“Dad? Dad?” The boy said and began to cry. “Dad!”
And then Jeremy was crying, the tears blurring his vision, making the task harder.
“It's okay,” Jeremy said. “Just stay still.”
Charlie’s arms and legs were free and he lifted his hands up to remove his blindfold but Jeremy caught his hands.
“Charlie. Don't be scared. He took me. Made we wear this. I'm not him. I'm your father. I love you.”
And then he let go of his hands and Charlie removed the blind fold. The look on Charlie's face when he saw his father was indescribable and it struck Jeremy so soundly that he literally fell backwards onto his ass and lifted his hands to cover his face. He scrubbed at the make up on his face with the back of his gloves, and pulled at the knot of the white tie until it loosened and fell to the floor.
“I'm your Father. I'm not him. I'm not him.”
Charlie just stared through the slits of his swollen eyes, lost, confounded.
“What's happening,” Cindy screamed. “Free us!”
Jeremy found himself again and got to his feet. He helped Charlie up, who was very week and unstable, and stood there, slowly swaying back and forth and Jeremy set about freeing the girl.
Several more gun shots rang up stairs.
“Come on,” He said bracing Charlie over his shoulder and leading them up the small flight of metal stairs to the door, which he discovered was locked.
“Stand back.”
He lifted the axe up and smashed it down on the handle. “Stand back!” He swung again and the handle snapped off revealing the workings of the lock. He reached in, turned, and opened the door.
More gun fire upstairs erupted, now louder in their ears.
He led them up the stairs through the small room with the table and up another small flight of stairs stopping just short of the door.
“Can you run?” He asked them. They both nodded yes.
He opened the door very slightly revealing a tiled hallway.
“Take this,” He said handing the axe to Charlie. “When I tell you, both of you run for the front door. I will make sure you get there. When you’re out-“
“Dad, no. I can’t. Don’t leave us.”
“Charlie, listen to me. When you get out the front door, run to the first house or building you see.”
“No dad! Don't! Just wait!”
“I can't. I can't let him get away.”
“Who's shooting?” Cindy asked, clutching the axe in front of her, her eyes wild and intense.
“It doesn't matter. I have to help. I have to stop him. I love you Charlie,” he said and kissed him on the forehead.
***
Before Costa even hit the floor Cuther was turning and firing on Mathews. He fell from his chair and scrambled behind the sofa but not before being hit. A bullet seared through his inner thigh and, he thought, exited just below his buttock. Immediately blood began to sputter from it in rhythmic gushes and he realized the femoral artery had been severed. With one hand he clamped down on the wound and with the other he drew his weapon and blindly returned fire from over the sofa. He knew the chance of hitting his target blind was slim but had to keep some space between them.
Mister had taken cover behind the corner from where he began to fire at the sofa in spaced out increments, searching for the Agent behind it.
Costa's lifeless body stared at Mathews from where it lay not five feet from him. He fumbled at the cell phone in his pocket but more gunfire came whizzing at him and he was forced to drop the phone to fire back until he was empty. With little other choice he stretched himself away from the cover of the couch to remove Costa's weapon. Several more shots came in his direction but he was able to get back behind the sofa without being hit again.
Mister knew he had him. He came out from his cover and moved towards the sofa firing in steady bursts.
Mathews immediately recognized it as suppressing fire and knew that he was advancing, though his options were severely limited. The wound prevented him from running, there was little cover to move for. With no choice he spun himself on to his back and fired Costa’s weapon blindly in the direction of his attacker.
***
Jeremy held the children behind him and quickly pulled them into the hallway.
For a brief moment vertigo over took him as he expected to find himself if a warehouse space on the outskirts of a town somewhere, though instead he was in a opulent home, he could tell from the view through the hallway window, nestled within the kind of hills and valleys which the rich and influential pay extortionist sums to dwell in.
