its bones. Ken shivered and brushed away a centipede that
had made its way to the nape of his neck before hunkering in to take a closer
look. No detail had been spared. There were even fibers of exposed muscle that
seemed to glisten in the flashlight’s beam. This is amazing, he thought. It’s
so intricate. It belongs in the National Gallery, not the…
A final detail caught his eye,
stopping him cold.
The monstrosity on the wall held a
strap, made to look like leather, in its bony right hand. The strap itself was
attached to what at first resembled a pair of sunglasses, until Ken realized
what they actually were—the orbital bones from a human skull.
“Well, hello,” he whispered.
The brilliant piece of art was a
portrait of Yum Cimil, one of the great Mayan gods. He’d seen representations
of this particular deity many times over the years, but none as expertly
crafted as this. All others were a child’s experimentation with finger paints
by comparison. It brought into question the Nicaraguan science team’s
assumption that this was a temple. Mayan temples were, as a rule, a place where
all gods were revered, not just one.
Ken squatted and brushed dust off
the area below where the painting ended. What came forth from the sandy grit
was a seam three feet off the ground. He marked the crease with his finger and
followed it to the floor. Bugs scattered. It was a door, a very small door that
was sealed shut. He pushed against the block of granite and it gave only
slightly. A soft, virtually unnoticeable vibration jangled in his head.
Something isn’t right here, his subconscious warned. Must tread lightly.
Ken didn’t listen. Exhilaration
overrode his common sense.
Snatching the pickaxe from his tool
belt, Ken went to work. He hacked away at the stone barricade, the pick head
spraying chunks of rock toward him each time he pulled back. A small hole
appeared, and then grew larger, then larger still. The obstruction came down
with surprising ease, crumbling like dried clay. Sweat poured down his chest,
drenching his shirt, pooled in his crotch, and irritated the mosquito bites
dotting his flesh, but he paid no mind to the discomfort. All he could think
about was what lay behind that wall.
One final stroke created a gap large
enough to squeeze through. He tossed in the flashlight, stuck his head into the
hole, wedged his shoulders through—the sweat covering him helped in this
regard—and finally let himself drop to the other side like a newborn calf.
His elbows struck ground that was at
least a foot lower than it should have been, followed by his knees. He yelped
as pain rattled through his bones. A disgusting, vinegary scent assaulted his
nostrils for a moment and then disappeared. He fumbled for the flashlight,
which shone an arbitrary beam on the pile of discarded rock he’d created. His
heart raced and he felt out of breath. The chilling sensation of being watched
tiptoed over his shoulder blades. He flashed the light at the hole he
created—now above him—just to be sure. There was no one there, no people, no
phantoms. Even the insects stayed away, much like they had in the main chamber.
He breathed out a sigh of relief and cursed his childish paranoia.
The room felt cold and cramped. The
ceiling hung low enough that he had to tilt his head to stand, but at least he
didn’t have to squat. The space was narrow, only four meters at most, but at
least three times as long. With his back to the wall and gazing straight ahead,
his flashlight only created the tiniest of circles. He decided he’d get to that
part of the chamber later. He sniffed the air—the odor of vinegar must have
been his imagination, he assumed—and realized the chamber smelled much like the
basement of his mother’s house in Banbury; like an ill maintained, moldy fruit
cellar. He shrugged it off to the humidity and examined his surroundings.
The first thing he noticed—other
than the thousand or so cobwebs—was the shrine. It stood against the wall a few
feet to the right of the entryway. He drew close. It was made from some sort of
limestone composite whose surface shone with natural, glass-like crystals. It
was a meter wide at its rectangular base, coming up in a flattened pyramid
shape. A bronze effigy of Kinich-Ahau, the sun god, his face green with
oxidation, watched over the room from its perch on the shrine’s apex. Maybe the
temple theory is back in play, he thought.
A shelf of white bone protruded from
the area below the effigy. On top of that was an ancient book. Looking at the
side, it seemed as if the pages would disintegrate should anyone try to touch
them. The cover had been warped by time but was otherwise preserved, and after
blowing the dust off he saw that the tapestry on its surface had remained
intact. A gold-leafed outline of a blazing sun emerged and Ken’s jaw dropped.
The Popol-Uuh. The Mayan holy book. It
had to be. Over the years a few bits of parchment thought to be from that very
text had made their way across the desk of his Regent Park
Ken didn’t want to turn away from
the book, but in the end he did just that. There were other things to see, and
he had to get a move on. Daylight wouldn’t last forever, and he didn’t want to
risk driving through the jungle at night, especially with that defective kid
behind the wheel.
The walls of the chamber were
smooth, just as they’d been in the main hall and passageway. The whole place
seemed constructed from a mold, if that were possible. Deep grooves marked the
surface every so often, as if someone or something had tried to claw its way
out. This gave him a sudden jolt of panic. The idea that something could be in
there with him caused the dial on his fight or flight instinct to start
wavering toward the latter.
He swallowed hard, closed his eyes,
and counted to ten. This simple trick always worked in the past, and this time
proved to be no different. His heart rate slowed to a steady thump-thump-thump.
His breathing decelerated and his mind cleared, as though a soft voice was
whispering gentle comforts into his ear.
That voice told him: It’s time to
come forward.
His feet shuffled onward over the
dirt floor as he progressed toward the milky-black end of the chamber. Gradually
his flashlight picked up the vague outline of a shadowy object and he realized
why his light hadn’t been able to fully penetrate the air. A sheet of what
seemed to be silk had been suspended from the ceiling, stretching the width of
the chamber, fifteen feet from the small doorway. This struck him as odd—the
voice of Cautious Ken urged him to be guarded and follow his logical
instincts—but he gently pushed aside the curtain, used a fastener from his belt
to hold it aside, and shone his light in nonetheless.
Wedged in the corner sat what
appeared to be a primitively assembled pew. The mummified remains of a small
girl knelt upon it, hands clasped on a stone pillar as if she’d fallen asleep
there and never woken up. Ken couldn’t believe his eyes.
He moved alongside the mummy,
getting as close as he could without touching it. Judging by the diminutive
stature of the corpse and the wisps of black hair—amazingly still in place
after all these centuries—that draped over its shoulders to the middle of its
back, he guessed the poor soul couldn’t have been older than ten to twelve
years old at the time of her entombment. A split black veil hung from a
headpiece of dried tree bark and dangled at the nape of her neck, framing her
face.
And what a face it was. The neck had
been craned back as if in an eternal scream. The hollow eye sockets gazed at
the ceiling. The skin appeared cracked and brown but amazingly conserved, and
the mouth, which still had its teeth, hung open in a ghastly, undead expression
of pain, offering one final cry of damnation to the heavens.
That’s when it hit him: the poor
girl had been buried alive down here.
“Amazing,” Ken whispered with a touch
of sadness. How it must have felt for her, to be trapped in this sinister
place, all alone, left to wither away into the nothingness of time. He felt her
loneliness and fear, and for a brief instant hated those he’d spent his life
studying.
Very gently, Ken reached for the
mummy-girl’s clasped hands. Confusion spiraled through his brain like an
unstoppable whirlpool as he did this, for the logical part of him knew the
rules. Never, ever place your dirty hands on something as precious and fragile
as this. Yet he couldn’t stop himself. His fingers brushed the mummy’s flesh. The
texture reminded him of sandpaper. Then he grew bolder, rubbing the spot as if
trying to ease the dead girl’s epoch of isolation with a well deserved, loving
caress. Stop it, man, what are you doing? his mind cried, but he couldn’t pull
himself away. His consciousness grew dim and his vision faded.
A bright light flashed in his eyes
and images poured into his head. Fire surrounded him on all sides, creating an
impenetrable wall of heat. He saw people standing around the lip of the shallow
pit he found himself in, dark-skinned and dressed in animal hides, wearing
headdresses of brightly colored feathers. He felt his throat constrict with
laughter and watched those around him tremble at the sound. Flames licked his
flesh, searing it, but he felt no pain. He pushed his hands forward, breaking
free of his bonds, and lunged for the one standing closest to him, the one who
chanted. He cleared the rim of the crater in a single leap, leaving the flames
behind. His fingers—looking small, delicate, and slightly charred—wrapped
around the man’s throat. He squeezed.
