“I was trying to help you!” The woman was screaming. He could see her attempting to make her way through the maze of reflection. He could feel her fear and it made his blood warm. The energy was rising.
His memory was becoming clearer, and he found that the room he was in matched his mind. He watched the flame of the oil lamp flicker the same as it had when he first saw it all those years ago. He set the lamp on a cabinet, and reached inside to grab a canister that he remembered would be there. In a drawer in the desk, he grabbed a roll of masking tape. Then, he ascended the small metal stairs.
He had to be careful. The grating of the cage wasn't large enough to fall through, but was big enough for his foot to get caught. He quietly walked over the cage until he stood directly above the woman. He looked down on her, letting her energy rise up like smoke to his nostrils.
“Robert. You have to let me go. I only wanted what was best for you!”
“Oh looky, the reporter is all alone,” he said, making sure to speak outward instead of down.
“No, Robert! We had a deal!”
“So we did. I will now answer any questions that you have for me.”
“Please, you don't have to do this.”
“Oh, but we had a deal.”
She was crying now. He crouched down to hear her better. She had stopped trying to solve the maze and just stood. He took the canister, and as he removed the cap, he read the label.
Kerosene.
It was only half full, but that would be enough. He hovered over the grating, and as the woman trembled, he poured the golden liquid down over her. He poured the contents quickly so that most of it was on her before she could react. Thickened with age, the gooey residue drenched her head, plastering her hair to her shoulders. She looked up, but the kerosene filled her eyes. As she tried to wipe them clean, it oozed down her front and sides.
“Oh my God, what are you doing?”
He pulled the woman's Taser out of his pocket. She had left it behind, a treat for him to find. Now he would return it to her. He knew the stun gun well. They had used them from time to time at Lincoln, and he despised them. They were generators of false energy.
He tested the button on the side, and blue electricity shot out between the two prongs of the gun. He wrapped the masking tape around the device so that the button stayed depressed.
The woman had cleared her eyes, and hearing the sound of the Taser, looked up.
“What was that?”
Then he dropped the gun through the grate directly above her head.
* * *
At first, she hadn't recognized the sound, but as soon as she did, there was a split second when she knew it was all over. The kerosene that covered her erupted as soon as the electric current struck her shoulder. The flames spread across her vision, engulfing her torso. She had just enough time to contemplate how it didn't hurt before the pain began.
She could feel the flesh melt from her cheeks.
She could smell the rancidness of her hair aflame.
And, through it all, she could see herself burn. She spun around, but everywhere she looked was a perfect picture of her body, lit like a torch. A mirror image of her torture and suffering.
She could see burning pieces of her flesh fall from her as she fell to her knees. The agony struck her mind and a darkness zeroed in on her sight.
The sweet blessing that was blindness.
FORTY FOUR
How many minutes had passed since they had parked the car? Ten? Twenty? Bill hadn't said a word. Had not tried to coax her out of the car. He just sat quietly as she got up the nerve to go inside.
That was the moment that she realized she loved him.
Sylvia watched the red front door of her childhood home, thinking that at any moment now, her parents would notice the Civic parked out front and come out to investigate. She didn't come home often, and when she did, it was usually unannounced. Still, she could not remember a time that her parents had not greeted her right away.
Maybe out back doing some gardening, she thought.
The front lawn was manicured to perfection, and hadn't changed much at all since she was last here. How long had that been? Years. The shrubs stood a bit taller and a lawn gnome had appeared where there was no lawn gnome before, but that was all.
She was stalling. It was time to rip off the Band-Aid.
She exited the car and Bill followed.
When her mother answered her knock, she didn't greet them warmly, but instead with a frigid look, as though she were expecting Sylvia, but dreading the reunion. She did give her daughter a quick hug and a peck on the cheek, though it never actually touched skin.
“Mom, this is Bill.”
“Oh. Well nice to meet you, Bill. Both of you come in and have a seat on the couch. I'm going to go out back and fetch your father.”
They sat down on the lime green love seat that Sylvia used to fall asleep on as a child. Her parents would send her to bed, but when they had gone to sleep themselves, she would sneak back down to listen to the radio. There was a station then that played rock music, but only at night. Her parents never liked her listening to rock, but when her mother found her asleep in the morning, the radio would have changed over to its day-time, easy listening format. It was a prefect little scam. The old radio still sat on a table near the love seat, as it always had. This used to be her favorite place in the house, but now it was as welcoming as a bed of nails.
After a few minutes, both of her parents returned. Her father gave a nod to Bill, and then leaned over to kiss Sylvia's forehead. “It's good to see you, Princess. It's been a long time since we've heard from you.”
“I know, Daddy. I'm terrible.”
“Nonsense, your mother and I have always known that you were your own woman.”
Sylvia had never told them what she did for a living for obvious reasons, and her parents had never inquired. As a child, they didn't give her an inch of breathing room, but as soon as she moved out, it was as if they had finished a job and never wanted to think of it again.