He turned the corner from the door way. At the end of a hall a man was firing a hand gun into the adjoining room into which Jeremy could not see. The man he recognized immediately as Mister. Finally he could see his face, his real face, free of the make up and costume which he himself still wore. Mister looked up and found Jeremy standing there, and for a very brief moment he appraised Jeremy as if trying to decide if he truly was an ally not, but he didn't deliberate long. He lifted the gun in Jeremy's direction and fired. Jeremy pulled the children to the floor, avoiding the gun fire so narrowly that he could actually hear the bullet cutting through the air above his head.
A long string of deafening shots followed. Jeremy crouched low on the ground waiting to pounce if Mister came around the corner. Seconds crawled by in silence, then a minute passed and he couldn't take it any longer. He peaked his head around the corner. Mister was gone. He looked around another corner towards the front door.
“Now,” he hissed. “Run,” I’ll watch from here.”
Just as Cindy grabbed Charlie by the arm and they started for the door Mister turned the corner to the main hallway, the gun held high ready to fire. Jeremy screamed in his heart. A thousand jolts of electric panic setting him on fire. He ran to towards the children and threw himself on top of them just as he heard the shot.
He felt the bullets bite somewhere in his back. He fell down on top of Charlie and Cindy, shielding them from the subsequent shots he knew were coming. He wanted to look at Charlie as he died. He had done everything -Everything he possibly could to save him. It was all out of his hands now. He had no control left. No power to do a thing. Except choose to depart the world looking at his son’s face.
He lifted himself off of them and pulled Charlie around on his back. He could see right away that something was wrong. He was gasping desperately and it was more than panic. Jeremy scrambled to find a bullet wound on him but couldn’t.
Cindy began shrieking at Mister who Jeremy could feel somewhere behind him, not doubt the gun on him ready to send him to hell but he didn’t care. His son was hurt. He then turned Charlie around and found the entry point in his back just behind his lungs.
“Don’t worry Jeremy. He was never real,” Mister said and Jeremy closed his eyes for the final moment.
Three shots rang out and Jeremy shuddered expecting to topple over into the next life. Seconds past and he was still there. His son still gasping for air underneath him.
He turned and looked, Mister was gone. Mathews was leaning against the wall in the living room, his gun still in his hand.
“Did you get him?!” Jeremy yelled already turning his attention back to Charlie.
Mathews struggled to limp over to them, a thick trail of blood following behind him.
“I think so,” he said. “In the arm.”
“Call an ambulance!” Jeremy yelled and tore open Charlie’s shirt.
Charlie was desperately reaching up to him, clinging to his shoulders with his muted strength, pleading with his eyes.
Jeremy watched his son’s face turn blue, knowing the bullet in his lung couldn’t be anything but fatal. He couldn’t hear Mathews on the phone with dispatch or Cindy crying in the corner. He couldn’t even hear Charlie’s desperate and wet gasping. All he could do was hold his son. Hold him like he held him when he was a baby and smooth the hair from his face. Even though he knew it wasn’t the blood loss that w
as the real issue he reached around him anyways to keep pressure on the wound.
“It’s going to be okay Charlie. It’s going to be alright buddy. You’re going to be whole again. And happy and nobody is ever going to hurt you. I love you Charlie. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Charlie then grabbed his father by the back of the head, trying with everything, every last fibre of strength he had left to say something. But the words never came. The wheezing became silent and breathless. A string of urgent soundless gasps and then he stopped. His eyes stuck open on the image of his father dressed as the monster who took it all away from them.
Jeremy closed his son’s eyes and kissed him on the forehead, laid him down gently on the floor next to him.
“The ambulance is on it’s way,” Mathews said. “Move aside I will try CPR.”
“He’s gone,” Jeremy replied and held out his hand. “Give me your gun.”
“It’s empty.”
“Can you move?” Jeremy asked standing up.
“I can’t run. He got an artery. I’m bleeding out fast. So are you.”
Jeremy went to the kitchen and removed the largest butcher knife he could find from the block and then passed Charlie’s body and Mathews and Cindy’s on his way to the back door.