The scene shifted. Now he floated
above the ground, bound and gagged, as those who’d been standing around the
hollow now carried him. He struggled mightily, but there were too many of them.
He twitched, forcing the veil from his eyes, and gazed at the canopy above,
repulsed by the vibrant greens, reds, and violets. Then he felt himself being
raised even higher into the air, followed by the sensation of falling. Fast.
Then came the violent impact as his body struck the ground. Stars in his vision
now, stars that would go on long after the dim point of light above him had
been sealed over for good.
Laughter again escaped his lips. He
tilted his head back in the darkness and let it come, wave after wave, like a
frenzied carnival clown. A mantra repeated in his head, over and over and over:
The time wasn’t right, the time
wasn’t right, the time wasn’t right…
As if struck by a bolt of lightning
he careened backward, whacking his head against the wall. Dizziness ensued. He
brought his hands to his head, cradled it, and rocked back and forth, trying to
force away both the sensation and the vision through mindless repetition. Eventually
his vertigo petered out like the last drops of water from a canteen.
His head still ached, his ears still
buzzed, and his intellect couldn’t come to grips with what had happened to him,
but still he wedged his palms into the ground and forced himself to his knees. He
panted and tried the counting trick again, but this time it couldn’t stop the
rapidity of his heart. A sound emerged, something soft and scratchy, like dry
hands rubbing against velvet. He picked the flashlight up off the ground beside
him and scanned the chamber, from corpse to shrine to door and back again. Nothing
moved. He cocked his head.
The sound grew in volume, and at
that point Ken understood it for what it was—a whisper tickling at his inner
ear. Then a voice emerged, a sickly humming, a female voice, getting louder
with each passing moment. Only this wasn’t in his head. This was behind him.
“Shit!” Ken yelped. He spun around,
his knees worn and bleeding as they scraped against the rough dirt floor. His
flashlight shone on the mummified little girl. The cadaver had developed a
liquid sheen in the few seconds since he had last illuminated it, as if someone
had snuck in and covered it with grease. He thought briefly that this had been
the result of Raul, the driver, playing a practical joke on him, but that
couldn’t explain the humming that still invaded his brain. Closer he inched,
his bloody knees smarting, only to stop when a rather large beetle scampered
over the mummy’s shoulder.
“Shoo,” he said, waving his hand at
it. The beetle lifted its pincers, snapped them together, and then took off
back from whence it came. What came next was the riot of a thousand tiny
clackers. The din sounded like game day at Wembley Stadium. He flashed the
light over his shoulder. Perched on the edge of the door cut into the side of
the chamber sat the horde of insects from the passageway, too many to count,
seemingly on the verge of joining him in a space that now seemed far too
congested. They twitched and writhed.
Game day at Wembley, indeed.
A bone-jarring crack snapped his
head back around. The mummy-girl no longer gazed at the ceiling. Those empty
eye sockets now stared directly at him, and though the mouth still hung open
the way it had before, it no longer seemed to be screaming.
The mummy-girl was laughing at him.
Ken backed away. The mummy-girl’s
head wobbled, furthering the image of laughter, and then split at the jaw. The
part of the skull from the disintegrated nose on up toppled off and rolled like
a papier-mâché ball until it rested against the wall. The lower jaw protruded from the top of the
wrinkled, root-like neck. Insects of every species imaginable erupted from
where the head had once been, scampering the length of the mummy-girl’s body
and falling to the ground in sheets. The body itself, rocked by the sheer
violence of the tiny invaders, collapsed. More bugs poured from the newly made
orifice when it hit the floor.
“No!” Ken screamed. He backpedaled
and then flipped, proceeding to crawl on all fours toward the entrance and the
army that waited there, thinking—no, hoping—they would prove as docile as
they’d been on his way in. As if sensing his wish, the insects dumped into the
chamber in a tidal wave of legs and exoskeletons and scuttled after him. Ken
stopped and got up on his knees. They came at him from front and back, left and
right. He flailed his limbs as they fell upon him, trying to brush them off. He
screamed the whole time.
It was no use. They formed a living
coat over his body. He felt them crawl and slither their way into his every
crevice, numerous legs treading where none should ever be, tiny mouths gouging
soft flesh. Pain engulfed him. He opened his mouth to scream one last time but
no sound came out. The wiggling mass flowed into his mouth and worked their way
down his windpipe. They were everywhere—in his ears, up his nose, worming into
his anus. A ghastly, mucus-filled whistle forced its way out of his throat.
It was the only form of resistance he could muster.
*
* *
Raul sat back in the driver’s seat,
bored out of his mind. The stuffy English maricon had been in the pit for
almost three hours and it was closing in on five o’clock now. He drummed his
fingers on the steering wheel, hoping the guy would finish soon. Sure he needed
the money, but sitting in the same place for so long with the sun beating down
on him, mosquitoes droning his ears and no company to speak of save chirping
tree frogs worked on his nerves. His buzz had long since worn off and the
following headache played tricks on his eyes. He cursed out loud, got out of
the Jeep, and walked to the edge of the abyss.
“Hello?” he yelled. The hollow
reverberation of his echo answered back, but nothing else. With an annoyed
grunt he turned back to the Jeep. Perhaps yanking on his tool and gazing at
Miss August’s concha again would help ease his pain a bit.
The support cable fastened to the
tow hitch suddenly pulled taught and kicked up dirt as it twitched back and
forth. Raul, sensing the end of his tedium, grabbed the line. He could barely
get it off the ground, which meant—he supposed—that someone was now climbing
it.
“Don’t worry, mister, I got you!” he
yelled. “Aguante, I pull you up!”
Raul sprinted to the Jeep and yanked
the lever on the winch. The small motor sputtered and creaked, its spindle
rotating in reverse, winding the cable. The lead scraped against the trench’s
rocky lip, sliding back and forth against the ground, knocking dirt, rubble,
and large chunks of stone into the pit. He could hear the larger pieces when
they struck the floor below: a hollow thwack that sounded like wet palms
smacked together. He worried that one of them might strike his fare, causing
who knew what kind of damage. Should that happen, he’d surely be held to blame
and lose out on the four thousand Lempira he’d been promised—money he and his
family certainly needed. He impatiently tapped on the Jeep’s hood and did, for
once, something his mother had taught him.
He prayed.
The prayer was answered. Several
long minutes after the old winch began its slow and at times nerve-wracking job
of coiling the line a hand emerged, grasping blindly for something to hold on
to. Raul turned the hoist off with a careless whack of its handle, rushed over,
and snatched the flailing arm with both hands. He pulled as hard as he could,
and squeezed his eyes shut as his back strained. It felt like the muscles in
his shoulder blades were separating from the bone. For a moment the man slipped
from his grasp, so he wrapped his hands around the forearm all the more
tightly, dug his heels into the rock-strewn earth, and offered a final,
desperate heave.
His client emerged from the
excavation and slumped in the dirt. The man’s whole body seemed to expand and
contract with each breath he took. Raul stood over him and asked, “Hey, you,
you okay?” followed by, “You got me worried, mister.”
Something wasn’t right. Raul noticed
raised red splotches with white heads covering all of his exposed flesh. There
were so many, in fact, that he couldn’t see a single unaffected area on the
man’s skin, save for the hand that had reached out from the dark depths. If he
had known better, which he didn’t, Raul would have guessed he’d been burned.
Raul bent at the waist and, with a
spot of revulsion, touched the back of the man’s neck. The inflamed and bulging
skin felt hot and soft, like mud on the banks of the Amazon during a summer
day. One of the boils popped and leaked yellowish pus. Raul pulled away with a
high-pitched yelp.
In response to Raul’s surprised
vocal acrobatics, the sick man’s unblemished hand shot out and snatched him by
the wrist. The grip was inhumanly tight, containing enough pressure to splinter
the bones beneath his thin membrane of flesh, and it forced Raul to his knees.
The thing that only somewhat
resembled the English doctor he’d brought to this godforsaken place got to its
feet and gazed down at him. Its mouth hung slack-jawed, black lips peeled back
in a sneer. The teeth inside the mouth looked like stone daggers. Loose flesh
drooped off its face, creating a pair of jowls that flopped this way and that
with each tilt of the head. Veins bulged, green and red, over the exposed
tissue inside its cheek.
