by David Beers
John grabbed his phone and shot a text to Diane.
Need to stop at the Church for a few minutes. Be home soon.
He put the phone back in his pocket and took a right off the expressway a couple of miles later. He didn’t plan on talking to Father Charles today; he only wanted to be alone in Christ’s refuge.
John tried not to judge other Christians, or anyone else for that matter, too harshly, but when he really thought about it, a lot of people missed the point of Christianity. God delivered him today, and one shouldn’t simply take that for granted, as if deliverance was a right.
It took him ten minutes to make it to the church. John hopped out of the car and went inside, almost walking on air. Had he ever beaten Harry before? He didn’t think so. Every time Harry came, it meant things were growing dark, and yet John now stood inside his church without a single glimpse of the man all damn day.
Praise God.
John made his way to the front, and sat down in the first pew to the right. The church was well lit, and Jesus hung in the front as he did in nearly all Catholic sanctums across the world. John bowed his head, keeping his eyes open, preparing for how to thank God.
He felt something like Moses must have when he finally saw the Promised Land. How many years had he run from Harry? How many times had Harry controlled him? Forcing him to do things he didn’t want to … evil things …
John closed his eyes.
Thank you.
He paused, tears coming to his eyes. He couldn’t put this happiness into words. He couldn’t … he had never been able to resist Harry’s temptation, and here he was, praying in gratefulness.
Thank you so much, John said. As always, your will, not mine, but thank you. I don’t want to go back there, God. Ever. I want to live in your grace and through that grace, find love and happiness in this world.
Thank you.
John opened his eyes and a tear escaped, falling to the carpeted floor.
He could do this, with God’s help. He didn’t have to see Harry anymore. He didn’t have to go back to the dark times.
John felt he had found a new life and in that life, freedom from the chains he carried.
A Portrait of a Young Man
Years Earlier
“Hi,” Lori Hilt said.
“Hey, Lori—come on in and have a seat,” the doctor said.
Lori walked into the office, taking in the surroundings as she did. It was comfortably large, big enough to not strike claustrophobia in any patients, but small enough to have a sense of home, too.
“That for me?” she said, pointing at the couch against the wall.
“Yes, that would be yours for the next hour.”
Lori walked to the couch and sat down in the middle. It felt large and extremely comfortable, much like the large room. She almost sank down into it.
“This is a nice couch,” she said, smiling.
“Would be hard for people to speak with me if they kept having to find a better position,” he said. The doctor sat down in a chair directly in front of the couch, perhaps eight feet away from Lori. “So, what brings you here today, Lori?”
“Dr. Vondi, right?” she said.
“That’s right.”
Lori sighed, finally letting down the air of levity she carried. No one comes to a psychiatrist to talk about how good they feel, she imagined. “I guess I’m worried about my children,” she said.
“Okay, how old are they?”
“John is five and Alicia is seven.”
“What makes you worried at such a young age? Any kind of handicaps?”
She shook her head and looked out the window to her right. It too was large, stretching the length of the office and offering an expansive view over the city. “No, nothing like that. They’re both healthy.”
“So what’s got you worrying?”
“I, um … I guess my mother,” Lori said. She hadn’t voiced those words since she was fifteen or sixteen years old. No one since her last therapist had ever heard what she was about to say, and she would be thirty-five next week. Twenty years without a whisper spoken of her mother.
“What about her?” Dr. Vondi asked as her pause stretched on.
“I’m sorry. I haven’t spoken about this in so long. I’m not sure where to even start.”
“Hey, don’t worry. Therapy isn’t a fix everything in the first week type gig. We’ll see each other plenty of times before we get to the bottom of it. Have you ever done therapy before?”
She nodded. “Yeah, about twenty years ago. I saw a therapist for a few months after my dad died.”
“So it’s been a while. We’ll take our time here. Let’s start by you telling me a little bit about your mother.”
“She’s dead,” Lori said, still staring out the window. “She’s been dead for fifteen years or so. I don’t even like calling her my mother. Her name was Clara. Can we refer to her as that from now on?”
“Sure. We can. If she passed, how does she make you worry about your kids?”
“Clara was insane, and I’m worried it might have transferred through the bloodline.”
3
Present Day
John stepped out of the church, his heart full. He looked down at the ground as he walked, thinking about getting himself home and seeing Diane. She wouldn’t understand his happiness, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t be happy with him. That part of his life—the Harry part—he had to keep separate from her no matter what.
Maybe he didn’t have to worry about it anymore, though, because that part might be done forever. She could see this happiness and maybe somehow see that both of them were freed from the past.
John looked up to the empty parking lot, seeing his car in the very front.
He stopped walking.
Harry stood in front of the car, leaning against the hood, his hands in his pockets.
