Seventeen
I wake up and find that I am alone in the bed. The sun is low in the sky, its rays stabbing into the bedroom almost aggressively. I hear voices downstairs. After grabbing a shower that’s far shorter than I would opt for in better circumstances, I descend to the first floor, welcomed not only by Beth’s and Love’s voices, but by the sweet and savory odors of bacon, sausage, biscuits, eggs, hash browns, and pancakes.
I’m prepared to thank Beth, but as I step from the hallway into the kitchen, she’s seated at the bar and Love is happily cooking away, wearing Beth’s ‘No Bitchin’ in the Kitchen’ apron.
I’m perpetually baffled that people don’t eat breakfast food more often. As a kid, the main reason I aspired to survive to adulthood was so that I could have French toast whenever I wanted, instead of whenever Dad failed to return home in the night. Now my mouth waters and hangs open, both spectacularly hungry and incredulous. Homeboy can cook. Damn can he cook.
“Heya, welcome,” Beth says.
She’s doing visibly better, the remaining swelling in her eye barely noticeable, although the bruising will take quite a while longer to disappear. She’s just starting into her food, and Love quickly sets out a plate for me, with generous helpings of everything in sight. As I start into my hash browns (which were perfectly done; crispy, but not hard, and wonderfully seasoned), he pours a glass of orange juice for me.
The mess of Beth’s abduction has been cleaned up, the bar stool with the broken support sitting upside down by the back door. When Love serves himself a plate with servings the same size as mine, we migrate to the table, the better to talk with each other, whenever we could get words out past the mounds of tasty food.
For a time, we eat and laugh, the matter of Keroth and my dad shoved to the figurative back burner, and some banana-ish pudding concoction on the literal back burner.
When we’re almost finished eating, a melancholy silence falls over us like a sheet draped over an exhibit that’s closing for good. We exchange glances nervously, becoming more and more aware of the events that are to take place in the coming hours. I wash down one more bite of pancake with a swallow of orange juice, but I haven’t chewed enough, and I can feel it descending slowly to my core.
Beth looks behind her, out the back window. The sky is turning shades of purple, and a few stars have pushed through the light barrier. She looks back toward Love and me.
“We ready?” she says. It sounds so plain and naked the way she says it, but as I think about it, I wouldn’t be able to come up with an appropriate pep talk at the moment either.
Love and I nod. I shiver slightly.
Wordlessly, we make one more trip upstairs to get the few items that we need for the night’s necessities. Love puts on a black zip-up sweatshirt, then another sweatshirt, almost identical, on top of that. I put on a bright blue windbreaker, and make sure I have enough gloves.
Just anticipating the night makes my heart rate increase noticeably. It’s not so much that I’m worried about the success of the mission tonight; on paper, it’s reasonably solid, and should be doable without too much issue. My worry is that this mission is only the first step, and we have little to no control over the following steps. We’re not pulling the trigger; we’re just loading the gun. Whether or not the events will occur to then turn off the safety and pull the trigger are unclear at this point, and we have to be okay with that.
The plan itself should work, but depending on what outside interference takes place, it’s easily interruptible and may end with trouble for us.
Trying to put that thought out of my mind, I get into the car. Beth is driving and I’m in shotgun, while Love rides in the seat behind me. It’s a short drive to the station; maybe five minutes. The clouds are dense enough that it looks as if it will rain, not to mention that the state of vulnerability that encapsulates us all renders a walk to the station in the dark sufficiently unpalatable. So we drive.
We park on the south side of the building, close to where Keroth’s car was parked when I broke into it, apparently watched throughout. We get out and make conspicuous small talk, feigning inside jokes and complaining loudly about the new coffee machine being too slow to keep up.
I wish that that were my biggest problem right now.
Inside, the heads of a handful of floaters still bob in the bullpen, threatening to fall asleep at any minute.
“Hang on a minute, I need to pee,” I say to Beth.
“Same,” says Love.
The bathroom in the interview hall has no windows, for obvious reasons, but there’s one off the other side of the bullpen in a hallway that can only be accessed by employees. That one has windows, and with the age of the building, they were built in a functional fashion, openable from the inside, and wide enough to admit a person my size.
We enter it, still talking about that darned coffee machine, and as soon as the door closes, I remove the blue windbreaker and hand it to Love, and Love removes the first black jacket and hands it to me. I put it on and zip it up while he opens the window and checks for passersby.
“All clear,” he says. “Be careful, and hurry.”
I plan on it.
While cheeky and borderline juvenile, the switch is necessary; first, I needed to be seen wearing that awful blue windbreaker. Surely, whatever surveillance Keroth has on me noted its brightness. If they look for me outside of here, they won’t likely see me, and if they do, they won’t recognize me for me, at least not immediately. Furthermore, they know that if we have been conspiring together, I’ll still be the one to carry out tasks like that, due to my in-depth knowledge on the neighborhood, my dad’s house, Keroth’s schedule, and how to pick locks.