Raul screamed. As if to answer this,
the creature drew Raul’s arm to its mouth and clamped down on his bicep. It
shook its neck like a rabid dog, pulled back, and ripped free a dripping hunk
of skin and muscle. Again Raul screamed—this time loud enough to disturb the
birds, which fluttered from the treetops—and then, in a feat of strength only
adrenaline could provide, he struck the monstrosity on the side of the head
with his free hand, forcing it to let go. Raul spun on his heels and took off
into the jungle.
He ran until the sun began dipping
down behind the mountains, until his feet couldn’t carry him, until his body
and mind, dizzy from lack of hydration and loss of blood, stumbled, tumbled,
and froze in place. He tried to tell himself it was all a dream, that things
such as these don’t happen in the real world. This denial might have worked,
too, if not for the gaping wound that still pumped blood onto the leafy
rainforest floor. That wound, that pain, couldn’t have been more real.
Cold and feverish, his surroundings
a haze to his blurred vision, Raul closed his eyes. For the second time that
day he prayed, for forgiveness, for mercy, for life. His lips moved, sticky
with dried saliva, but his words were hoarse, inaudible. He gathered enough
strength to inch his way against a tree, onto which he leaned his head back,
closed his eyes, and thought of home.
He didn’t see the creature that had
once been Ken Trudeau, of Oxford
His end came quickly. By all
accounts, Raul Javier Desoto was one of the lucky ones.
CHAPTER 2
THE RECREANT
MOST OF DOVER New Hampshire
Not the entire town was asleep—at
least, not in the purest sense of the word. The Pit, one of Dover
Dim light infused the place with all
the charm of a medieval dungeon. Lynyrd Skynyrd blasted from the decayed
speakers of an ancient jukebox. Sawdust covered the floor. Three pool tables
stood in the open area to the rear of the lounge area, of which only one was in
use. Joshua Benoit stood facing away from that table, holding a cue stick in
one hand and a pint of beer in the other, watching everything that went on
around him like a bored referee. Three men circled a thirty-something female,
whose expression seemed to say ‘here we go again’ and ‘oh, isn’t this exciting’
at the same time. The woman appeared not to notice (or perhaps ignored) the
fact these men bore down on her like a pack of wild dogs. The two older ladies
sitting across from the pack were diving into their fourth round of Merlot,
staring straight ahead and ignoring each other as if the brown stain on the
wall behind them would make for better company.
Despite the dreariness of these
events, they were, to Joshua, the more interesting sights to be seen, even
though the ragged collection of mullets, flattops, tattoos, leather, and dirty
tank tops created an atmosphere that those not in the know would find either
disheartening or threatening.
Joshua was in the know. He knew
everyone in there quite well, as a matter of fact, though he didn’t want to. Their
names rolled off his tongue like sewage: Kenny, Walter, Esther, Dot, Larry,
Quentin, and Mary, among others. He took the fact that he was on a first-name
basis with these people as another sign that his life had gone nowhere.
He was twenty-five and had lived in Dover
His life flashed before him. He’d
never been an eager student and his high school grades reflected as much. However,
with an intelligent (if not sensible) head on his shoulders, he fudged his way
through. He also tested well, which allowed him a great many opportunities that
others in this dumpy little town didn’t have. He was accepted at all the
universities he applied to but one—Dartmouth, the place he dreamed of attending
and by far the toughest school he applied to—and had parents willing to pay his
way. He chose Syracuse University in upstate New York University
of New Hampshire , only a few short
miles away in the town of Durham
Townie to the core, his subconscious
had chided ever since.
Josh suffered from the same
misconception that infected many bright boys of that age: the idea that their
talents would carry them to greatness without having to exert any time or
energy. He never worked too hard, never loved too long, and often tumbled into
deep depressions when events inevitably didn’t fall his way. His relationship
history followed this same pattern. Two months represented a lengthy attachment
for him, the point when he became either uninterested or irritated by how much
of his free time was spent kneading the emotions and desires of someone else
rather than his own.
When this consideration flitted into
his head he dropped his shoulders, almost spilling his beer in the process. A
twisting ache of sadness sluiced over him as one name, the same important
person who told him those fateful words that now filled his remaining wits with
a litany of guilt and regret, came to mind, and he said the name out loud, as
he was apt to do whenever he felt the anchor of compunction tie him down.
“Marcy.”
“Hey, dickhead, it’s your shot!” a
voice shouted from behind him, breaking his doldrums. He turned to see Colin,
his oldest friend and polar opposite, standing there, stick in hand, grinning.
Josh and Colin had known each other
since grammar school, when Colin would visit his house every day after class. In
those days they would share comic books and action figures. Josh loved reading
X-Men and playing with G.I. Joes while Colin preferred The Flash and
Transformers. This was only the tip of the iceberg when it came to their
differences. Short and slender whereas Josh had grown tall and a bit on the
heavy side, Colin wore an expression of constant joy, as if a silent voice
whispered jokes into his brain every minute of every day. Josh envied him for
that, for he felt he didn’t possess his friend’s enjoyment—his passion—for
everyday life.
Josh turned. “Hold on, I’m coming,”
he said as he slunk to the table and bent to take his shot. He breathed in deep,
his eyes narrowing in concentration. His arm swung the butt of the stick back. All
went well until he urged the cue forward. Something whacked into his forearm,
knocking him off-center. The white ball flew over the table and plummeted to
the sawdust-colored carpet like a dove made of stone. The tip of his stick
forged a streak of blue across the filthy, matted felt.
“You missed,” another voice said,
followed by a throaty, phlegm-filled laugh.
“You’re an ass, Bobby,” said Josh. He
turned and frowned at his other old friend. He wanted to be mad, but the sight
of Bobby’s ungainly crew cut, lanky posture, and tattered flannel disarmed him.
Bobby might have been a giant of a man with a large, bombastic personality, but
anyone who looked into those pale blue eyes could see that the rough outer
shell hid a nature gentle enough to cry during a viewing of A River Runs
Through It. So instead of frowning, Josh smiled.
“My turn,” said Colin with a grin. He
hopped up to the table and, in a few short strokes, finished the game. That was
another big difference between the two of them. Pool was a struggle to Josh. It
seemed that the more he focused, the more apt he was to fuck up. Not that it
really matters; it’s only a game, he thought with a shrug, and finished the second
half of his beer in two massive gulps.
“Well, time for another,” he said.
His friends nodded and began another
game without him.
With legs unsteady, he sauntered to
the bar and placed his glass on the counter. The bartender, a woman in her
forties with fiery red hair, leaned across the bar opposite him, elbows propped
on the counter with her chin in her hands. She was speaking with a man he knew
only as Doc. Her tight jeans clung to her hips and butt, and Josh quickly
turned his eyes away, not wanting to linger on her for long. He tapped gently
on the counter and started whistling.
“I’ll be right back,” he heard the
bartender say.
She stepped up to him—he could see
her hips swaying in his peripheral—and spoke. Her voice was low and a bit
raspy. It was seductive.
“You want another, sweetie?” she
asked.
“Yeah,” he answered.
“Same as usual?”
“Uh-huh.”
He kept his eyes away from her, even
as she took his glass, placed it in the wash station, replaced it with another,
and filled it at the spigot. When she handed him the newly filled glass, he
said thanks—kindly, but still without so much as a glance in her direction—and
headed back to his small gathering of friends.
“Idiot,” he whispered under his
breath.
An old drunk named Carl, sitting
alone at a table, stopped him as he passed by. “Would you look at that, kid,”
he said, pointing at the wide-screen television positioned against the back
wall, where images of the Red Sox, finishing off their season at home in
below-freezing temperatures, were re-broadcasted as big as life.
“Look at what?”
The drunk slapped the tabletop
without taking his eyes off the screen. “Damn bum,” he said. “Can’t hit a
fucking curveball to save his life. Whole team’s like that now. They better get
their shit together for the playoffs.”
Josh shrugged. “Couldn’t care less,
really.”
“Why’s that?” the old man asked, his
eyebrows rising.
“Well,” said Josh, the jittery
feeling of mischief rising in his gut matching the sarcastic smile on his face,
“For one, they’ve already won a couple of World Series. And secondly, I’m a
Yankees fan.”
Old Carl swiped Josh’s hand off the
table. “Get outta here, you traitor,” he snarled.
Josh spun on his heels and strutted
away.
“Any time, partner. Any time.”
