As they came around a sweeping bend, brake lights up ahead were the first signs of any other life that they had seen since leaving the camp. The traffic was stopped and the swiftly turning blue lights that blocked their route suddenly alerted them that they were driving into a roadblock.
“We’re dead, man,” Chris said, and immediately regretted how that sounded coming out of his mouth.
“Easy, we don’t even know what this is about. It’s probably got nothing to do with us: A sobriety check or something?”
“A sobriety check? On an Interstate? At,” he glanced at the clock on the dashboard, “a quarter past eleven in the morning?”
“Okay bad example but it still probably has nothing to do with us. Stay calm, we’re on vacation. Just left Wisconsin Dells and we’re heading to Mt. Rushmore.” Jimmy sat back in his seat and crossed his arms over his chest.
There were three police cars across the road with a space between two of them that was just big enough for a small truck to drive through. They were light blue with white stripes and a shield on the door that read State Patrol. If a big rig had come by, they probably would have had to make an adjustment. The two lanes had merged into one and the police were spread out from just where the two lanes came together, to just past the blockade.
The first officer they approached asked for licenses and registrations which they both handed over. He was young, early twenties, clean shaven and crew cut beneath his Smokey the Bear trooper’s hat. The uniform was a mix of light and dark shades of gray and he had Ray Bans on which mirrored Chris’s face as he looked into them. The name tag just above his left pocket said, Trooper Allen. He had a clipboard and stuck the three documents under the clip and began writing. “What’s this about sir?” Jimmy said, leaning in towards the driver’s window.
“Officer Reynolds will be the one to ask the questions son, just mind your manners and you’ll get along fine,” the trooper said, he was all business. “Thank you, Christopher,” he said, handing the documents back. “You can pull up now, slowly.”
Chris put the car in drive and edged his way up to the next trooper. This one was middle-aged, in the same uniform with a few more bars on his shoulder and chest. He was also clean-shaven but unlike the previous one, Trooper Reynolds was all smiles, he glanced at the license plate as they approached.
“Mornin boys,” he said, “New York, huh? Long way from home. What brings you out our way?” he asked, watching them intently through his mirrored aviators.
“Good morning, sir. Yes, sir, New York. We’re just on vacation.”
“Vacations up here are real good, yes they are. So, where y’all comin from this mornin?”
The questioning went on like this for a few minutes: Small talk mostly. He would stand up tall when he was talking to Chris and then bend down with his hands on his knees to ask Jimmy a question every now and then. At last, he came to the reason for the stop: He reached into his top pocket and took out two photographs. His manner changed and the chit-chatty man with the grinning eyes was suddenly in no mood for jokes.
“Have you boys seen either one of these girls?” he asked, handing the photos to Chris.
Chris held them both in his left hand, fanned, and appeared to be studying them. Sweat beads began to form on his upper lip. A desert of sand had been poured in his throat and when he tried to talk, a raspy, “no,” was all that he could get out. He passed them to Jimmy.
Jimmy stacked them one on top of the other, looking first at the picture of Amy, probably a middle school graduation picture, and then the one of Jenny, more recent, at a picnic. He fought back the tears and forced himself to think of something else, so he began to sing in his head. “Sorry officer,” he said, “never seen them before, pretty though. They in trouble?”
“Could be,” Trooper Reynolds said. “Runaways most likely. He handed Chris a business card. “If you see them, you find a phone and pull over to give me a call, won’t you?”
“Yes sir,” they both answered in unison.
He began to stand tall and paused, a moment’s hesitation, and then he crouched back down just so his eyes were even with Chris’s. “Are you nervous about somethin’ son?” he asked Chris, the perspiration had spread like poison ivy from his upper lip to his forehead and then to his neck.
“I’ve just never been pulled over before. It’s a little unsettling,” Chris answered.
“I imagine it is,” Trooper Reynolds said, seeming satisfied with Chris’s response. “You go on now, straight between those two patrol cars. Drive slow.”
