Mr Hands

by Gary A Braunbeck

  It felt good to be giving a little something back to the community.

  Today she was at the park to add to the scrapbook she kept for herself and Mr. Hands; after all, they were partners, on a mission from SHIT, and should document their good deeds for posterity; so, each time Mr. Hands dispatched a monster and Lucy could remove the case from the Walls of Madness, she added those clippings to the scrapbook along with the stories about the odd, horrible, and usually painfully slow manner in which they were banished from this world.

  When they were found, that is.

  On this late October day, Lucy Thompson and Mr. Hands had rid the world of exactly eleven of the very worst monsters, and they would rid it of many, many more; Lucy had vowed so much to the memory of her daughter.

  “Did you know that there are two kinds of time, Mr. Hands? I read about it a book once: chronos and kairos. Kairos is not measurable. In kairos, you simply are, from the moment of your birth on. You are, wholly and positively. In chronos you’re nothing more than a set of records, fingerprints, your social-security number, you’re always watching the clock, aware of time passing and of being vulnerable to outside forces that are creeping up on you, pushing you closer to the moment of your death…but in kairos, you simply are. Kairos is especially strong in children, because they haven’t learned to understand, let alone accept, concepts such as time and age and torture and starvation and death. In children, kairos can break through chronos: when they’re playing safely, drawing a picture for Mommy or Daddy, taking the first taste of the first ice-cream cone of summer, when they sing along to songs in a Disney cartoon or talk to an ‘imaginary’ friend or invent secret places in this world only they can see, there is only kairos. As long as a child thinks it’s immortal, it is.”

  She applied glue to the back of a newspaper article about the torture-death of Karen Lawrence, then carefully smoothed it in place next to a color photograph the Cedar Hill Ally had run while covering the woman’s trail; a reproduction of Billy Lawrence’s only photograph taken outside the hospital: He was dressed in an infant’s baseball player uniform, holding a small plastic bat and smiling the widest, most radiant baby-boy smile you ever saw.

  Lucy could look at it now and feel her heart grow warm at how happy and loveable he was, instead of thinking: He was dead six days after this was taken.

  It might have just been a trick of the light, but she could swear his tiny smile actually grew wider when the article detailing his mother’s death was pasted next to his picture.

  “It’s important that we continue this, Mr. Hands. Think of every living child as being the burning bush that Moses saw; surrounded by the flames of chronos, but untouched by the fire.”

  An image in her mind: children sitting around a birthday-party table, singing to Sarah who was smiling and embarrassed and happy, and next to her, safe and secure in a baby-seat, was Billy Lawrence, cute as a button in his baseball outfit, giggling as Carol Beals played nosey-nose with him...

  “Children don’t know about chronos, Mr. H., and as long as we continue SHIT’s work, that’s how it remains.”

  ...Blow out the candles! See if you can get ‘em all in one breath!

  “I’ve been wrong in thinking that Sarah was my only child, Mr. H—Heather Wilson, Daniel McKellan, Rosie and Thad Simpkins, Billy Lawrence…all of them are mine—are ours—because no one else wants the responsibility. And there’re hundreds more just like them, too many of whom died at the hands of a parent who was supposed to love them, care for them, protect them from harm, or who died at the hands of family friends, or suffered unspeakable deaths inflicted on them by people who stole them away for their own twisted pleasures. We have babies, Mr. H., some who lived less than a month because they were starved or beaten or dumped in trash cans or left out in the cold to freeze to death or locked in cars on summer days to slowly suffocate—but that can’t touch them now because when we dispatch those who snuffed out their lives, they come into our care, and in our care they live only in kairos. Chronos isn’t part of them any longer.”

  She turned the scrapbook around so as to give Mr. Hands a glimpse of the Lawrence section. She suspected that he peeked out from between the rows of stone faces and was pleased with what he saw.

  “The world will not be this way within reach of my arm, Mr. H.