Josh and Colin said their goodbyes
to Bobby at two o’clock, when the lights came on and the bouncer proclaimed,
“Everybody out!” The ride home was depressing. Josh sat and stewed in his
juices while Colin quietly hummed, probably in his godforsaken “happy place”.
Josh assumed he was dreaming about either the girl who’d given him her phone number
an hour ago or whatever exciting happenings he was sure to experience the next
morning in the realm of telephone marketing. How can you love life so much? he
thought with a hint of resentment. Josh sure didn’t.
The Counting Crows—Colin’s favorite
band—wailed from the CD player. The singer crooned about life’s uncertainty and
his quest for self discovery. Josh felt close to tears as questions rattled off
in his mind. Where was his sorry excuse of an existence going? Would he ever be
happy? Could this be his destiny, to exist somewhere between completely
pathetic and a view of moderate success he would have scoffed at not even a
decade ago? He sniffed in a wad of snot and swallowed it. Questions for another
day. I can’t deal right now.
The car pulled into the driveway of
the duplex he and Colin shared. They walked to the door in silence and went
their separate ways. Colin patted him on the back when they separated. Josh
said nothing.
He descended the steps to his
basement bedroom and collapsed on his mattress, which rested on the thinly
carpeted plywood floor instead of a bed frame. Feeling a little drunk and a lot
dejected, he closed his eyes and curled into a ball, trying not to think of his
life any longer, and prayed for sleep.
*
* *
A crescent moon bathed the road in
faint blue light. There was no breeze and the leaves scattered on the pavement
sat idle, waiting to be crunched under meandering feet. The trees lining the
road became midnight monsters, changing shape, growing larger and more menacing
in the dark places beyond the guardrails. Josh walked onward, eyes set straight
ahead as to not be drawn into the phantoms’ roadside traps. A watery feeling of
uncertainty struck him, and he tried to tell his subconscious that this was
only a nightmare, but the sound of his sneakers scraping against the blacktop
and the way his breath formed perfect clouds of mist in the air before him said
this was something much more than that.
Something scarier.
The road curved, and there he found
a large, unremarkable SUV—things Colin laughingly dubbed Shitty Undressed
Vulvas, though the moniker made absolutely no sense—sitting idle by the side of
the road. The interior light clicked on, and from a distance he swore he could
see two people locked in a struggle. His heart rate picked up and he began to
run. His sneakers sank into the road. The strain of pulling them out while he
ran caused his leg muscles to burn.
By the time he reached the vehicle
he was out of breath. He gathered himself, bending at the waist and grabbing
the ends of his flannel shirt for support, until he felt well enough to glance
through the driver’s side window. The overhead light shone, allowing him to see
the charred interior. The upholstery fluttered like black flakes of confetti.
He moved toward the rear. There he found a slender girl, dressed in a dirty
white negligee, occupying the back seat. She shook violently, like an
epileptic. The short brown hair falling just above her shoulders shielded her
face from him. She coddled something in her arms that quaked along with her.
Josh slammed his fist against the window, bracing for the likelihood of it
shattering, but it didn’t. He tried to scream but nothing came out.
The girl stopped her convulsions and
turned her head. She stared at him with terrified eyes, and the moment Josh saw
those eyes he felt the undeniable urge to wretch. Again those five letters
escaped his lips in a hoarse whisper.
“Marcy.”
It can’t be, he thought. She looked
older than he remembered. Of course she would, you dolt, Sane Josh nagged, you
haven’t seen her in seven years. He braced his palms against the windshield and
forced himself to look on. There was something else wrong here. Bruises covered
her face. One eyelid was puffy, almost closed. Blood trickled from her nose.
Josh yelled to her, the full of his
voice finally escaping his throat’s prison. For a second time he pounded his
fists into the glass, this time drawing blood. She acted as if she didn’t
notice his struggle. Instead, she held thing cradled in her arms out to him.
Josh’s attack on the window ceased and he stared at it, wide-eyed.
It was a baby girl dressed in pink.
It lay splayed out and motionless in a filthy receiving blanket dotted with
streaks of blood. Its skin had taken on a bluish hue, with swollen lips and
blackened craters for eyes. Toothless gums colored green were exposed through a
gaping hole in its cheek. The need to wretch overtook him again.
He wrapped his fingers around the
door handle and yanked as hard as he could. It wouldn’t budge. The woman who
looked too much like his post-high-school sweetheart slapped her hands on the
window. Her lips mimicked words—Please help our baby, please help our
baby!—with soundless fury.
“I’m trying!” Josh pleaded. He
continued to tug on the handle and then resumed pelting the window with his
fists for good measure. Then the Marcy look-alike pitched her head back, her
body once more thrown into spasms. Josh was frozen stiff. Her face bulged and
rippled, and agonized screams suddenly pierced his skull through the vacuum of
sound. The skin on her throat peeled back and a bony spike poked through.
Bloody spit bubbled on her lips, but her eyes never left his. She pleaded for
help again, even as the spike kept growing, moving farther outward. He could
see it was segmented, insect-like. Then another, larger obstruction burst from
her chest, bathing the interior of the SUV in red. The baby tumbled from her
lap and fell limp into the unseen area beneath the seat. Blood seeped through
the seams in the doorframe.
Josh spun around and ran, pushing
his legs as fast as they could go. He heard the sound of glass shattering
behind him, followed by the dull thump of something heavy landing on the
automobile’s aluminum hood, and thrust on even faster, heading for the corner
from which he’d come. When he rounded the bend, the road inexplicably ended. He
tripped over the embankment and tumbled through a narrow line of demonic trees.
Their branches reached out for him and rocks gouged his elbows. His head struck
a stump.
Finally, he came to rest in a thick
patch of ferns. He waited for the world to stop spinning—which it did,
eventually—and lifted his head. Despite the darkness, he could make out the
silhouette of a small figure in profile, standing with one leg propped up on a
tree and arms crossed like a miniature James Dean. It lowered its leg and
turned, creeping gradually toward him. A thin beam of light caught it for the
briefest of moments and Josh stopped breathing. Huge, skeletal mandibles
snapped open and shut. A long, serpentine tongue lolled to one side. The beast
leapt into the air. Josh screamed.
Josh awoke with a start and began
crying. His body ached all over, a sensation he would have, if he’d been in a
better state of mind, attributed to the coming hangover, but he was in no
condition to think logically. Instead he shivered and pulled his knees to his
chest, chanting, “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” until sleep—a relatively
peaceful one this time—claimed him.
*
* *
Josh ended up saying ‘Wednesday
morning be damned’ for real the following day. He was in need of some healing,
so he called into work at seven-thirty, long after his alarm had gone off, and
crawled back into bed.
He awoke for good a little past noon
and tooled around the house for a few hours, eating a lunch of dry Cheerios and
listening to music. When the nightmare and thoughts of Marcy wouldn’t leave his
mind, he threw on his coat and took a walk in the unusually frigid
late-afternoon air, heading for the place where real recuperation would take
place.
Josh’s parents lived in a nice
little colonial two streets over from him and Colin. The white siding reflected
sunlight a little too well and the well-manicured lawn was the only one in the
surrounding neighborhood devoid of fallen leaves. Josh marched up the driveway,
the lingering effects of the previous evening’s events started to fade. The
expectation of a hearty meal began to break him of his mood. No ramen noodles
for Josh Benoit tonight. Let the healing begin.
“Hey, Dad,” he said, waving at his
father, who stood with hose in hand, for some reason watering the side garden
in the almost-freezing temperatures. Donald Benoit waved back and passed his
son a goofy grin, his teeth glimmering beneath his thick mustache. Josh
chuckled. At fifty years old, Don lived life with the fervor of someone half
his age. In that way he was like Colin, only he stood six feet tall with a full
beard that accentuated his active and restless brown eyes. He lived in a
constant state of motion. “Stagnation is the next step before death,” Don was
fond of saying. “Just look at sharks.”
Josh entered the house to find his
mother in the kitchen, peeling carrots over the garbage disposal. She glanced
up from her task and smiled, not appearing the least bit surprised he was
there.
“How are you, honey?” she asked.
“Not too bad, Mom. You?”
“All right.” She lifted her
hands—half-stripped carrot in one, peeler in the other—and offered them out to
him. “Just cooking.”