He wore a different shirt than the last time John saw him five years ago (not last night—it was too dark for him to see Harry’s shirt last night), and certainly not the same one he wore the day he drowned. That thing was nothing but tatters when they finally found his body, looking more like a rag than an article of clothing. The one he wore today fit him fine, showing no damage at all.
Harry’s body, though, was a different story.
He aged, just as John did, but he didn’t heal. Every time John saw him, he saw all the damage done to his old friend. John met Harry’s eyes, seeing the right pupil still burst, filling up most of his eyeball. The left one was fine, except for the broken veins running across it, giving him the most bloodshot eye John had ever seen.
He didn’t look away, not to the parking lot nor to any other parts of Harry’s body. John didn’t want to look at the rest of him right now; he wasn’t sure he could handle the rest.
Please, God, please let this be another dream.
“It’s no dream, John,” Harry said. “I’m here. You knew I’d be back. You had to.”
“Why?” John said, his mouth suddenly feeling like fifteen cotton balls were shoved inside, soaking up all the saliva.
“Because this is what we do. It’s time to do it again. There doesn’t have to be a reason outside of that. I mean, it’s been a long time hasn’t it? How long?”
John tried to swallow but couldn’t. “Five years, two months, and twenty-two days.”
“Yeah, that’s a long time. Too long!” Harry smiled, pulling his hands out of his pockets. He walked around to the passenger side of the car and placed both hands on the roof. “Let’s go ahead and get out of here; Diane will be getting worried soon. We have to keep up appearances, don’t we?”
John shook his head slightly, almost in shock. “There is no ‘we’, Harry. There hasn’t ever been a ‘we’.”
“Every fucking time. You know that, John? Every time I show up we go through this same charade. There is no we. God will save you. On and on. And what ends up happening? Every time we do what we need to and life goes on. For once, can’t we just
stop with the theatrics? Just once?”
John finally broke eye contact and looked out into the parking lot. What choices did he have right now? He could go back into the church and hope that Harry couldn’t come inside. Harry was right, though: Diane would start worrying. He couldn’t walk home, and even if he did, Harry would probably walk right beside him—bitching the whole way about not taking the car.
“You know you’re out of choices, now get in the car and let’s get home.”
John felt the keys in his hands. Had he thought it would be so easy? That a few prayers this time would keep Harry away? It didn’t work like that. Nothing would be so easy.
John sighed and walked to the car, unlocking the door and getting in. He closed his side and put the key in the ignition, not looking over to see Harry still standing outside.
“Come on, let me in. You know I’ll be there one way or another, the least you can do is make me think I’m human again.”
John shook his head. Human again. His friend wasn’t human because his friend was dead—
“And whose fault is that, John?” Harry said from outside.
John unlocked the door and listened as Harry got in, still not looking over to him. He put the car in reverse and pulled out of the parking spot.
“Have you had any ideas about who?” Harry said.
“I’m not doing it. You need to understand that.”
“Oh lordy, and why not? What makes you want to stop so bad after all these years?”
John kept both hands on the steering wheel. “It’s not who I am anymore. It’s wrong.”
“It’s wrong that your God made you this way; the blame falls there, not with you!” Harry said.
“Hush.” John didn’t believe that. God had nothing to do with this or what was done in the past. He didn’t want to hear that nonsense either.
“Fine, fine. I’ll leave the Big Man be for now. But can we start talking about why I’m here?”
“No, Harry. We’re not talking about it. We’re not entertaining it at all.”
“Ah, but John, you’re already saying ‘we’,” Harry said with a smile.
A Portrait of a Young Man
Years Earlier
Dr. Vondi opened his door, smiling.
Lori smiled back though she didn’t feel happy inside. She wasn’t anything close to excited about coming back this week, because sooner or later, they would have to dig into Clara. They would have to exhume a body long dead, and one that Lori hoped would always remain underground.
“How are you?” he said as she walked past him and into the office.
“I’m nervous,” she said though she didn’t drop the smile.
Dr. Vondi closed the door and followed Lori in. “What’s got you nervous?”
“Because I know that we’re going to talk about her today, I suppose,” Lori said. She sat down on the couch while the doctor took his seat.
“Nothing to be nervous about. Judgment free zone, here. Did you used to get nervous when you talked with the other therapist?”
“I didn’t say a whole lot to the other therapist,” Lori said.
“So I guess that’s a yes?”
“No. The therapist didn’t make me nervous. Clara did.”
The doctor nodded. “Let’s back up a little bit. I kind of want to start some from the beginning. Your parents were married, is that right?”
“Yeah, they were.”
“How was their marriage?”
Lori laughed, though it came out closer to a whisper. “I’d say their marriage was pretty rough.”
“Tell me a little about it.”
Lori let out a large breath, looking to the window again. She truly enjoyed the view and imagined the doctor did too, when he didn’t have patients sitting on his couch. “Clara hated my dad, I guess. Really, I think she hated everyone and everything. She was an evil bitch, if you want the truth.”