  “We will continue to punish the monsters who have already killed, but from now on we will also save as many living children as we can from having to die at abusive, neglectful, violent hands.

  “And there shall be no mercy. Under no circumstances.”

  A cool autumn breeze kissed her cheek as she gently closed the scrapbook and filled herself with the scent of the dried leaves whispering around her.

  Somewhere between the breeze and the sound of the leaves brushing against the ground, she heard Sarah’s voice saying, What a great birthday party! I’m so glad you’re my mommy...

  And thus, under the all-seeing eye of SHIT, the focus of their mission expanded.

  Chapter Four

  Lucy spotted the couple outside the Sparta restaurant downtown two days later. Everything about them screamed Welfare Recipients (the despicable type who gave the truly needy a bad name—both obviously available and able to work but deciding instead to bilk the system for everything they could get, feeling that the world owed them and screw anyone else); the two of them, dressed in not-cheap winter clothing and arguing loudly over who was going to pick up the “party supplies” for that night, seemed oblivious to the infant in its stroller: dressed in clothing far too thin for this type of weather (not to mention far too small, as if they’d chosen to spend the money on beer instead of proper seasonal attire for their baby), the child’s cold-reddened face showed open misery. The woman—twenty, maybe twenty-one—kept kicking at the back of the stroller every time the baby cried too loudly, while the father flicked his cigarette ashes thoughtlessly to the side, more than a few of them—still red and hot—landing on the child’s exposed hands and causing it to cry all the louder, which in turn compelled the mother to kick the back of the stroller even harder.

  For a moment, the child’s eyes met Lucy’s as she stood staring from across the street, and in its small, pained eyes was a wordless plea: Make it stop.

  “You got it, precious one,” Lucy whispered.

  She closed her eyes and summoned Mr. Hands, then followed the couple on foot until they stopped by a phone booth at the opposite end of the square.

  The father went into the booth to make a call while the mother stood outside, adjusting the fluffy collar of her pricey coat because she was cold. The child looked up at her with teary eyes, trying to turn around in its seat, arms extended, wanting so very much to be in Mommy’s arms.

  Lucy crossed the street and walked past them just to test a theory; sure enough, as she slowed her steps to smile down at the baby, it reached out toward her, a moment of hope on its freezing face.

  Simple human contact, that’s what it wanted, a warm touch from anyone.

  Please.

  Lucy winked at it, then went to the end of the street and turned around.

  This was the part she’d grown to like the best, knowing that only she and those monsters who were about to be dispatched could see Mr. Hands. There was a crack between the walls of the finite and the infinite, and in this place, when she summoned him, Mr. Hands could freeze things—time, perception, matter, she wasn’t entirely certain—but for the few moments it took for him to dispatch a Monster, Mr. Hands, his targets, and herself existed only in that space where the walls of the finite and infinite didn’t quite fit together as tightly as they should have.

  It was their little secret, one that she was happy to keep from the chronos-bound world of consensual reality.

  It made her laugh sometimes, the idea of consensual reality: why did people think so small?

  She called for him again.

  And there he was, looming over the phone booth like a curse from heaven, a soldier of SHIT. Lucy noticed t
he quiver-like basket that he’d recently fashioned from tree branches and roots that was slung over his back, held in place by a strap that she suspected was constructed of equal parts sinew, sticks, and flesh.

  Protruding from the rim of the basket were a couple of arms and part of a leg.

  Mr. Hands did not leave the body of every dispatched monster behind; he kept a few for his own amusement. What that amusement might be, Lucy didn’t care to imagine.

  He looked at her and she made a small pushing gesture with her arms.

  Balancing on his stumps, Mr. Hands reached out and gently, silently, without the mother even noticing, moved the child out of harm’s way. Aware not only that it was being pushed, but that it was being pushed by something unseen, the child’s face lit up with mystified glee.