Her mother was rocking back and forth where she stood; pacing in a single step. “Let's just get it over with, Franklin. It's killing me to let it linger in the air like this.”
Sylvia knew then that they had seen the news. Maybe they had finally bought a television, or more likely, the neighbors had informed them. Her father nodded and sighed.
“We were expecting you, Princess. I'm sorry we didn't return your calls, but this is better done in person.”
“We never wanted you to find out at all,” her mother followed.
“Well, it would have been better coming from you than the fucking news, Mom!” Sylvia shouted.
Tears formed in her mother's eyes and Sylvia immediately regretted her tone.
“I'm sorry. I don't mean to be so harsh, but this is heavy shit. Do I really have a brother?” Sylvia had held it together thus far, but now, in this house, with her parents in front of her, she couldn't hold back the emotion.
Her mother snapped out of her own heartache and took Sylvia in her arms, her motherly instinct returning.
“Tell me the story, Daddy,” Sylvia said, her head resting on her mother's shoulder, and her hand gripping Bill's like a vice.
“Your mother and I had a child before you. A boy named Robert, as you already know. We moved here when he was just a few years old.”
Her father went to the bar and poured himself a bourbon, neat, but didn't offer any to the rest. “For a while, everything was great,” he continued, “but there was this game that the children played. Robert hadn't really fit in yet, so we encouraged him to join in the game. I think we were the only parents in town that actually wanted their kid to go out and vandalize the place. He wouldn't do it, but he began to spend more and more time on his own, away from the house.”
“Your father worked so hard,” her mother interrupted, “I was the one who should have seen it coming.”
“Don't blame yourself, Dear. Nothing is y
our fault. Robert was just a bad egg.”
“Could you just finish please,” Sylvia said, trying to be polite, though her patience was gone.
“Right,” her father continued, “There was an incident. Several, I guess. Robert had finally joined in the game, but it was wrong. He was wrong. Instead of throwing eggs at cars, he started killing things. Pets mostly. I'll save you the details.”
Franklin downed the remainder of his bourbon. “Anyway, we had no choice but to commit him.”
“Lincoln was the best place for him,” her mother said.
“Whatever. So he killed a couple of pets. I get that he needed help, but did you need to throw away the key?”
“It wasn't just a couple of pets. There were a lot. I don't expect you to fully understand. He didn't just kill them. He mutilated them. He… he smiled at me when I caught him,” Franklin said, unsteadily.
Her father made another drink and downed it. Sylvia had never seen the man shaken. Her father had always been steadfast, but now he was visibly ashamed.
“You have to understand, Sylvia,” he said, “We didn't know what he had become until just a couple of days ago. We had always planned to bring him home after he got the help he needed, but your mother had you soon after. As you grew up, we were convinced that we couldn't risk letting him near you.”
Her mother said, “We felt so much guilt all those years. We were selfish. But, now that guilt is gone. Now we know that we were right to pay to keep him there.”
“Wait a minute. Pay?” asked Sylvia.
“You shouldn't have said that dear. She won't understand.”
“Understand what, Daddy?”
“I paid the institute each year to keep Robert there. It pained us to do it, but a doctor was pushing for his release, and we couldn't risk it. And, we were right. You see? Who knows what he would have done to you.”
“Well I'm fucking glad that your guilt is gone, Daddy. How do you know that keeping him locked up in there didn't make him what he is? Maybe he was just a kid that needed a little help. A little attention. How do you know that if he had just gotten a little guidance from his parents instead of imprisonment, he wouldn't have turned out just fine, and I could have had a brother? I would have liked that. Jesus Fucking Christ.”
Everyone hushed. Each realized that any more words, one way or another, would only hurt. Sylvia felt so much anger that her skin grew hot, yet she didn't want to direct it at her parents. She was angry for losing something she never had, and that seemed unfair. She was angry that she had been lied to, but who was she to judge anyone's lies?
Bill placed a cool hand on the small of her back, just under her shirt. His touch made the anger level out, and when she looked at him, she knew that he understood. Bill, the mind reader. The empath. She had just about broken his hand with her squeeze, yet he made no complaint.
Her mother's head was down, and her father had poured a third drink and sat in a chair opposite her. Sylvia reached out, took the drink from him, and sipped it.
Everyone sat perfectly still and quiet.
A loud bang, as the front door swung open and slapped against the wall, interrupted the reticence. For a moment, no one walked inside. Fear would have been an obvious reaction, but Sylvia was so drained, all she felt was curiosity.
When Robert Kirkman entered, the light at his back and his shadow stretching out across the carpet in elongated delineation, everyone knew it was him.
He had come home.
One of them needed to react. Any of them.
Someone please do something.
FORTY FIVE
They woke early the next morning without the aid of an alarm. After dressing simultaneously, Love in her vinyl and Harry in khaki, they were back on the highway before the rooster crowed. Their only stop was a quick one for breakfast. The rubbery pancakes Harry ordered weren't top shelf cuisine, but he ate them anyway. Love had a more reasonable meal of orange juice and mixed fruit. Harry had two glasses of chocolate milk, and Love wiped away his liquid mustache more than once.