“I can see that,” he replied, feeling
his heart lift. He so loved his mother. Gail Benoit had spent her whole life
doting over her only son, and it was that unquestioned acceptance he longed for
on so many of his lonely nights.
The rapid patter of feet came from
behind him and he whirled around, knowing what to expect—Sophia, his twelve-year-old
sister, sprinting toward him with arms held out wide. She jumped into his arms
and he held her there for a moment, fighting against her weight. She wasn’t a
kid anymore.
“Hey, Rascal!” he exclaimed. He gave
her a big hug, one that she returned in kind. She buried her face in his chest
and laughed. Josh’s heart picked up another few beats.
Sophia had an energetic personality
that bordered on exuberant and was the only person in his life who never
considered him a failure. It had been that way since the day of her birth, when
Josh began the habit of fawning over his happy-accident sister the way his
mother had fawned over him. He adored her and they became best buddies, growing
unusually close for siblings separated by that many years. Josh was her Daddy-Bro,
she his Rascal, and no one in the world came close, not even their parents.
They let go of each other and stood
at arm’s length. Josh tousled her hair. “So, how’s school?” he asked.
“It’s alright,” she replied with a
hint of a frown. “The guys in gym keep bugging me. They kept saying I was a
hottie and asking if I wanted to hook up with them. All during swimming. I keep
telling the teachers it’s wrong to make us wear bathing suits in school. It’s
like walking around in your underwear. I hate that place.”
Josh squeezed her arm. “Well, you
are a pretty girl, Rascal. You’re just gonna have to get used to it or tell
them to back off.” He passed her a devilish smirk. “Or say you’ll sic big
brother on them. That might rattle their cages.”
“You’d do that for me?”
“’Course I would. You’re always safe
with me, sis.”
She gave him another hug and said,
“I know I am.”
Dinner was tremendous, as usual.
Josh devoured his food, laughing at the good-natured yet concerned expressions
his mother shot him while he feasted on his roast beef, mashed potatoes, green
beans, and salad. It tasted delicious, and it wasn’t until his third helping of
meat that his stomach barked at him.
After supper, Josh and Sophia
cleared the table while Gail washed the dishes and Don, ever the one to savor
his food, sat and finished his meal with tiny bites, like a connoisseur of fine
wine taking the slightest sips of some expensive Cabernet. It amazed Josh how
every time he came over for dinner they fell back into old routines. How long
had it been since he had left home? Five years? Six? This, along with the
thought that came next, made him frown. You’ve never really been on your own,
have you, big boy?
When one tradition ended, the next
began. Cleaning chores finished, the four of them made their way into the
living room. His father sat in his recliner, using a handkerchief to
dramatically wipe the corners of his mouth while his mom took her usual spot on
the neighboring couch. Josh sat on the love seat opposite them with his sister
on the floor between his knees. With everyone in their proper positions—the
same way they’d sat after dinner since Sophia was old enough to be out of the
high chair—the post-dinner conversations began.
“So, Josh, any word about the UCLA
application?” asked Don.
Panic set in. “They’ll probably get
back to me in a couple weeks,” he said. It was a complete and utter lie, but
one he hoped his parents believed. If he could, he would have slapped his own
face. Gotta get on that, he thought. Don’t want to let them down again.
Sophia looked up at him, a frown on
her face. “You moving away?” she asked.
“Of course not,” said Josh as he
caressed her shoulder.
“I hope you don’t.”
“Don’t say that, Sophia,” Gail said
as she looked down on her daughter with obvious disappointment. “You don’t mean
it.”
“Yes, I do.”
The discussion of Josh’s furthered
education reached a fever pitch after that, until he successfully swayed the
conversation by using the secret weapon, the one thing that piqued his father’s
interest even more than his own family’s business: current events.
“So,” Josh said, “what’s up with
health care?”
Don took off, as he was wont to do.
They talked about everything from the situation in the Middle
East , whether it had reached time to bring the troops home for
good this time, to the polarization of the political system. This was the
biggie, the grand mal of Donald Benoit’s emotional epicenter. He ranted on and
on about how the States had become a nation divided, with left and right
sitting in opposite corners of the ring, waiting for the bell to chime so they
could come out swinging, using barbed words disguised as philosophical ideals
for weapons.
“Little do those bastards know,” said
Don.
Gail interjected, “Watch your
language, Donald.”
To which Don replied, “Sorry, darling,
but anyway, little do those toadies know, but they’re working under the same
trainers.”
Josh smiled as his father seethed.
It gave him a sense of completion to talk with intelligent people, individuals
who would offer their opinions and still listen with interest to his, no matter
how far-out and radical they might seem. It was family at its greatest…or at
least at its most encouraging.
“Did anyone hear about what’s
happening in Mexico?” asked his father, his breath regained after a
particularly heated tirade blasting the oil industry and their squashing of the
electric car.
“A little bit,” Josh said, “but my
cable got shut off last week, so I’ve been kinda in the dark lately.”
“Well, it looks like they’re having a
revolution down there,” said Don, looking excited to be spreading word of the
unknown to a rapt audience. “It’s been all over CNN the last few days. It’s
some pretty disturbing stuff.”
“What happened? Drug wars?”
“Not sure, but I don’t think so. In
fact, saying ‘what’s happening in Mexico Mexico and Brazil
“Jihadists?” Sophia asked.
Don squinted at his daughter and
looked like he was making every effort to smile. “I really don’t know, honey.”
He glanced back at Josh. “I really don’t know anything. It’s all been very
hush-hush. Little details started coming out a week and a half ago, mixed in
between long-winded history lessons on Central American politics. It was weird.
Big stories with little exposition, if you know what I mean. I can’t decide if
it means anything or not.”
“Should we be worried?” Gail asked.
Don cleared his throat. “Maybe.
Yesterday they were saying conflict had broken out along the Texas-Mexico
border. Then nothing.”
“What do you mean nothing?” Josh
queried.
“Just that. Nothing. When I turned on
the television this afternoon they were talking about some bill that will
potentially reverse Roe v. Wade. Not a word about Mexico
“Maybe it’s all over,” said Sophia.
“Perhaps,” answered Don, “but somehow
I doubt it.”
Family time finished up soon after
that. Josh gave hugs all around, the strongest one for Sophia, before starting
for home on foot. Disquieting ideas of disturbing events on the southern border
melted away with each step. Those events were so far away. There was no way
anything bad could reach as far north as New England, not with
two-thousand-plus miles of prime U.S.
Pleasant memories of time recently
passed drifted through his mind during the rest of his short journey home, and
by the time he reached the front door he felt totally at peace. He walked in to
find Colin sitting at the kitchen table, car keys dangling on his fingers.
“Where you been?” he asked.
“Went to see the folks.”
“They doing okay?”
“No. They’re all sick. In the head.”
“Ha-ha. You ready to go, clever guy?”
“Whenever you are.”
The nightly trek to The Pit
followed: two friends ready for another evening of drunkenness in their
not-so-futile pursuit of eliminating coherent thought. “Home again, home again,
jiggidy-jig,” Josh sang as he entered the dim space beyond the door. Someone
bumped into him as he passed through the entryway, a man who looked much too
pale. The guy glowered back at him with eyes that said this dude isn’t to be
fucked with.
“Yo, no harm, no foul,” said Josh,
backtracking.
The man flipped him the bird and
then stormed out the door, heading for the oil rig parked outside, coughing the
whole time, without offering a rebuttal. “Asshole,” Josh said, loudly, when the
man was safely out of range.
“That’s right,” said Colin with a
laugh. “No need for fighting when there’s beer to be had!”
They laughed, ordered pints at the
bar, and drank the night away.
CHAPTER 3
THE FALLEN WOMAN
KYRA HOLCOMB FUMBLED with her keys
while a gust of bitterly cold wind caused goose pimples to rise on the nape of
her neck. The rain and sleet from earlier in the evening had long ceased, but
her hands were still numb from scraping frost from her windshield. She moaned
and her teeth chattered, causing a verbal staccato she might have found funny
if not for her physical discomfort.
She wanted nothing more than to
collapse into bed and pass out after yet one more night of drunken townsfolk
coming at her with hollered demands and inappropriate advances. This didn’t
even take into account the nine hours on her feet running back and forth.
Bartending sucks, she thought. I should’ve become a secretary.