  This pleased Mr. Hands to no end, and with one of his fingers he tenderly mussed the child’s hair, which sent it into another fit of wondrous giggling.

  That done, he turned, raised up a mighty fist, and brought it down on top of the phone booth, crushing the structure as easily as an aluminum can. The woman screamed as some of the pulped remains of her husband splattered outward and covered her face, and then she was in Mr. Hands’ grip and he was looking at Lucy.

  Do it somewhere very, very cold, she commanded him. I trust you’ll make it appropriate.

  He nodded his understanding, then—knocking the young woman unconscious by slamming her skull against the pavement once—placed her in his basket and ran off.

  Later, several witnesses who’d been driving by all reported seeing the same thing: The phone booth had simply crumpled, crushing the man within, and then the young woman, screaming, had seemed to leap into the air and…vanish.

  This latter incident was chalked up to shock and panic, it being far too fantastic for anyone to believe.

  The mother’s naked body was discovered two days later by some teenager who’d gone out to Buckeye Lake for some ice-skating. One of them had stopped to re-tie their laces and found themselves staring into the dead, frozen face of a crushed body beneath the ice of the rink.

  The child was taken into protective care by Children’s Services. Newspaper reports over the next several days confirmed Lucy’s suspicions: The couple had been investigated three times not only for Welfare fraud, but for suspected mistreatment of their baby, who was now doing very well and was happy and feeling much better and would undoubtedly be adopted soon by a more deserving and loving couple.

  Lucy celebrated by buying a bottle of expensive wine and toasting Mr. Hands in front of the sculpture a few days later.

  The young mound-walking couple saw her making her toast. Lucy stopped mid-sentence and waited for them to leave, which they did when they saw the writhing of something unhinged behind her gaze.

  They never came back there again.

  Chapter Five

  At six-ten p.m. the following Friday night, Lucy was getting ready to turn off the television when a late-breaking story came in: A two-year-old girl had been killed in Cedar Hill, and her older brother had confessed to it.

  She remained very still as the anchor read from the Teleprompter.

  The facts were scant but spoke volumes nonetheless:

  Kylie Ann Patterson—who would have turned three in less than a week—had been burned to death by her brother, Randy, 16, during a party.

  “Details are sketchy at this point,” intoned the anchor, “but it appears that her older brother doused her in gasoline and then set her on fire. We have a team on the way to the scene and will update you as soon as more information becomes available.”

  Lucy turned off the television and then sat in the still, sudden silence and wept for the horror and agony of Kylie Ann Patterson’s last few minutes of life.

  Then she stepped outside and closed her eyes and conferred with Mr. Hands.

  What a miserable world this has become, Mr. H. We’re rearing an entire generation that doesn’t care about the suffering of the innocent.

  He agreed with her wholeheartedly.

  They decided to punish Randy next Tuesday—what would have been Kylie’s third birthday.

  * * *

  In the age of instant communication, tragedy is often unwittingly compounded by the sheer amount of venues through which it can be recounted; a perverse, modern-day variation of Telephone.

  There might have been someone to blame for what happened next, or there might have been no one at all.

  One could have blamed the sheriff’s deputy who was first on the scene, and the first person to see up-close the charred, still-twitching remains of Kylie Ann’s body; who among us could look on such a sight and not suffer some form of revulsion, heartbreak, or shock?

  Easier still, place the blame on those at the television station whose job it was to monitor all police and sheriff’s calls; upon hearing the shocked and tearful voice of the deputy as he radioed in, who wouldn’t get so caught up in the excitement that maybe a syllable or two of his report wouldn’t get lost in the radio static?

  Or point fingers at those who entered the information into the television station’s system so that it came up on the teleprompter almost as quickly as the deputy spoke.

  Lay blame, if you like, on the anchor himself, who on this particular night chose to wear his new contact lenses instead of his glasses (which he thought made him look older than he cared to appear).