It took six full hours and a handful of minutes before they cracked the shell of Pleasure, Wisconsin. The drive had been all finger taps, over emphasized sighs, and talk radio. From the moment they passed the sign welcoming them into town, the mammoth wheels of the Hummer had trouble slipping through the paint of the Norman Rockwell piece that they found themselves in.
Pleasure was laid out in a perfect grid, with wide roads and perfect trees lining them. Each home was expertly painted, and each front lawn hedged to perfection. Love whistled the theme music from the Andy Griffith Show as they took a wide left onto Butterscotch Avenue.
As they drove past the house at number fifteen, they saw a car in the driveway, as well as one parked on the street out front. Love drove several blocks down, then made a U-turn, and parked the colossal sore thumb as far away as she could, while still allowing for a view of the house.
“There are people in that Honda,” Harry said, unbuckling his safety belt.
“I saw that. I think that might be the sister, Sylvia. I don't know who the guy is.”
“You have much better eyes than me.”
“Of course, I do. Old man,” Love joked, taking Harry's hand in her own.
“We might as well be flashing our lights and blasting a siren. There is no way in hell that those people aren't wondering why there is a huge blue military vehicle parked down the street.”
“It will be fine.” Love said. “People notice so much less than you think they do. But, honestly, I hadn't really thought about this part of the adventure. I bought this thing the same morning that I picked you up.”
“Really?”
“Yep. I saw it at a dealership when I was on my way. It was crazy, and my kind of color. I thought it would be fun.”
Harry smiled as his heart rose in his throat.
“You're going to surprise me every day of my life,” he told her, and for once, she didn't have anything sarcastic to say.
Moments passed liked millennia as they watched. Then the Honda's doors opened.
“Shit,” Love said.
Harry could see that Love was anxious.
“Calm down, they aren't coming this way. Look, they're going inside. You were right, that is definitely the sister. The other one is probably a boyfriend, or maybe a husband.”
“OK. Cool. That's good.”
“You know, you seemed like kind of a badass back at the motel, but now you seem to have gotten a little case of stage fright.”
“Well, I have done very little actual field work. I'm all brain, no brawn.”
Then Love opened her door.
“What are you doing?” asked Harry.
“I have to go up there and check things out.”
“Are you sure?”
“No. But I have to do something.” She reached into the back and grabbed a shoulder holster and gun. She put on the holster and checked the gun's clip. “Did you bring yours?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No. I left mine in the motel room along with my badge. I figured, fuck it, here is my resignation.”
“Shit. OK. Well, you stay here and try your absolute hardest not to get into any trouble. You can keep watch. Text me if you see anything. I'll have my phone on vibrate in my back pocket.”
“OK,” he said, leaning over the console to kiss her. “Be careful.”
Love moved slowly, but deliberately, down the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street. Harry could see that she was desperately trying to look normal, never mind the gun at her side in plain sight, or the plastic skirt.
Eventually, she got to a line of box shrubs that separated the Kirkman's house from the one next door. Love crouched down behind the greenery, and shuffled down the line until she came to a stop.
She must have found a vantage point.
Love stayed crouched for a while, watching. Other than adjusting her footing, she made no other movements. Then, something else caught Harry'
s attention.
The man was still several blocks away, but closing the gap quickly. At first, he was just a blur to Harry and his old man eyes, but when the man came into focus, and Harry could see the scars, he knew. He had never seen Robert Kirkman before, but there was no mistaking him. Blood ran down the man's arms, and his smile was abhorrent.
For fucks sake, Harry, do something.
He took out his phone and sent text after text after text. He saw Love react to the movement in the seat of her pants, but she wasn't reacting fast enough. He was almost there.
Do something, Harry. Do something
FORTY SIX
“Have a seat, Robert.”
The young man had not sat down since entering Dr. Lyst's office. He stood nervously by the door, and looked as if he would bolt at the slightest sound or movement.
“It's alright. I understand that I'm not the doctor that you're used to seeing, but I can assure you that I'll give you ample care. If you will just have a seat, we can get to know each other a little better, and I'm sure that you will warm to me, as you did to Dr. Willis.”
Robert didn't make a move, and instead of insisting, the new doctor simply remained silent. Minutes went by, and whether it was that Robert had grown more comfortable, or if he had just decided the quickest way out the room was through the chair, he sat.
“Good. I'm happy that you have decided to join me. My name is Dr. Earl Lyst, but you may call me Dr. Lyst, or just doctor. I've taken over your case from Dr. Willis, as he has left the hospital.”
“Where has he gone,” Robert asked quietly.
“That isn't something that is pertinent right now, Robert. It's just important for you to know that he is no longer with the Lincoln, and I have taken over the majority of his affairs.”
The doctor flipped through Robert's file, making subtle noises of understanding as he went along. “I see here that you have a history of violent behavior. That's why you were originally sent here, is it not?”
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