Despite the promise of home, she was
offered no comforts, not even the cold kind. She climbed into her car in The
Pit’s deserted parking lot and turned the key, listening to the soft rattle as
the old engine idled. It would take a bit for the car to warm up. At least her
belly felt toasty.
“Thank God for tequila,” she
whispered.
All the places she’d rather be
performed their annual roll call in her mind as she sat there: in Massachusetts , living with her sister; Galveston ,
Texas , where her old high-school friend Heidi
had moved so long ago; northern Saskatchewan Dover , New
Hampshire
“This town sucks,” she muttered. It
depressed and annoyed her as much now as it had during her childhood days in
the seventies, when she watched her father slowly unravel after the textile
mill closed. Through her adulthood she saw the locals seek redemption through
liquor, weed, pills, and happy powder, just as he had. Kyra, herself, had
joined the party more than once, spending many a night drowning her sorry
apology of an existence and pretending to be happy, just like her father, just
like the rest of them. She’d been stuck in the same bad marriage for going on
twenty-three years and felt trapped: too young to hang ’em up, too old to start
over, too reliant on the familiar to change a thing.
When a rush of hot air burst through
the dashboard vent she threw the car into drive and pulled out of the lot. She
took the long way home as usual, uttering the same old lies about how lovely
the street looked at four in the morning—empty, pitch-black, and quiet, with
most sane folks tucked away in their beds, awaiting the alarm clock’s bleating.
Deep down she knew this was furthest from the truth. There were many reasons
for lingering by her lonesome in an empty saloon for three hours after she’d
closed it down, and the ability to cruise the back roads in silence wasn’t one
of them.
After fifteen minutes of a slow
crawl she arrived home. On instinct she tied her red hair back in a ponytail,
got out of the car, and glanced at the upstairs windows. No lights on, not a
sound to be heard but trees ruffling in the breeze. She closed the door
carefully, gently nudging it with her hip until it clicked shut. After that she
walked up the driveway, measuring each step: twenty-four to the edge of the
grass, thirteen around the walkway, and five up the steps to the front
entrance. She opened the flimsy screen door—I wish he’d get off his ass and
install the winter glass—and winced when the rusty hinges squealed.
Darkness greeted her inside and the
creepy sensation of being watched tiptoed up her spine. Silly girl. Always
jumping at shadows. She made her way down the hall, using the wall to guide her
like a blind person while old floorboards creaked beneath her feet. At the end
of the hall she reached her hand around and flicked on the kitchen light. Her
eyes adjusted to the new brightness. There was no one there—not leaning against
the counter, not sitting at the dining table, not hanging by a noose from the
ceiling fan. Kyra sighed. Wishful thinking.
She set her purse on the counter and
her keys in the jar next to the sink with care, and opened the fridge. The
previous night’s dinner—Chinese takeout—sat in its small cardboard container on
the top shelf. She opened the top and pulled out the last piece of
sweet-and-sour pork. It wasn’t much, but she had to eat something. The liquor
churning in her stomach demanded as much.
The sound of someone clearing their
throat shattered the silence and Kyra froze. She turned around and there he
stood, in the murky passageway where the kitchen and living room met. His eyes
glimmered like a cat’s.
“Shit, Justin!” she exclaimed. “You
scared me!”
Justin Holcomb entered the light. He
was quite a large man, standing six-foot-two with forearms the size of her
thighs and a barrel chest. The extra pounds he’d packed on over the last ten
years, showing in the paunch around his belly and the spare padding in his ass,
seemed to heighten his stature. Instead of appearing clownish, which was how
she usually saw him, now he looked careless.
If the past were prologue, with
Justin Holcomb, careless meant dangerous.
“Where have you been?” he said in a
shrill yelp that bordered on comical, and then coughed violently. Kyra stepped
back and stared at him as he hacked away. Huge black raccoon rings surrounded
his eye sockets. His flesh had taken on a silvery sheen, slick with sweat. His
voice oozed of exhaustion and anger.
“I was working,” said Kyra with a
roll of her eyes. She cast aside his appearance and breezed past him into the
dark living room. She threw her voice over her shoulder. “Where I always am on
weeknights.”
Justin followed at her heels. “It’s
going on five the fuck o’clock in the morning,” he growled. “The bar closes at
two.”
She turned on the table lamp. The
ashtray beside Justin’s easy chair overflowed with cigarette butts and three
tattered old copies of Guns and Ammo were stacked haphazardly on the table. It
looked like he’d been sitting there, alone and in the dark, for hours.
“What’s your point?” she asked. She
couldn’t understand where all this anger was coming from.
“Your shift ends at two,” he
repeated.
“And?”
“Where…the fuck…have you been?”
She batted her eyes at him, the one
trick she could always count on to shift his bad moods, but it didn’t work. So
she sighed and said, “Like I said, at work. A couple kids got into a fight,
left the place a huge mess. I spent the last few hours picking glass up off the
floor and mopping up stale beer. In other words, I’m tired now. I want to go to
bed.” It wasn’t a complete lie—she had been at work, after all—but there’d been
no fights that night. Escaping into a Harper Allen romance novel was the real
reason she was so late. She didn’t know why she wouldn’t just tell him that,
but chalked it up to old habits dying hard.
Justin took a menacing step toward
her. “What a load of shit!” he screamed. “You were with him again, weren’t you?
I know you were! Don’t fucking lie to me!”
“I wasn’t with anyone, dear,” replied
Kyra while shaking her head as if at a silly puppy. “I was at work. Call Barb
if you don’t believe me. Sorry, but it’s true.”
His tone dropped to a low rumble.
“You’re a lying whore. Duke told me he saw you getting all friendly with that
little yuppie fuck from the bank the other night. What, you think I don’t know
these things? You think I’m fucking stupid? I got eyes all over this town,
babe.”
Kyra ignored his macho posturing and
focused on the accusation. She knew exactly who he meant: Jack Trombley, a
sweet guy with a wife and two kids back home who’d become a regular as of late.
Jack had taken to sitting in a secluded corner, waiting for her rounds to
finish so he could have a few moments to air his feelings. They talked about
their respective problems often, but had never once been intimate. Did he find
her attractive? Maybe. Probably. But he never said anything about it or made even
a token attempt at flirting. The thought had never crossed her mind, in fact,
until Justin came out with his accusation. She found it pretty funny, though
not so much in a ha-ha kind of way, that Justin would suspect anything between
the two of them. She’d cheated on him many times over the years, occasionally
being daring and drunk enough to flaunt it in front of him, and yet her
husband, on those occasions, either didn’t notice or didn’t care. But take a
case like this, where some random guy wanted nothing but her company, time, and
respect, and he blew a gasket.
“Listen, darling,” she said, “I
haven’t been with anyone. Let’s leave it at that.”
“Bitch, don’t you dare ‘darling’ me.”
“Don’t open your mouth to me like
that,” she snapped. “Show me some goddamn respect, you lousy fuck. The guy Duke
saw me with is a friend, that’s it. We talk…like me and a hundred other
motherfuckers do on a nightly basis. And shit,
besides, Jack wasn’t even at the bar tonight. Like I said, there was a
fi—”
Her chest exploded in a burst of
liquid fire as Justin’s fist struck her breastplate, robbing her of both words
and breath. Kyra’s head snapped forward with the force of the blow. She
collapsed to one knee and gasped for air. Shock stripped her of coherent
thought.
“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” he shouted. “SHUT
YOUR DIRTY, ASS-FUCKING CRACK! YOU DON’T DISRESPECT ME, AND YOU DON’T FUCK
ANYBODY ELSE!” He shoved her over and kicked her in the rear. Kyra tried to
scurry away on her hands and knees, fingernails digging deep into the shag
carpet, but he grabbed her by the back of her pants and dragged her into the
middle of the room, where he began thumping her with a combination of fists and
feet. She lashed out against him out of pure instinct, eyes closed, scratching
at his arms and face, but he wouldn’t stop. Blow after blow landed on her
chest, her stomach, her sides, and at least once on her cheek. Her world became
a dizzying kaleidoscope of physical torment.
The instinctive part of her brain
said, kick him in the balls, and that’s just what she tried, bringing her leg
up blindly with as much force as she could gather. His sensitive little sack
mashed against her shin and a wounded yelp followed. Droplets of spit landed on
her cheek, their impact waking her from her shocked state. Her eyes snapped
open and she kicked him again, this time sending him down onto his side. She
thrust with her opposite leg and slid from under him, flipped over, and got
first to her knees, then to her feet, and darted for the kitchen.
