“No matter what happens, just remember I love you always. Understand. Forever and ever, no matter what.”
“Please, Mommy,” Logan begs.
“It’s time for you to go now, baby.”
Logan thumps his fist against his heart.
“I’m coming back for you. I won’t ever let you go.”
“I love you, beautiful boy.”
The shack is now shrouded in darkness except for a sliver of moonlight coming through the bathroom window. As Logan turns to make his escape, I take in his jet-black hair and tan, lean legs one last time. For a split second, he looks exactly like Ben.
But then my son is gone as the bathroom door shuts. The old window squeaks as it opens, and I hear Logan’s clothes scrape against the window frame as he slides through and out into the sticky night air.
“Run, baby, run,” I whisper.
A car engine cuts through the sudden quiet in the sugar shack. The padlock rips open and Alice lumbers inside. She slides the key in the bathroom lock and the door swings open. The crimson curtain that hangs above the open bathroom window dances gently against the breeze.
“He’s gone. Enough. Take the gun and shoot him when you find him,” Alice tells Leslie. “Now go. I’ll take care of her.”
Leslie hustles out of the shack with the gun, ready to hunt down Logan. I have to rely on the fact he is fast, and Leslie’s leg wound should slow her down.
Alice moves to the kitchen and attaches a hose to the sink. She begins to fill up the giant cast-iron pot with water. Once it is full, she drags it across the room and places it on the floor in front of my chair.
“Praise God from whom all blessings flow,” Alice sings in a lilting soprano. Her hands lock around the back of my head.
“Wait, stop,” I cry.
Alice shoves me forward and plunges my head into the icy-cold water.
Please God. I need to save my children.
Alice yanks me out of the water, and I fight to inhale a single breath.
“Praise Him, all creatures, here below,” she sings.
My face slams under the surface of the water for the second time. I thrash my head back and forth to try and knock the cast-iron pot over, but it is too heavy.
(“I want to beat the world’s record for holding my breath the longest. A guy from Germany held his breath for fifteen minutes and two seconds. I think if I just keep practicing, I can beat him.”)
I love you Logan.
Alice’s thick hands latch around my hair, and she yanks me up. I open my mouth to try and catch a breath.
“Praise Him above, ye heavenly host.”
Alice forces my head underwater again.
I love you Will.
Like a cat toying with a mouse before it is killed, Alice pulls me out of the water for a final time.
“Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.”
“No, stop,” I try and scream, but nothing comes out. I stretch open my mouth to try and fill my lungs up with air.
But it is too late. The song is over.
Alice wraps her hands around my neck and pushes my head under the water for the final time.
I love you Ben. I am sorry. I wish I could have remembered and helped bring you back.
God, please take care of my children.
And with that last conscious thought, everything goes black.
CHAPTER 19
I hear the comfort of familiarity whisper my name like an old friend welcoming me back warmly to a place I wish I had never left.
“Julia, time to get up. Time to get up, sleepy head.”
I flick open my eyes and wonder if it is time to get up for the first day of school.
A small black-and-white TV is on in the corner of the room. Its broken antenna is taped together, and a set of rabbit ears points wildly in either direction in a hard-fought attempt to get a signal. A little boy in a red shirt and thin khaki shorts sits on a chair and gazes intently at the shabby TV set. He bends as close as he can to the screen with his elbows pressed firmly against his suntanned, lean legs.
I strain to see what the boy is watching as grainy images flash across the screen.
“Come on!” the boy yells.
I hear the crack of a bat and a collective roar as the stadium crowd goes wild. The boy leaps to his feet. He jumps up and down, exploding with excitement, and pumps his small fist victoriously in the air.
An announcer’s nasally Brooklyn accent booms from the TV set. “OH, WHAT A BLOW! What a way to top it off. Forget about who the most valuable player is in the World Series! How this man has responded to pressure! Oh, what a beam on his face. How can you blame him? He’s answered the whole WORLD! After all the furor, after all the hassling, it comes down to this!”
The little boy spins around and flashes me a big, crooked smile.
“Howard Cosell. That’s the name of the announcer guy you’re trying to remember, Julia. It’s game six of the 1977 World Series. Reggie Jackson just nailed his third consecutive home run on the first pitch, clinching the series against the Los Angeles Dodgers. What a game. I had my doubts about that hotshot from the Baltimore Orioles, but I have to give it to him. Reggie Jackson finally won my respect.”
No one loved the New York Yankees more than my brother.
“Oh, Ben,” I cry. “I’ve missed you so much.”
I try to run to him, but I am startled by something rhythmically tapping below me. I look toward the sound and see drops of water falling steadily down and forming a sizable puddle around my feet.
“You’re okay, Julia,” Ben tells me. “Just stay where you are.”
I look around to get my bearings. It looks like we are in the living room of our childhood house in Sparrow. The tinny sound of carousel music plays softly in the background, and the distinct aroma of cotton candy wafts lazily through the air.
“Could we go to Funland, Ben?” I beg. “Maybe you could work some odd jobs, and we could get enough money to go to the boardwalk just one more time before school starts tomorrow. All we need is a couple of bucks, and we’ll have enough to ride the bumper cars and play a couple games of skee-ball. Hopefully we won’t run into Mark Brewster.”