Both boys started to breathe easier as Chris put the car in gear and rolled past Trooper Reynolds. Just as they passed, the officer banged twice, hard, on the rear quarter panel and yelled in his loudest official voice, “STOP!”
Chris slammed down the brake as hard as he could, throwing both boys forward, neither had their seatbelt on. Chris slammed hard into the steering wheel and Jimmy’s head banged the windshield. A purple bruise and bump appeared on his forehead almost immediately.
Officer Reynolds took the five or six steps to catch up to the front window. Chris watched him grow larger and larger in the side view mirror. The trooper unsnapped his holster and rested his palm on the handle of his gun, but he didn’t pull it out.
“I need you to roll this rear window here down,” he said and tapped on the back one on the driver’s side. Chris complied, and the trooper put his head into the window. “Don’t suppose these are your white sandals on the floor back here, with these pretty little purple flowers on em? Keep your hands where I can see them, boys, and don’t make any sudden moves: Wouldn’t want to put a bullet in your head for no good reason.” His eyes remained fixed, concentrating on Chris and Jimmy as he withdrew his head. The gun was now out of the holster, although he had not yet deemed it necessary to point it at them. “Captain!” he called. “Need to see you here!”
The Captain came walking over and began talking in hushed tones to Trooper Reynolds, who never took his eyes off the boys nor let his concentration wane. In the course of their conversation, something the Captain said, led Reynolds to aim his gun into the car. He unsnapped his own holster as he walked up to the car. He removed his hat and placed it on top of the car, before bending down and looking in the back window. Reynolds stood at the front corner, watching. The name tag above his left pocket said, Captain Zimmerman.
“This looks pretty bad boys, must admit,” the captain said. “Wondering if either one of you can tell me whose sandals these are or how they came to be in the back of your automobile. Keep your eyes forward and your hands on the dash, please.”
“They’re my girlfriends, from New York. We were making out at the drive-in the night before we left,” Jimmy answered, as coolly and matter-of-factly as possible.
“Hmm, that right? And what would her name and phone number be?” Before Jimmy could even pretend to give an answer, he continued. “We both know you ain’t even got a girlfriend back in New York, son,” he said and sounded remarkably like Jimmy’s dad.
The captain moved to the front driver’s window. “Look at me boys,” he said, and both boys turned slightly left. “Ever hear of DNA son?” he asked, looking at Jimmy, and all the primeval sensors that trigger fear, fight or flight, began to kick into overdrive in Jimmy’s body. The Captain looked like his father. “It’s like pussy juice, for example, and I’m betting there’s lots of Jenny Walker’s DNA on your dick.”
Chris’s gaze was pulled just for a moment, out the window towards the horizon above the Captain’s right shoulder. A mangy looking dog with matted brown fur had walked out of a copse of trees on the divider, and settled down, prone on the side of the road watching the car. When he returned his gaze to the Captain, the man had changed, and Father Flynn now stared back at him with a concerned countenance. He had that same look on his face, the one the priest used to have when he would kneel in front of Chris in the transept after he had taken his penis out. The look he’d have when he was opening Chris’s jean
s, the look of…victory.
“And you, Christopher my child,” he said, with just a hint of an Irish lilt. “You must have learned well from me because you didn’t have the guts to even try kissing that little Amy girl, did you? No, maybe you like dicks too,” He said, licking his lips now. “No matter, her skin cells are all over you too my child. And that tent, the one with all the blood inside, that’s just waiting to be discovered by the sensational Trooper Reynolds over there. Once I tell him that you confessed the location to me.”
Chris was overcome with fear and paralyzed with the ignorance this presented him with, his ignorance. Nothing he thought he knew about life, about the way the world worked, none of it was true. This was impossible, or he was ignorant.
