Mister White: The Novel

by John C. Foster

  “I’m not.”

  “Are you currently under the care of a psychiatrist or any kind of doctor?”

  “No.”

  “Are you…” Messina hesitated. “Are you wanted for any criminal activity?”

  “Murder, theft, drug trafficking and illegal border crossings are all that I can think of,” Lewis Edgar said.

  Messina watched his eyes and waited before continuing. “Do you love your wife?”

  “I do, but damn me for forgetting for so long.”

  “And your daughter, you love her?”

  “I do. I love her so much, but I’m a terrible father.”

  “And Gerard Beaumont, do you love him?”

  A flicker of life in the stranger’s eyes and a twist of his lips before he said, “If he took my gals in, I’ll take back everything I’ve ever said about him and kiss his hairy French ass.”

  Messina barked a short laugh and patted the stranger’s knee.

  “And all these things you have told me, you understand they sound…”

  “Crazy?”

  “They are difficult to accept. Are they all true?”

  He met Messina’s eyes, and the country priest was struck at the power in them.

  “Everything is true, I swear it.” Lewis paused. “I have memorized a number for Lucien if you would like to call him, though he said his phone service is unzuverlassig. Unreliable.”

  The conviction of things not seen.

  Messina shook his head.

  “You have confessed your sins and you will take the host—” Messina cocked his head as he heard the telephone ring. “Excuse me for one moment.”

  He rose and strode quickly to an inconspicuous door on a side wall, a short, sturdy man in black with unruly hair salted with white.

  Lewis liked him and was surprised. Not at liking the man, but that such a thought would even cross his mind now.

  He heard the murmuring of a distant conversation before Messina reappeared, his open face wearing a torn expression.

  “I… That was a member of my church. A virtual shut in. She sounded quite panicked and has asked me to go to her immediately.”

  Lewis stood, the small hairs prickling on the back of his neck.

  “What frightened her?”

  Messina took in the man’s stance, and by God he indeed looked like a man capable of fighting across Europe and the Atlantic to reach his wife and daughter.

  “She was vague,” the priest said. “She is not always entirely lucid, I’m afraid, but she has few friends. Fewer still who would go to her aid.”

  “Then go.”

  “Will you wait for me here?”

  “I’ll come with you if you need me.”

  Belief in things not seen. A blossoming flower in Messina’s chest.

  “Stay here so we may complete your armament in the Lord’s Grace,” Messina said. “I believe your daughter is safe. I was told that an out-of-town girl had a scuffle with two local boys—”

  “Hedde? Is she alright?” Lewis interrupted, stepping forward.

  Messina patted the air. “Yes, yes. But I know she is scheduled to give her statement at the police station right around now. She is certainly safe there.” He grabbed a winter coat from a hook near the door. “I will be back very soon. Martha Leroux has many problems, but she is comforted quickly.”

  And with that the priest stepped out into the cold gloom of a New Hampshire twilight, passed the ridiculous little gold car and climbed into his Dodge 4x4. The headlights splashed across the stained glass at the front of the church and cast the room in molten tones.

  Lewis heard a honk followed by the crunch of tires over ice as the vehicle backed out. He sat in a pew, looking around the kind space and knowing that he could not wait.

  - 3 -

  Father Messina turned left at Percy Street, accelerating to blow through a small snowbank left by plows passing on the main road. The homes here were modest, a mixture of single-story ranch houses and both single- and double-wide trailers separated by great swathes of trees on empty lots.

  He was anxious to return to the church and to the mysterious Lewis Edgar, for in the man he sensed he might be exposed to, and be a part of, the most clearly defined struggle between good and evil he had ever imagined. It awoke something in him that he had not felt since the heady days of a young man at seminary. A battle against fire, not the slow decay of poverty and despair.

  And so it was that when he turned into Martha Leroux’s short driveway, the only thing he noticed amiss was that nobody had bothered to plow it clear.