“I can’t let you go,” Mathews said. “I know… I know what you’ve done.”
“Try and stop me,” he growled and laboured towards the back door.
The house was perched tentatively on a steep red rock canyon which would be a treacherous descent under any circumstances. Jeremy slid down the rocks on his side careful to keep his weight all on his back leg so as not to topple forward. Coming to a flat meter or two he would run and then slide, run and then slide. The Californian sun beat fiercely on his head and they were far enough from the blight of concrete and steel that the machinery of the city that it could no longer be heard and the only sounds were the birds and the wind in the trees, the rocks rolling under his feet and his own laboured breathing.
A wide plateau opened up and he was able to run upright again. The white pants now ripped and dirtied, his legs bleeding underneath from painful scratches and scrapes. From there Mister could have run east or west. Though a cluster of trees to the east providing a good place to hide so he picked that direction jogged at fast as he could. The make up on his face ran down to his shirt collar in sweaty grimy streaks. The knife felt heavy in his hand. Its blade was completely covered in his own blood now. Eventually his hand could no longer grip it and it fell to the dirt.
He slowed under the canopy of trees, their shade falling over him like a soothing balm. He wanted nothing more than to lie down in the shrubbery and let death take him. Let himself just bleed out until he fell asleep and never again woke. And now that Charlie was gone he supposed he could. He could just leave this awful nightmare and never have to explain what he had done. Never have to remember that look in Charlie’s eyes again.
His eye caught a small puddle of blood against a tree where Mister must have stopped for a moment or two. Which meant he was wounded and not far ahead of him. Every shred of his being was pleading with him to just sit for a second. Take a breath, get his legs back, but he held to the image of his son's face turning blue in, struggled to hold onto life just for a second longer.
His feet were heavy, his lungs and throat burned, the blood loss was dragging him under. But still he drudged on, one clumsy foot in front of the other. And then, not fifty meters in front of him, he caught sight of Mister. He had slowed to a jog, clearly exhausted also. Jeremy bent down and picked up a rock the size of a soft ball and chased after him.
He was able to close roughly half the distance before Mister noticed him. Mister picked up his pace and Jeremy tried his best to match it but he quickly lost ground.
He couldn't let this happen. He could let him just slip away. Blood and sweet and tears stung his pores everywhere. He pushed and he pushed, and he pushed. Twenty feet, fifteen feet. He was close enough to see the gun shot wound in his side, to hear him breathing. To see the pistol in his hand, but why he didn't turn and fire Jeremy didn't know and it didn't matter.
The hills gave way to a sudden drop. Twenty feet of sheer rock face. Mister had no choice, at the cliff he turned to face Jeremy, to face Mister, his Frankenstein monster come to kill him.
“Put down the rock,” Mister demanding lifting the gun. “I have freed you. Don’t make me kill you now.”
“No. You haven’t done anything. You’re insane. This is the world. The only world. The only truth. You’re delusional. About all of it.”
“You killed those people.”
“No. Mister killed them.”
“Put down the rock,” he said jabbing the gun in the air.
“If you had bullets left you would have shot me already.”
In one fluid motion Mister flipped the gun in his hand, caught it by the barrel and lunged towards Jeremy. Jeremy lifted the rock to bash against Mister’s face but the heavy handle of the gun caught him first and he stumbled backwards on his heels, dropping the rock. Then Mister was on him, they fell to the ground, Mister’ wiry legs clamped down on either side of Jeremy’s hips to keep him from bucking loose. The blunt gun handle came down again this time with more inertia and smashed into the bridge of Jeremy’s nose. White pain exploded behind his eyes, seizing up his brain, causing his teeth to clench and sharp pain to shoot through his jaw and came to rest somewhere deep in his skull.
Death called to him again. Offered him her comforts. And it would be so easy to just let it scoop him up in her black wings and shush him and take him away from the violence. Let Mister win. So what? He will die too. The worm will have its day. So when he surged the last of his strength to scramble free from underneath Mister it wasn’t his mind, or his intentions, it was something primal and instinctual which told him he would never rest even in death, if he didn’t first avenge his son and himself.