One of her chunky boot heels snapped
off when she passed from carpet to linoleum, but that didn’t stop her. She made
a beeline for the stove, beside which sat the chopping block and knife caddy.
Her hand grasped the handle of the butcher knife and she pulled it free,
wheeling around with it held in front of her. The tendons in her neck pulled
taut. Her whole body shook.
Justin stumbled through the
entryway, holding his nutsack and moaning. He looked up at her and coughed.
Amazingly enough, the rage had drained from his face.
“You…kicked me…” he said.
“Damn straight,” she replied. The
side of her jaw stung. It felt like her tongue had been wrapped in bandages.
With her free hand she took the telephone receiver off its cradle. Justin began
to come forward.
“Get any closer and I stick you in
the gut with this,” she said, flashing the knife at him.
“What’re you doing?” he asked in a
pathetically pleading voice.
She pressed the Talk button and
dialed 9-1-1. “Calling the cops.”
Justin straightened up, cracked his
neck, coughed again, and then asked, amazingly, “Why?”
Kyra was so flabbergasted that she
almost dropped the phone. “Why? What? Are you kidding me?”
Without another word, Justin started
forward again. She shielded herself from him, but he gave her a wide berth and
limped out of the room. She heard his thumping footfalls as he went down the
hall, the creak of the front door when he opened it, and the battalion-like
roar of his Chevy engine when he pulled out of the driveway and sped off.
“You don’t ever fucking hit me,” she
muttered to the empty air. She could almost feel steam rise from her ears.
“Excuse me?” a lady’s voice asked
over the phone.
She’d been so busy worrying about
Justin’s next move that she forgot she had the police on the other line.
“Sorry,” she said. “My husband and I
got into a fight. He hit me pretty hard…”
While speaking to the 9-1-1
operator, Kyra put the knife down and let a wandering hand drift to her belly.
It stung to the touch.
There’s definitely gonna be a big
bruise there tomorrow, she thought.
*
* *
It was past noon by the time Kyra
awoke. She’d slept in the spare bedroom with the door locked and the knife
clutched in her hands. Justin hadn’t returned after she spoke with police, as
far as she knew—the cop who took her statement, Officer Bartlett, had predicted
as much—but as her mom (and everyone else’s for that matter) used to say,
better safe than sorry. So she got out of bed slowly, dragging her feet with
her sore legs down the hall in a shuffle, peering around each corner like a
player in a bad detective movie. It took a good half-hour of careful searching
before she was amply satisfied that her husband wasn’t lurking behind a
curtain, under a table, or in the refrigerator. He was just…gone.
Kyra wasn’t sure how much good
calling the police had done. Officer Bartlett was plenty helpful, being the
newbie he was, but Sergeant Jerry Baxter was another story. This was a guy who
drank with her husband, bowled with her husband, even got high with him on more
than one occasion. When Jerry promised he would go talk with Justin, asked her
to please not press charges, and proceeded to say it was nothing but a big
misunderstanding, she told him to get out of her house and slammed the door in
his face. Perhaps the folks at the courthouse would treat her differently. She
could only hope so.
The coffee maker heaved its liquid
sigh and Kyra poured herself a cup. She drank it without her usual cream and
four sugars, wanting nothing more than to feel the throb of its black heat on
her sore inner jaw to numb it. Whiskey would’ve worked better, but she was in
no shape to go down that road, not after the morning she’d had.
She went to sit at the kitchen table
and felt a stab of pain in her midsection. The bruise was huge, all right, but
that wasn’t what went through her mind as she lowered her backside into the
chair and rubbed the sore spot. No, that wasn’t it, at all.
What she did think about was how
this whole mess had started in the first place.
It began more than twenty years ago,
on a beautifully brisk April evening. Kyra and Justin had been dating for three
years by then: he, the former high school jock still holding on to past glory a
year past graduation; she, the striking cheerleader, the focus of many an
underclassmen’s pubescent fantasies. Kyra turned eighteen that day, and
although she didn’t feel any real sort of affection for her longtime
boyfriend—their relationship had more or less been one built around the truism
of social climbing, the way couplings between popular children many times
are—it still pleased her to no end when, out of nowhere, Justin decided he
would treat her to a romantic night out.
Justin spent the evening acting the
perfect gentleman. He pulled out her chair at the restaurant, ran over to open
the car door for her, and seemed to listen with interest when she spoke. For
the first time Kyra began to think they had a future that would last beyond her
inevitable departure for college. Her spirits rose and she drifted through the
experience as if she’d been anointed princess for a night, excited beyond
belief for whatever might come next.
They headed north after dinner,
toward the town of Berwick ,
Maine
Kyra shook her head and took another
burning sip of coffee. Please don’t go there, I don’t want to go there, she
thought, but what choice did she have in the matter? After the beating she’d
gotten last night, there was no way in hell this poor excuse for a marriage
could be salvaged. She’d never have it. One of her stipulations, her guiding
principles, had always been this: Hitting me is a deal-breaker. He’d hit her.
Beat her. Deal broken. End of story. In time, she would only have memories.
She glanced at the clock. Eight
minutes past one o’clock. She’d slept less than five hours and her body felt
it, but her mind seemed alive and eager. She stood up and walked into the
living room. In daylight it didn’t seem as menacing as it had when only the
desk lamp lit it and Justin loomed over her, belting her with all his might.
She got down on all fours, her knees and shin smarting along with the rest of
her bruised body, and reached beneath the couch, grasping blindly until her
hand found what it searched for—a plastic bag covered in a decade’s worth of
dust. She pulled the sack out, examined its contents from the outside, and
flicked the edge with her finger. The last time she glanced at these little
snippets of history she promised herself she’d throw them away, but she could
never bring herself to actually do it. Now there they were, a small stack of
four-inch squares concealed in plastic. She suddenly wished she had tossed them
out.
Kyra’s body shook as she opened the
bag and carefully removed one of the glossy images. A white border surrounded a
black interior. The object in the center of the blackness—a smudged gray blur,
somewhat oval in shape—looked like an abstract painting. Tears welled up as her
eyes recognized first a foot, then a leg, then settled on the small, circular
outline in the center of the mass, the heart that once beat vigorously inside
her, the live-giving force of a spirit that never saw the light of day.
Those memories she didn’t want came
pouring back. She remembered everything: the way she felt when she first
discovered the pregnancy; the way she hid it from her folks in fear that they’d
disown her; the look on Justin’s face, one of pure joy, when she told him; his
proposal, dumb and naïve in an adorable way, down on one knee in the middle of
an intra-town softball game; her wedding day, how handsome Justin looked, the
pride on her mother’s face, the promise of happiness in her own soul. Please,
stop! her mind screamed as tears cascaded down her cheeks. I don’t want what
comes next!
But there would be no stopping it.
In a flash, Kyra was there on the
day she was in the supermarket, shopping with her mother, when she felt wetness
slide down her legs. She felt the dizziness that followed, and the flash of
hazy and bright images that followed that, as she was rushed to the hospital
with blood covering her lower body. She saw the doctor’s face as he said the
words placental abruption and went on to tell her the worst part—that a sudden
surge of amniotic fluid had caused her placenta to tear from the wall of her
uterus, doing untold damage to her insides and killing her child. They had to
remove a part of her uterus, he said, simply out of precaution.
Kyra dropped her head in her hands
and wept. She heard the doctor’s voice when he told her she’d never have
children. She remembered how hard Justin had taken the news, becoming a shell
of the man he was now that the thing he wished for most was gone. Whereas
before he at least tried, in his big dumb way, after their loss he surrendered
to apathy. Not that Kyra took it any better. She pulled away from her friends,
her husband, her family, herself, her inner strength and naiveté gone for good.
Her relationship with Justin crumbled but never ended, her insides healed but
never functioned correctly again, which mirrored the way she felt about little
Steven, the son she’d never have.
She dropped her arm, letting the
ultrasound photo dangle between her legs. Anger soon replaced sorrow, rearing
its ugly head like an unwanted zit on prom night. She marched into the kitchen,
flipped open the trashcan lid, and dropped the last remaining evidence of that
sorrow in. There would be no more crying for past mistakes, no more giving in,
no more giving up.