  He threw the shift into PARK and turned off the ignition, sitting for a moment as his engine ticked and thinking of the steps he might take to further aid Lewis. Realizing that a no-longer-quiet voice within him had already decided he would accompany the man into Flintlock to retrieve his family. And if the shadow remained over the Edgars after today, Father Messina would accompany them further.

  A curtain twitched in the trailer, and he noticed that every drape had been drawn, but light blazed around the edges of each small window.

  Martha must have every light in the house on, he thought.

  Father Messina pushed open the door with a squeal of hinges and stepped out into the shin-deep snow, wishing he had paused to don his boots.

  The dead cat came as both a shock and something of a relief. Poor Leo had met his match at last. The priest crouched slightly, straining to make out wet details in the fading light, face tightening in distaste. Ugly, what had been done to it. Judging from the amount of damage, probably not another cat.

  Perhaps a raccoon?

  If the sight shook him, it would nearly have unhinged poor Martha.

  He stepped over the mangled body of the cat and pressed the faintly glowing button beside the door, hearing the chime inside.

  “Who is it?” a tremulous voice asked from behind the door.

  Messina paused, realizing she really was shaken. “Martha, it’s Father Messina.”

  In the silence that followed, he heard the whisper of wind in the trees.

  “When I open the door, you come in quick,” Martha said from inside. “No ‘how are you’ or ‘nice to see ya,’ just Johnny-on-the-spot and in you go.”

  “Of course.”

  Messina heard the rattle of locks as the inner door was opened, and then the deadbolt was thrown and the outer door swung towards him. He pushed it wider with one hand and took the single step up and through onto the mustard-colored carpet.

  “I’m so sorry about Le—” he was saying when she shouldered him aside and slammed both doors, throwing the locks immediately.

  - 4 -

  Lewis hunched over the wheel, following the Kia’s meager headlights and forcing himself to drive at a measured pace. Sliding off the road on a patch of black ice would slow him down.

  On the seat next to him was a Bible taken from the rack on the back of a pew, and an inner pocket contained a metal flask he had stolen from Messina’s desk. He had regretted pouring the amber liquid down a drain in the bathroom, but he needed it for other things.

  The flask had gurgled like a living thing when he pressed it down beneath the surface of the holy water in the granite stoup. He hoped he was not committing some kind of blasphemy in doing so, or diluting the agency of the holy water if it came in contact with alcoholic remnants in the flask, but it was all he could think of to do.

  Strange weapons, he thought. Yet they comforted him. He hoped it was not the placebo effect of a desperate man needing to believe in something, but didn’t have the luxury of dwelling on the idea.

  Downtown Flintlock was too poor to warrant many streetlights, and he struggled to make out the shape of the municipal building as he crawled through town. He saw it looming slightly over its neighbors and cut the wheel too late, pulling into a slot between trucks and SUVs in front of a bar called the Red Red Rooster.

  Emerging with the Bible tucked under his arm he slammed the door with an unimpressive whack, suddenly
nervous about seeing his wife and daughter, some tactical part of his brain deciding to talk to Gerard first, to thank the man while giving himself a chance to sense the lay of the land with his family.

  Inside the front door was a small window with the shade pulled down. The hours stenciled on the glass indicated it closed at 4:00pm.

  “Fine, then. Here I come, unannounced.”

  The stairs creaked beneath him as he climbed, and while he imagined that Cat would be cautious in her response to the sight of him, at least publicly, his daughter was another matter. Hedde was a girl who spoke her mind. Silently he prayed that he would not see disappointment on her face, or anger. He desperately wished for a chance to make things right.

  The outer door of the police station was half wood with pebbled glass on top, and he could hear raised voices as he steeled himself and turned the knob.

  “Not what I expected,” he said aloud at the sight of Gerard Beaumont behind bars, a bandage wrapped around his head, no less, arguing with a uniformed officer who looked suspiciously like a park ranger.

  Both men paused in their exchange to stare in surprise at the newcomer, and Gerard lifted a hand in greeting, but it was the officer who spoke first.