He managed to get a hold of Mister’s wrist forcing him to use both hands to clench the gun. Jeremy found one of Mister’s fingers and bent it back hard, snapping it like a twig, causing him to scream and it sounded like music to Jeremy who then proceeded to pry the gun loose.
Mister kicked and thrashed and scrambled free on his hands and knees but Jeremy quickly got his weight back on top of him and pinned him to the dirt. With one hand around his throat he lifted the gun and smashed the handle into Mister’s face. He could feel his heart filling with dark satisfaction, feel the world go red and his mind go black. Each swing which connected to Mister’s bloody and broken face took a little more fight out of him and by time he went limp it was all Jeremy could to do lift the gun up again but still he found the strength to hit him again and again and again. A large cut opened over his cheekbone and Jeremy targeted it. He wanted to split his face open like an egg and reach in a pull out his fucking brain and feed it to him. A final satisfying crunch indicated the cheekbone had been crushed.
Jeremy threw the gun aside and rolled off. He put his hand on Mister’s chest to see if he was still breathing and he was.
He pulled himself to his feet and took a moment to catch his breath and looked back up the hills knowing it wouldn’t be long before the police and FBI found them. No doubt a K-9 unit had already been dispatched.
He had to finish it while he still could. There wouldn’t be another chance. He grabbed Mister by the collar and dragged his limp body back to the rock face. He held him there at the edge trying to will his eyes to open. He wanted him to look at him as he dropped him, wanted to see the fear in his face as he tumbled to his death. But his eyes didn’t open and Jeremy knew they never would again.
He let him go, agonized at how little fulfillment it brought him to see Mister’s body bounce off the rocks and come to a sudden and mangled mess below. It was over, it was finally over. He wanted to turn and make his way back up to this house. He wanted to go and hold Charlie in his arms again and tell him he loved him.
How could he ever face Katie ag
ain? How could he ever tell her he let their boy die.
He teetered back and forth on his feet, the world swinging and dimming around him. His knees buckled but he caught himself and had to widen his stance and use his arms for balance to keep from falling.
Jeremy thought of that night on the bluffs; the night he had almost thrown himself over a cliff much like the one he stood at now. And here he finds himself at another cliff. His enemy dashed to pieces in front of him and his son dead, everything dead behind him.
A memory of the day Charlie was born flashed one last time in his mind's eye. The image was sepia and faded like an old photograph that had frayed around the edges. He was so small, so fragile. And now he was gone. He wanted to be gone too. This was the way it always had to end. With him falling. He had always been falling.
CHAPTER 35
The sun slowly ascended behind a heavy veil of smog which diffused the colours of that burning ball of fire into a soft and sweeping cacophony of reds and pinks over top of the state of California. Cindy Summer lay in bed looking down at the stump of her amputated forefinger trying to calculate what she had lost besides the obvious. Her parents had fussed over her since she had returned. Tears and tears and tears. Hugging and kissing and more tears. Though truth be told, their little girl would never really come home to them. That girl was gone. Gone forever and they would just have to make do with this shade of Cindy which remained.
What doesn't kill you only makes your stronger she told herself. She would never take her life and safety or anything for granted again. Though a nagging voice in the back of her mind kept objecting to all the vain attempts at optimism. Stronger for what? It said. What are we preparing ourselves for? When it's over, it's over. What is this clinging to life?
***
Mary sat still in her bathrobe, shivering despite its heavy, fluffy fabric. She was hunkered over a mug of coffee at her kitchen table, watching the steam roll up and away from it. She had wrapped herself in aura of silence since that day in Jeremy’s apartment. An atmosphere of mute reaction that surrounded her and held her and it was good for her to be there in that cocoon of muteness because the alternative would be to... well she didn't know really. Just keep on living? Move on? To grow? To gain something in someway? Fucking what? Perspective?
Horror Becomes Me Page 17