Grateful, again, to be able to shed my klutzy charade, I quickly and quietly slip out the window, back into the cold November night. I land almost silently in the moss so fortuitously growing beneath the window, and head toward the back roads. The back parking lot contains no cars and no noise. It’s dimly lit by incandescent bulbs held securely on thirty-foot poles. They’re also equipped with cameras, both traditional and infrared, but this doesn’t faze me; they’re not monitored in real-time. The only real-time surveillance that preoccupies my mind is that of Keroth. So, I zip across the parking lot toward the alternate route toward my childhood dwelling.
While this detour will add quite some time to my trip, it’s a precaution I deemed necessary based on how closely Keroth’s guys have been able to watch and interfere with me thus far. The back roads are VERY dimly lit, sometimes not at all, which is perfect for a guy like me. Surely they would have gotten more complaints about the dimly lit streets, but it’s an older community now, and most of them aren’t venturing out past dark anyway, and nor are their kids. Beyond that, crime in this part of town is either undetectable or takes place in broad daylight. So, the community stays fairly dark at night, providing passage for me to carry out my own crimes more confidently.
As I trot, I keep my hands balled in my pocket to keep them warm; I need them as operable and as deft as possible when I get back to Dad’s house. Step by step, damp pavement passes underfoot and my target draws closer. This time I’m armed with two plastic bags, but instead of feeling like heavy weight against my gut, I draw energy from their presence, as though I’m clinging to a battery that ushers me through the gloom.
My childhood memories are entities that I’m usually happy to ignore, letting them bubble and belch on their own, occasionally stopping by only to check that they’re still there. They always are.
In this case, however, I must call upon them; ten-year-old me knew these streets inside and out. Little Jeremy could walk these roads blindfolded and hop the potholes while pointing out who lived in each house. That’s who I need to be right now: Jeremy, not Remy.
As I anticipated, when I open the gates to the steaming pool of goop that is my childhood in memory form, memories of the roads are accompanied by memories of the pain, the anxiety, the throb in my ribs from my most recent beat
ing.
I produce tears, but only enough that my vision is augmented with a strange crispness, and only until I blink a couple of times and return them to their normal state. A few more blocks and I’m there.
The other day, I approached from the west, coming in from Main Street, just four blocks out. This time, I’m coming from the east, having taken a detour that took me both eastward and north of my target. But, again, the detour was necessary, and as I close in, I mentally pat myself on the back.
Instead of taking the road to my dad’s front door, I hop the neighbors’ fences and take the easy path through their backyards to get to the back door. As I trudge through the small jungle that is now my dad’s old backyard, I already have my gloves out and am putting them on when I reach the door. The lock gives without much hassle, despite my hands shaking (from anxiety more than from the cold).
Once more, I enter the dragon’s lair, the devil’s den of perversion. I’m too preoccupied to come up with any more metaphors. My ears flood with the sound of my shallow breaths and my heartbeat. Trying to remain convinced that the sounds that I hear around me are tricks of the acoustics and my mind, I focus.
Focus, damn it.
“Focus, damn it,” I find myself saying out loud.
Will you shut the fuck up?!
My dad sits at the table in the front room, opposite where I entered. He stares at me, eyes blazing, making to get up and pulling a tire iron out of midair. He stands tall and walks toward me. I shake my head and he vanishes, all at once; the filthy wifebeater and the filthy wife-beater who’s wearing it.
Though the image of my late father was entirely hallucinated, it seemed to leave an afterimage in my mind, the negative space surrounding his spot at the table teeming with shadow.
This isn’t the kind of darkness that I like. My darkness is soft, quiet, calm. Easy on the senses.
This darkness is choking, tying a noose around my neck with a rope made of unknowns and what-ifs. Under normal circumstances, darkness and I are on equal ground, but here, in the place of my upbringing, it is predator and I am prey.
I persist.
Slowly, the shaking in my hands and knees steadies, and I’m nearly back to my cool, effective, methodical self. My breathing slows and steadies, and at last, my own darkness has overwhelmed that of this house. My mind no longer twists or contorts what little light spills into the rooms from the windows. I hear a few small plits that steadily escalate in frequency: rain.
Along with Orion, rain soothes my mind and soul beyond virtually any other form of catharsis. Books, tea, coffee, cocoa, chocolate, cookies, and kids’ movies all act as ready tools for my taking, but no combination of those compares with the overwhelming calm that rain provides. This presents a delicious dynamic late in the year, when Orion is present and bright, because often when he isn’t visible, it’s because it’s raining. And that’s fine with me.
I am calm. The darkness is mine, and the rain has voiced its support for my mission. While I’m confident that I wasn’t followed, and that the darkness and rain provided visual protection bordering on invisibility, I crouch nonetheless, unwilling to risk the potential consequences of omitting such precautions. Up the stairs, once again. Into my dad’s room, once again.
No fingerprint dust. There was no yellow tape, either.
There has been no investigation in the house yet, which means that my window of opportunity is still open. Keroth must have wanted to get in here and clean it up before he sent the techs out; the filth that had previously tainted the walls and tabletops has been removed, replaced with thrift store paintings framed in yard sale frames and Auto Trader. A Sudoku book lies on the bedside table now.
It looks normal.