“So right now, here is the likeliest scenario, self-preservation, you know. I drop my gun on the floor in your car and jump away yelling shoot, he’s taken my gun. Then, Trooper Reynolds over there fires into the car and keeps firing, until his gun is empty and you’re both dead. I hate to play hardball with you Christopher, we’ve just met, but I need to know that we are on the same side, now and forever.”
Chris swallowed through a greatly constricted esophagus, struggling to get the little saliva that was left in his mouth, down his throat. “What do you want from me?” he asked in a raspy, breathy voice, the voice a mouse stuck on a glue pad might use if he had one.
“Just answer one simple question, Christopher. Do you want my help?”
Part Three
Do the Difficult Things…
2008
Chapter XXIV
“Again Dada, again,” the child said, pushing the tips of his thumbs and index fingers together to make the sign for more, like two okays touching. Four-year-old Conner Carter had learned American Sign Language before he could talk, much of it before he could walk. His mom had begun teaching him, almost out of the womb, having read that babies that can sign learn self-expression much quicker than others. Now that he could talk he had amazing verbal skills, but he still used the signs to reinforce his words. In this case, the signs he was using were meant to convince his dad to battle with the lightsabers one more time, souvenirs from a trip to Walt Disney World.
Chris Conner picked up the lightsaber with the red telescoping plastic light beam, “I am your father Luke,” he said in his best Darth Vader voice. Conner’s face, ringed with brown curls beamed with excitement and anticipation as he reached for his blue one. His large brown eyes widened as he turned to face his dad.
Chris Carter, who at thirty-six still looked like a twenty-something, had just come home from a three-mile run before work. His clean-shaven baby face and close-cropped hair topped his athletic build and made him look like a pro athlete. He wheeled on his boy with his lightsaber facing straight out. The battle raged for five minutes as the plastic swords clashed above and below them, the two combatants doing their best to imitate the whirring sound of the lasers. Conner laughed with glee each time his father retreated a step or two. “I’m winning, I’m winning,” he shouted. With that, Chris fell to his knees and brought his saber vertically in front of his face. “I am done my son, you have defeated the evil Lord Vader.” He collapsed sideways onto the den rug. Just for good measure, Conner stood over his dad and ran him through with his saber. He took off running out of the den. “Mama, Mama, I defeated the evil Lord Vader!!” Chris’s heart swelled as he headed for the shower.
He had a wonderful life, he thought, standing there beneath the hot water from two pulsating shower heads; great house on the North Shore, partner in a Wall Street hedge fund, beautiful wife, and a smart healthy kid. It was all so perfect, except that it wasn’t. There was that one gnawing detail that happened every month. It was the thing he never spoke of, tried not to think of and had not told a soul about, not even his wife. It was the thing that haunted his dreams and gave him oh so many sleepless nights of cold sweats and staring at the ceiling in the dark. It was the thing that made no sense, could not be explained, or rationalized, in fact, could not possibly happen and yet it did every single month.
Today was the day. He took the plastic test tube from its concealed place inside his towel and put the opening at the tip of his erect penis. He stood in the corner of the oversized shower, where the water would just hit his legs, and rubbed. It was completely non-sexual masturbation as it always was this day. No visions of his wife, no Playboy magazines, just a quick jerk off in a test tube, fast and clinical.
He dressed in his navy-blue suit, ate the three-egg-white and spinach omelet his wife had made him, kissed her beautiful face, then the top of Conner’s head, and headed for the Port Washington branch of the Long Island Railroad. At Penn Station, he took the A Train south, until he exited the subway at Chambers Street an hour and fifteen minutes later. This left him about a ten-minute walk to the office and he usually cut through the graveyard at Trinity Church, it gave him focus and perspective to start his day.
As always, on the first Monday of the month, Father Flynn was sitting on a bench, midway through the cemetery. There was an unleashed brown dog laying at his feet. As Chris approached, the man looked up from the newspaper he had been reading, it was old and yellowed, fraying and torn around the edges. Like everything else about it, this made no sense.