Not today, anyway.
*
* *
At six o’clock that evening, the
telephone rang. Kyra pried herself away from the television and answered it,
hoping it was the attorney she’d spoken to earlier calling her back.
“Hello?” she said.
“Is this Mrs. Holcomb?” asked a man
whose tenor seemed much too hesitant.
”It is. Who’s this?”
“I’m Dr. Fitzsimmons, from
Wentworth-Douglass…” His voice trailed off.
“Wentworth-Douglass? As in the
hospital?” she asked.
“Uh, yes, ma’am.”
“What’s this about?”
The man cleared his throat and
seemed to get his act together. “I’m calling about your husband, Mrs. Holcomb.”
“Is he okay?” she asked, amazed she
still felt a pang of concern.
“Well…I would say…something happened
today…something we need you to come down here and talk to us about. I can’t get
into it over the phone. All I can tell you is that your husband is here and
he’s stable. If you could please come down when you get a chance, we would
really like to speak with you.”
“All right,” she replied. “I’ll be
there in fifteen minutes.”
It actually took a half-hour. The
traffic seemed busier than usual. Fridays, she thought, tailing a beaten-up old
Ford Explorer with a bumper sticker that said, “We are born naked, wet, and
hungry. Then things get worse.” She chuckled at the truth of it.
She arrived at the packed lot of
Wentworth-Douglass and parked the car. She strolled across the pavement, her
body still sore, and walked through the automated emergency room door. A nurse
greeted her at the desk and pointed her in the direction of the elevator, which
she took to a large, crowded waiting area on the second floor. Once there, she
marveled at how many folks had gathered and the expressions they wore. It
reminded her of those news shots of nervous family members gathered in Red
Cross stations around New York City
Kyra made her way to the reception
desk, where the attending nurse, a pretty black woman with kind, round
features, stood behind the sliding window.
“Hello,” said Kyra, “I’m Mrs.
Holcomb. I’m here about my husband.”
“Does he work for Capital Oil?” asked
the nurse.
“Yes.”
The nurse—Tiana, as her nametag
stated—gestured in the direction of the others in the room. “Please, wait over
there. The doctor will see you all in a few moments.”
“Thank you,” replied Kyra. She
spotted an open chair outside the huddled throng and took it. She sat beside a
slender young woman, who moved her purse from the area beneath Kyra’s seat and
held it in her lap. The woman never looked up as she did so, her blank face
staring straight ahead in silence. Kyra offered her thanks but received no
reply. She looked around then, noticing that no one else in the room had given
her so much as a second glance. It was as if they were all hypnotized, with
fifty sets of eyes ordered to stare at the ground. Kyra leaned back, closed
hers, and waited.
Ten minutes later a doctor strode
into the room. His short, fat body swayed with each step. The few remaining
hairs on his head were matted down with nervous sweat. Those who lingered
pulled their collective attention from the polished tile floor. The doctor
pushed his glasses up from the tip of his nose with his right index finger and
cleared his throat.
“Hello everyone, I’m Dr.
Fitzsimmons,” he said. “I spoke with many of you on the phone. I thank you for
coming.”
“What’s going on here?” the voice of
a large, older man boomed. “Where’s my son?”
The nervous doctor shifted on his
small feet. “You’ll be able to see your loved ones shortly.” He frowned and
stared at his watch. His voice dropped to the point where Kyra could barely
make out his words. “We’re really not sure what’s going on. Representatives
from the CDC are on their way, but until they arrive, they are all to remain
under strict supervision.”
“What happened?” asked the formerly
silent woman beside Kyra. Her voice came out mousy and timid.
Doctor Fitzsimmons shrugged. “We
can’t be certain. An emergency call was placed from the Capital Oil garage at
one-thirty this afternoon. When the ambulance arrived, everyone inside
appeared…sick. We’ve done some tests on them, but haven’t been able to arrive
at an acceptable diagnosis.” He feigned a smile. “With that being said, I
wouldn’t worry too much about it. Everything that’s being done is strictly
precautionary. It might be something like Legionnaires’, but more than likely
it’s nothing but a new strain of flu. They’re all currently being administered
heavy doses of antivirals, so hopefully this will be much ado about nothing.”
There was something uncomfortable in
the doctor’s body language. He knows something he’s not telling us, Kyra
thought. Others seemed to sense this, as well, because his words of reassurance
did little to change the doubt on their faces. The doctor, obviously unnerved,
lifted the chart in his left hand and ogled it as if it had a copy of Penthouse
beneath the metal clip. His actions said he was searching for a way to get past
the uncomfortable silence.
Another doctor, this one young and
Hispanic with deep blue eyes, emerged from the double doors. He whispered into
Dr. Fitzsimmons’s ear, who nodded intently.
“All right,” Fitzsimmons said,
addressing the crowd, “everyone follow me.”
He led the group through the doors
and down a long corridor. The sound of the linoleum as shoes squeaked over it,
wet from the slow drizzle that had started an hour or so before, echoed off the
pure-white walls. They entered another large room, one with a huge viewing
window. There stood four unarmed security guards, two standing on either side
of the locked door to the left. Bright fluorescent light shone from behind the
enormous window. This seemed like an abnormal and definitely unethical practice
to Kyra, but she had no choice but to follow the leader. Dr. Fitzsimmons
chatted with the guard closest to him, then ushered everyone forward. A series
of gasps rose from the crowd.
Kyra pushed her way to the front and
peered through the window. Four rows of gurneys lined the room behind the
glass. At least twenty men and women were in there, IVs taped to their
forearms. Their skin appeared spongy, virtually translucent, their veins
clearly visible. An older woman screeched and began weeping. The kind young
gentleman standing next to the woman put his arm around her, allowing her to
sob into the lapel of his suit jacket. Kyra felt the woman’s pain but could
only stare with slack-jawed astonishment.
One of the patients was Harry, a boy
of eighteen Kyra had first met at the company’s Independence Day picnic. The
youngster lifted his head and yellow secretions streaked with red tendrils
dripped from the corner of his mouth. A tear trickled down Kyra’s cheek. The
Harry she remembered had been a strapping young man with pitch-black hair,
soulful brown eyes, and a thinly muscled physique. Now he appeared thin,
malnourished beyond belief. He moved his mouth, looking like he was trying to
form words, and then his body started to shake. His arms lifted above his head
and he turned away. It was as feeble a gesture as Kyra had ever seen. Another
middle-aged woman in the group of observers howled and ran from the room. It
was probably the young man’s mother.
The ruckus of the screaming woman
subsided and Kyra spotted Justin, laying three cots down from Harry. His large
features were bloated to the point of absurdity. He was unconscious, his chest
rising and falling at odd intervals. She could almost hear his rasping through
the soundproof glass. He coughed. His eyes opened for a brief second, stared
blankly at the ceiling, and then closed.
Kyra turned her back to the scene,
nudged her way through the crowd, and returned to the sitting room. Sadness
overwhelmed her and she cried openly. These tears were not for Justin, he who’d
broken his vow never to hurt her, but for the innocent boy; for Harry, the
youngster who’d never hurt a fly, who had never said an unkind word in her
presence. Suddenly this whole mess became her husband’s fault. Fuck you,
Justin, she thought. You’re the one who deserves this. Not him.
An unexpected commotion broke out,
drawing her attention. A crowd of nurses and cleaning staff had gathered around
the corner television, shooting snippets of conversation back and forth, their
eyes glued to the screen. The sound of what appeared to be a digital foghorn
filled the air.
Kyra approached the group and
spotted Tiana the nurse. “What’s going on?” she asked.
“Emergency broadcast,” replied Tiana
in a far away, frightened voice. “The damned horn’s been going off for the last
five minutes.”
Kyra nodded and looked at the
television. URGENT MESSAGE: PLEASE STAND BY flashed across the screen. She
knelt down in the front so others could see over her. The message faded away
and an image appeared: a portly man she recognized but couldn’t exactly place,
with thinning brown hair and wearing a disheveled gray suit that hung from his
shoulders like a drape, stood behind the presidential podium. He opened his
mouth and spoke, his eyes wide and dire.
“Citizens of this great nation,” he
said, “this is not a test.”
This is the end of the first 3 chapters of THe Fall: The Rift Book I, if you like this you can get a copy for free by clicking here GET THE FULL BOOK FREE
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