Still crouching, I cross to the desk by the window, already fishing in my jacket for one of the plastic bags that I brought from Beth’s house. Satisfied that my hands have returned to their usual steadiness, I pull the comb out and set it on the floor, parallel to the wall. I use my phone’s light to make sure that there’s a noticeable amount of flaming red hair on it. There is.
I retreat and cross the hall to the bathroom, pulling out the second of my two plastic bags. I open a drawer and remove a second comb, identical to the first, and place it carefully underneath a can of body spray that smells faintly like an antique store. It, too, carries just enough blazing red hair to be noticeable. The drawer rolls shut smoothly, and I stow the bag back in my jacket.
An additional comb will, hopefully, ensure that if somebody comes through hoping to make one last sweep before the forensics crew gets its hands on the place, there’s a good chance that they’ll find it, think that it’s the only thing that they have to worry about, and abandon the hunt, retiring satisfied, to their former posts, probably keeping an eye on me or Beth or Todd.
I turn toward the hallway and hear a car on the road. Likely a neighbor, or so I think until I hear the cacophony of rushed men’s voices outside. They’re growing louder. I don’t have time to get downstairs and out of sight before they burst in through the front door. My old bedroom has a window that goes out to the lower roof, but I don’t know whether the nearby tree is grown out enough to support my descent.
If nothing else, I can hide on the roof until they leave. It faces north while the rest of the house faces west, so I won’t be visible from the street. As long as I cover my face, I shouldn’t be visible at all, not in this darkness.
The front door opens and at least three men enter, but I mentally allow for the possibility of a fourth. I sneak out of the bathroom and zip down the hall, hoping that the noise that they themselves are making is enough to mask my footfalls. I hold out my hand and grasp the cold metal, sweat filling my gloves.
The knob doesn’t turn. It’s locked. I could more or less easily break it in, but the racket would surely be detected, and instead of evading their senses, I would initiate a chase, and perhaps they have someone on the ground for additional security purposes. I can’t run. I need to hide or fight and, while I can handle myself in hand-to-hand combat, and even to a degree with firearms, they’re likely all armed, and in any case, four-on-one is a level of Bruce Lee that my skills will not accommodate.
So I hide. There’s a closet in the hallway that’s almost hidden, a small latch barely visible in the wood paneling. Before I throw myself into it, I go back to the bathroom and put the comb back into the plastic bag, listening hard for anyone beginning an ascent of the stairs, but it sounds like they’re still on the ground floor.
Having secured my precious, I close the hallway closet door behind me, and pray that its subtlety is sufficient to deter the seeking gazes of my new friends. And not a moment too soon; the staircase turns into a thunderstorm. It seems they’re moving together. Great.
Eighteen
Never has my control of my breath had higher stakes. The voices come closer, closer, but far enough that I’m safe. For now, at least. I hear them go into my dad’s room.
“I’m sure it’s here somewhere. Boss said it’s the last one the kid has, so once we find it, he can have the pigs sniff this place out. Let’s get it and get out. I know this guy was one of ours, but … he was also fuckin’ creepy. You ever meet ’im?”
“Once,” says another voice. “We didn’t shake hands, but I still felt like I had to wash my hands afterward. Have you seen the shit this guy churns out? Fuckin’ demon, for real.”
“Yeah,” agree two or three of them.
I’d been hoping that their being closer to me would help me figure out how many of them there are, but no such luck.
“Honestly, Boss isn’t much better. He was all buddy buddy with this guy. I guess he didn’t do it himself, but he definitely partook in the product that came out of this place. Fuck.” I can almost hear him shaking his head in disgust, which intrigues me; how much of a monster do you have to be to disgust these guys?
Keroth may be more evil than I thought. I entertain the image of him in a cell, and entertain further the image of his fello
w inmates ripping him apart. I shake myself back to focus.
“Ah, here it is. Who’s taking care of the guy and the girl? They’re at the station, yeah?”
“I think so. Cross said he’d do it.”
FUCK.
“Good. So what’s the plan for Thorn?”
“Junior or senior?”
“The living one, dipshit.”
“Right. What’d Boss say?”
“We take care of him.”
“But when?” He mocked the whining of a child on a long road trip.
“After he talks to him.”
“Talks?”
Though I had previously identified three distinct voices, this conversation has, thus far, only played host to two of them. They’re fairly typical, though; I feel like I would be unable to identify them, even if I knew them on a casual basis.
“Yeah. I dunno. Monologue, maybe cut him a little. James Bond villain-type bullshit.”
Drawers opening and closing in the bedroom. Either they’re not looking all that hard and haven’t seen the comb yet, or they found it and are conducting a once-over to be sure they didn’t miss anything, which could spell checkmate for me.
“So what, a couple of days?”
“Tops.”
I never got an invitation to this party that I’m supposedly attending. How rude. I’ll have to RSVP regrets.
Judging by the completeness of the darkness in which I sit, I deem that it’s safe to use my cell phone without its little light being detected from outside. After ensuring that it’s on silent, I compose a text to Beth and Todd.
“You still at the station?”
I grip my phone as though an increase in pressure from my hands will squeeze a reply into it.
[Darkthorn 01.0] Pond Scum Page 13