The doctor didn’t say anything for a second. “How do you know she hated him? Was it just a lack of love, or something active?”
Lori smiled, a sad thing, as she remembered her father. She would always remember him in his mid-forties, because he never grew older than that. “It was most definitely an active thing. My father was a tall man. Six-four and about two-sixty. Clara was thin, like a twig. The power rested with her though, every single bit of it. When my dad died, he was still six-four, but carried himself like he could walk under a limbo stick without bending.”
“Was it verbal abuse? Or more?”
“More,” Lori said. “A lot more.”
“When did it start?” Dr. Vondi said. “Did you see it, or just hear it?” He shook his head. “Sorry, too many questions at once. Take your time, tell me as you’d like.”
Lori nodded, appreciating the slow pace he allowed. Her hands weren’t shaking yet, but she thought they might soon. She figured she would probably start crying, too.
“A lot of it’s a blur, to be honest. I was young. But what I remember was just awful. Some of my earliest memories are of her just screaming at him. She used to just scream for hours, but I don’t remember what it was about. I just think about my life now, and I can’t imagine there being any reason for me to talk to Scott like that.”
“And Scott,” Dr. Vondi said. “He’s your husband, right?”
“Yes,” she said, growing quiet again.
“Do you think that you might act like that to him, and that your kids might pick that up? Is that what you mean when you say you’re worried Clara might influence your kids?”
“No,” she whispered. “That’s not it.”
“I’m sorry, I can’t hear you.”
Lori shook her head. “No, that’s not what I’m meaning. The screaming wasn’t the end of it with her. She progressed to hitting him. Hard. Face, groin, she didn’t care.”
A long pause passed before Dr. Vondi said, “You saw it happen, or you saw the after effects?”
“I saw it. She didn’t care who saw, at least not for those that lived in the house. Outside, to the world, everything was fine, though.”
“And your dad stayed with her? They didn’t get divorced?”
“No,” Lori said. “He stayed, getting beat up on monthly, then weekly, until finally she was hitting him everyday. He stayed the whole time.”
“Why, do you think?”
Her eyes grew misty. “I don’t know. I was too young to ask. If I had to guess, just based on my life right now, he stayed because of me. I think he knew what would happen if he left, that she would turn that rage to me. It wasn’t until later that I found out rage wasn’t behind it at all.”
“But your household isn’t like that?” Dr. Vondi said.
“No, not at all.”
“Then what’s scaring you for the kids?”
Lori smiled, eyes full of tears. How could she tell this man? How could she go further than she already had? He might not believe her; she probably wouldn’t if she was in his position.
“You have to know more about Clara to understand that,” she said.
5
Present Day
“I’m going to call my dad,” Alicia said.
“Okay, where at?” Mark, her husband, said.
“Probably on the porch. Is the heater on out there?”
“No, give me a minute and I’ll turn it on,” he said.
That was fine because Alicia didn’t know where she put her cell phone, anyway. John didn’t call when he got off work, and truthfully, Alicia hadn’t thought he would. She still couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong with her brother. He sounded too much like he had before, though no one really ever talked about those times anymore. How long had it been since he last went through one of those dark spells? He had a few through his life, but she felt like it had been a long stretch since his last one.
Of course, when their mom died, he went through one. Another time in college—in fact, she thought a lot of them happened in succession when he was younger. Maybe a year or so i
n between? She didn’t remember, but she knew her mother--while alive--spoke to John a lot during those times and, eventually, John returned to normal. Alicia, if she was being honest, felt scared back then; she didn’t know how to talk to John nor how to help.
So she disappeared.
Later they grew close, and while Alicia was—at the very least—nervous now, she wouldn’t disappear again. If something was happening with her brother, she would face it with him. She didn’t know a lot about those dark times, but she remembered how the entire family nearly shut down from stress and worry. She remembered how her mother barely spoke and wouldn’t eat. Her father may have held a positive demeanor, but even he changed when John did.
Her phone lay on the bed where she must have tossed it when she came in from work. She grabbed it and went through the house out to the porch. Sure enough, Mark had lit the heater, the one they bought from the restaurant closing auction. It stood tall and cast enough warmth to keep the majority of the porch warm.
She found her father’s number and put the phone to her ear, listening as it rang.
“Hey, sweetie,” her dad said. “How are things?”
Whenever she heard the sound of her father’s voice, a soothing calm began in her chest and spread outward—as cliche as it sounded. She couldn’t stop it, nor did she want to. Her father was always the one that took everything in stride, whether he walked through a hurricane or a park, and that’s what Alicia needed right now.
“They’re okay, I suppose. How are things with you?”
“As good as they can be,” he said and she heard his smile. “This time of the year is never easy, but it’s still a lot easier than it was ten years ago.”