“Top of the morning, Christopher, my child. I trust all is well with you today.”
Chris had made up his mind on the ride in, that he needed to get something settled today and he would make a stand until it was. “What do you do with this?” Chris asked, holding up the vial that contained his semen.
“Now, my boy, there are some things we are all better off not knowing he said,” and flashed a grin that, momentarily, looked like the mouth of a corpse, years in the grave.
“I’m not going along with this anymore until you give me some answers,” Chris said, sounding braver than he felt. He knew what this monster was capable of.
“Christopher, Christopher. You let me in, son, when you asked for my help. Have you forgotten?”
“Forgotten? No, of course not but that was ages ago. This can’t go on forever,” Chris said.
The priest shifted in his seat and the dog sat up: The combined motion chilled Chris to the bone. “Oh, but it can, Chris,” the priest said, “and it will. You would not want to do anything to jeopardize the wonderful life you live now, would you?”
“Are you threatening me?” Chris asked, knowing, of course, this whole relationship was built on a veiled, unspoken threat.
“Just give me the vile son, then go off to your perfect job and have your perfect day, with our compliments. Then go home and fuck your perfect wife. Let it go, boy.”
“What do you do with it?” Chris demanded.
The priest sighed and looked down at the dog who gave out a quiet bark. “Have you ever heard of feeder mice, Christopher? They sell them at the pet store.”
The direction of the conversation confused him, and a puzzled look swept over his face. “Like for pet snakes?” He asked.
“Bingo!!” the priest answered. “Funny that, huh, me being a Catholic Priest and saying bingo,” he laughed and stood up stepping close to Chris who immediately smelled the rotting, decaying odor that always accompanied this thing. “Well Christopher, this,” he grabbed the vial from Chris’s hand. “This is for feeder babies.”
Chris went pale, all the blood drained from his face and nausea coursed through him. Sweat began to flow from under his arms and beads of it popped out on his forehead.
“Now Christopher,” The creature said, looking much more like the corpse he had seen before and no longer like Father Flynn. It only lasted a moment and the transition continued to evolve until the face before him was one he had only seen once a long time ago on I-90. “You have the same look you had last time we spoke,” the man with the Wisconsin State Trooper uniform said.
“I’m done, I’m not doing this anymore. I don’t know what you are or where you’re from, Hell, I’m sure, but I’m not doing this anymore.” Chris lo
oked down at the dog and then up at the Trooper. He began to walk past them, when the dog stood up and bared its mouth full of razor-sharp teeth, the canines larger by far than the rest and his oversized head appeared to grow even larger.
“Now, you’ve upset him, Christopher. You won’t get another chance. Maybe you should go home and talk this over with your wife. Ask her if she wouldn’t mind giving up the Volvo and the house on the Cape. Ask her if it would be okay if you didn’t live in Glen Head anymore or if the little one didn’t go to that fancy Montessori school anymore. Talk it over, we’ll give you another chance. Very benevolent of us, don’t you think?” That last part seemed almost directed at the dog as much as it was at him.
Chris walked quickly away, perspiration soaking his clothes and a primal fear in him that he had never experienced before, well, once before. He was certain that he had just been arguing with the devil.
Chapter XXV
That was a sound he would never tire of, the sound of the cheers and the stomping feet beckoning him back to the stage. It never varied, once it became clear he had sung his last song, it would start with a rhythmic clap. When the instruments were down, and he had said his customary “Dallas, You Rock!!” or New York, or Atlanta, or Tucson, then the clapping would escalate, building, and building like the melody of a symphony, inexorably driven to its crescendo. Soon the feet would begin to stomp, throwing the syncopated rhythm into a chaotic, primal, cadence. When the voices were added, the cheers and the whistles, it took all his self-restraint not to rush right back out. But of course, he had to wait a suitable amount of time, don’t be over-anxious, he told himself.
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