  “Sir, we are very busy at the moment as you can see. If it’s not an emergency, come back later. If it is, take a damned number and sit down.”

  “What the hell’s going on?” Lewis asked, stepping towards the cells and ignoring the cop who was approaching with a hand out.

  The two teens in the adjacent cell looked at the newcomer with rapt attention.

  The officer stopped and glanced back at Gerard. “Gerry, who is this guy?”

  Lewis caught motion at the corner of his vision and saw Hedde in an overlarge winter coat emerging from a cubicle. Her face went pale and she dropped the pen she’d been holding. Words caught in his throat and Lewis saw his daughter’s eyes well with tears as her lips curled with the awful completeness of a child in pain.

  “I—” Lewis began, and she spoke over him, her whisper decimating him.

  “Daddy?”

  He nodded, feeling the sandy prickle behind his eyes that meant he was moments from weeping.

  “Dad?” She wailed, face twisting with disbelief and accusation. And then she was charging, hair streaming out behind her. He staggered as she hit him without any effort to slow, and then she was squeezing him hard enough to push the wind out of him.

  When did she get so strong?

  His hands were moving over her arms and head as he kissed her hair, and they both tried to say what had already been said with their eyes, words tumbling over each other to create a jumble of sound that meant nothing and everything.

  Officer Wannamaker stepped closer to Gerard and leaned against the cell. Gerard leaned forward from the other side of the bars and said, “That’s Hedde’s father.”

  And Wannamaker got off a good one, as his friends would say. “I didn’t think it was her husband.”

  Gerard Beaumont grabbed the cell bars in both scarred fists and threw back his head, roaring with laughter. After a moment, Wannamaker joined in with a little less volume, laughing as much out of surprise as anything else.

  “Gerry, this is some strange day,” Wannamaker said.

  Gerard patted him on the shoulder and looked at the hugging family.

  “Lew,” Gerard said.

  Lewis lifted his watering eyes and walked in a clumsy two-step towards the cells with Hedde, unwilling to release his grip. He wiped his eyes with his free hand and then offered it to Wannamaker, who took it.

  “Hi, I’m—”

  “This is Lewis Edgar,” Hedde interjected and stepped away, eyes searching her father’s face.

  “Meetcha,” Wannamaker said after the shake.

  “Dad?” she said. Lewis turned just as Hedde slammed the heels of her hands into his chest.

  “Hey!” Lewis said, backpedaling as Gerard and Wannamaker shouted in surprise, and the town boys whooped.

  “You merde,” she said, tears streaming. “Where have you been?”

  - 5 -

  “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done!” Martha Leroux shouted from another room.

  As Messina stuffed kitchen towels into the crack growing beneath a bedroom window, some giddy, spinning part of his mind noted that he had never heard the Lord’s Prayer shouted quite like Martha Leroux could shout it.

  Then again, she was terrified and so was he.

  A staccato blast raked across the metal roof as if they had been strafed by a fighter plane. Just then, the trailer rocked as a mighty BOOM sounded, and Messina raced into the apocalyptic nightmare of the living room, gaping as chunks of faux-wood paneling tumbled from the wall and the trailer shook again from a mighty blow that dented the outer metal.

  “What is happening?” Martha shrieked from her kneeling position on the liquid-smeared kitchen floor. She was covered in flour and cooking oil. Soda bottles rolled as if they were on the deck of a ship.

  “Keep praying, Martha!” Messina shouted back and leapt over shattered glass and furniture to scoop up a magazine rack and hurl it at the shape bulging inward through a window curtain.

  “Though I walk through the valley—” the panicked woman wailed, and Messina ran to the door, throwing his bruised bulk against it as something heavy crashed into it from the other side.

  He had been sipping a cup of tea while Martha described the eyes outside, watching her trailer all day long. He had been in the midst of explaining, ever so rationally, that he had seen nothing outside when the lights went out and all hell broke loose.

  “Father!”