  Take your pick: A shocked and weeping deputy who maybe slurred a word or two as he radioed in his report; communication monitors who perhaps didn’t hear everything quite right through the static and so unconsciously filled in the gaps created by a muffled syllable; excitement on the part of those who entered the information into the station’s computer because their broadcast had to be the first to break the story; an anxious, middle-aged anchorman who was worried about losing his position to a younger man and so tried to take ten years off his appearance by wearing new contact lenses and who, as a result maybe, just perhaps, misread something in the blurry, scrolling text.

  Add these elements to an already horrifying tragedy and loose them into the self-perpetuating machinations of the Information Age.

  Where all can be undone by a single numeral.

  Lucy Thompson was not watching television seventeen minutes later when the anchorman, displaying the proper amount of concern, professionalism, and Gosh-We’re-Just-Human humility, looked into the camera and said, “We need to correct something we told you about earlier in the broadcast concerning the death of two-year-old Kylie Ann Patterson. Her brother, Randy, whose age our sources initially reported as being sixteen, is actually six years old. We have information coming in now that the girl’s death was an accident and not a homicide. For the full story, tune in tonight at ten.”

  Chapter Six

  Feeling drained and heartsick about Kylie Ann Patterson, Lucy took Saturday off from all sources of news; there was no web surfing, no newspaper, no radio, no television.

  It wasn’t until she sat down with the Sunday paper that she read the full account of what had happened at the Patterson house the previous Friday night.

  The family had been grilling out in their backyard, a Hallowe’en tradition in their household regardless of how chilly it was. Randy had been trying to help his father get the fire started while Kylie and her mother were readying themselves to go trick-or-treating. They’d come out back to tell Randy and his father they were leaving. Mr. Patterson asked his wife to help him get some lawn chairs from the garage and the two of them left the grill unattended. Wanting only to help, Randy picked up the can of charcoal lighter fluid and was squeezing more onto the smoldering coals when the fire unexpectedly roared to life. The force of the fire startled him and he dropped the can of lighter fluid onto the grill and fell to the ground. The can exploded before Kylie could move from harm’s way, and the little girl was immediately covered in flaming fluid. She screamed and ran and Randy went after her. She collapsed a minute later, her body and highly flammable costume engulfed in flames.
Randy, screaming and crying, tried to save her, to drag her down to the creek and throw her in the water, but a neighbor stopped him from getting too near the conflagration.

  There was nothing anyone could do to save her.

  Later, Randy, still hysterical, was heard by other witnesses screaming, “I did it! I did it! It’s all my fault!”

  No criminal charges were being filed against any member of the Patterson family.

  Stunned, Lucy slumped back in her chair and pressed her hand against her mouth.

  Six years old. The same age Sarah would be now if...

  If.

  Six years old.

  Dear God, Dear SHIT, what am I going to do now?

  Thirty minutes later she stood before the sculpture in Moundbuilders Park, pressing her face against one of the openings between those faces chiseled into the rounded stones, whispering, “I was wrong, Mr. H. Do you hear? I was wrong about Randy Patterson. We’re not to punish him, understand?”

  There was only silence for a response.

  “Say something!” she hissed into the opening.

  No mercy.

  “But this is different, Mr. H. I was wrong and it was an accident and—”

  No mercy. Under no circumstances.

  “Goddammit, no!” she shouted, beating a fist against the stone. “No, we—you can’t—”

  But his reply remained unchanged.

  Under. No. Circumstances.

  Lucy could only stand there, bloodied fist held against her chest, and stare at the ground.

  Sometime later, she stumbled back to her car and drove home, where she cleaned and bandaged her wounded hand, poured herself a generous drink, then stood before the Walls of Madness. The faces and words of the articles seemed to shift the longer she stared at them, become liquid and flowing, reshaping themselves into a small newspaper figure, and that figure shimmered in kairos until it was paper-flesh, and that flesh seemed so alive, so close, so near.