  He wheeled at a shriek and saw another curtain bulging inward as if some great, amorphous shape were trying to climb through. He fought down a groan of terror and swept a lamp off the floor, shoes crunching over glass as he hurled the fixture with great force.

  The curtain slapped against the window once more and Messina whirled in place, eyes darting everywhere at once. His breath was the ragged gasp of a marathoner in the last mile.

  He had yet to lay eyes on a single one of their attackers.

  BOOM!

  The trailer shook again and he fell to his knees, screaming as glass tore through his pants and into the meat of him. Martha was screaming as he put down a hand, crying out again as his palm was impaled, and rose, fighting to pull the shard free.

  How arrogant had he been just moments ago, eager to do battle against EVIL while armored only in his unbreakable faith.

  A crash sounded from the bedroom and he sprinted for it, droplets of blood flying in his wake.

  His battle had come. Not in a blaze of white light at the center of things, but with the town pariah in a dismal trailer on the edge of everything. Hell, in all honesty, even he didn’t like Martha. There were no trumpets or choirs of angels singing his praises. His battle against genuine evil had arrived and his inadequacy was laid bare.

  There was nothing in the gloom of the bedroom, nothing at all. He leapt to the closet and ripped the mirrored door aside hard enough that it tore from its runners and smashed into the wall.

  Clothes. Debris of a lonely life stuffed inside to make room for visitors who never came.

  He sprang onto the creaking mattress of her single bed and tore open the drapes to scream at the empty night.

  “Where are you? Show yourself!”

  The hollow dark mocked him silently.

  From the kitchen Martha screamed, “Oh my God, Father, help me!”

  Messina staggered back in drunken exhaustion, falling from the bed as it shifted beneath him. His head struck the doorframe with an audible crack and the darkness spun around him.

  “Father, please!”

  He pushed himself up and crawled back into the living room across debris, feeling the heat of the fire even as he beheld the flames racing in jagged lines across the counter and floor.

  “What happened?” He croaked as she staggered towards him, a scarecrow silhouette outlined in blazing ligh
t.

  “They were coming up! Coming up through the drain in the kitchen sink so I…I…”

  “What?” He roared, surging upright and grabbing her stick-thin upper arms. “What did you do?”

  “I burned them,” Martha sobbed, falling against him, and for a moment he felt himself in the grip of a horrible urge, the desire to shove her back into the growing conflagration.

  “I’m sorry,” she blurted, and he was repulsed by her teary, soot-stained face. “I’m so sorry.” A great bubble of snot grew from her nose and popped.

  Smoke was already boiling across the ceiling and they began to cough.

  “I’m so—”

  A bleeding finger was pressed across Martha’s lips, silencing her.

  “No, Martha. No more,” Messina said hoarsely. “It’s me who has failed. I’ve failed you as your priest and friend.”

  Martha lifted her eyes, shining and black in the crazed half-light. “You’re the only one who ever comes.” Her thin chest hitched. “And now I’ve killed us. We can’t stay inside because of—”

  It took his whole hand this time but he silenced her.

  “Maybe I’ve been wrong. Maybe we shouldn’t stay inside.” He paused, covering his mouth with a fist to hide a cough. “Let’s go outside and see this thing face-to-face.”

  Her mouth formed a nearly comical O of fear.

  “After all,” Messina continued, “they have knocked ever so politely.”

  A sound blatted from her and it took Messina’s tired brain a moment to process it. Martha Leroux was laughing.

  He walked with an arm around her shoulders, her body so thin he could feel her shoulder blades, like dinner plates sliding beneath her dress.

  “I’m frightened,” she said.

  Messina nodded his understanding, only then realizing that the banging and smashing from outside had ceased.

  “The Lord God has made us such a beautiful sky tonight. A million stars shining against the black. I suspect he would want us to see it, don’t you?” He was aware that he was using his Sunday school voice, but it seemed somehow appropriate.

  They were at the door when she said, “Thank you for always coming.”