Ben kicks the floor with the threadbare toe of his cheap sneakers Mom bought him at the A&P.
“I’d love to. More than anything. But I can’t,” Ben says. “Besides, you’re an adult now, and adults don’t like to play or do fun stuff anymore.”
“No way. I love to play, and I always will even when I grow up,” I promise.
I look toward the black-and-white TV set. Reggie Jackson swings and connects with a thunderous stroke of the bat. Jackson watches the ball sail high into the stadium as he jogs easily around the bases and savors his ultimate moment of victory.
“He answered the whole WORLD!” Cosell’s voice echoes from the television.
“I’m proud of you,” Ben says. “You turned out exactly like I’d hoped you would.”
I wipe away a droplet of water that begins to slip down my forehead.
“I just wish we could stay in this house forever. Wouldn’t it be wonderful?” I ask. “I don’t want to get evicted again. We always get kicked out of places, and I want to stay in one house for a while. One day, when I’m older and I have my very own house, I’m going to draw all over the wall with crayons, because it will be mine and I can. I’ll draw orange for you and purple for me, okay?”
“You can’t stay here.”
“Don’t say that to me,” I plead. “Don’t ever say that. You’re never going to leave me. You promised. And you can’t make me go.”
“I’m sorry. I really am. But you need to listen to me. You need to remember everything you have, and you need to fight for it with all you’ve got. This isn’t real. It’s the place of the in-between, the good part. The Yankees won the World Series, but I never came back. But you have to.”
“It’s cold in here,” I say as I begin to shiver. “Mom and Dad didn’t pay the heating bill again, did they?”<
br />
“You need to fight. Promise me you will,” Ben says. “You can’t stay here. And you can’t go any further. I won’t let you.”
“I don’t want to leave you. I don’t want you to ever go away,” I cry. “I couldn’t live without you. You’re my hero, you know.”
Ben turns his face away from me and blinks hard. He looks up at me finally, and his dark eyes are intense and filled with resolve.
“You have to. I promise I’ll be with you though. I always have been. I promised you I’d be here to protect you, and I never left your side. Love that is pure and true and hopeful never dies. I never stopped loving you, little sister.”
Ben walks over to the television and adjusts the antenna.
“Never could afford a good one,” Ben says. “I duct-taped those rabbit ears together though so at least we were able to watch the baseball games when the power was on.”
A blast of cold hits me like a massive rogue wave, and my teeth begin to chatter.
“You made it though, huh? Just like I thought you would. I tried to make it good for you when you were a kid. You were always my bright spot. You and me, we were born into a bad life, and most people don’t know how to fight their way out of it like Daddy and Sarah, who just gave up and became hustlers. But not you. I told you to fight and learn everything you could in school. That was your ticket out of our life. I made you believe life could still be full of possibilities even though deep down, you weren’t sure if it really was. I said you had to fight the bullies even if I wasn’t around, and you did.”
“I would do anything you told me. I always listen to you.”
“Then listen to me now. You need to remember all you’ve got. You’ve worked hard, and you created a beautiful life for yourself even though you feel like you don’t belong in it sometimes. You’re good enough. You’re better than good enough,” Ben says. “I’ve missed you, kid.”
“I feel so cold.”
“Concentrate. Think about your family, David, Logan, and Will. Logan is a really special boy. He’s going to do something great one day that will save thousands of people if he only gets the chance. He won’t if you don’t go back for him. You have to go back and save Logan and Will. They need you.”
“I’m tired. I want to go to sleep. I’m just going to take a little rest for a while. I promise I won’t sleep long.”
“Logan loves you with all his heart. He’s brave. Will is waiting for you to come back for him. Will aches for you. Logan and Will are going to die if you don’t go back.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”
“Look at me,” Ben says in a stern voice.
I stare back at Ben, but instead, I see another little boy with jet-black hair racing ahead of me. The boy runs along a lakeshore and stops at the water’s edge, where he picks up a smooth, flat stone and tosses it across the water.
(“Check that out. That one skipped four times, Mom. It’s all about the smoothness of the rock and the skill of the thrower.”)
I then see the same little boy sitting in my lap. His face is crimson and his hair is drenched with sweat from fever as I rock back and forth with him in a white wicker chair until his fever breaks. The boy looks up at me to be sure everything is all right before he closes his eyes.
(“Mom is here, beautiful boy. Go back to sleep.”)
And I see the same little boy crouching behind a car with a pocketknife, unafraid of the evil that surrounds him as long as he can save me.
(“I’m coming back for you, Mom. I won’t ever let you go.”)
Logan. My son. He ran to the guesthouse to rescue Will, and Leslie is going to kill him.
“My sons are in danger! I need to go back.”
“I knew you could do it,” Ben answers proudly.
The memory of Alice and Leslie rushes back to me, and I struggle to catch my breath.
“I know what I have to do, but I’m scared. I don’t know if I can beat them. I tried, but I wasn’t strong enough,” I say.
“Don’t be scared. You have to fight.”
“Sometimes it seems like no matter how hard you fight or pray or hope, you lose anyway. What you love gets taken and the bad wins every time. It took you away and it never brought you back.”
“Listen to me,” Ben insists. “If you give up, then it will win. Call it what you want, the darkness, the evil, the bad, it’s all the same black monster, and it will prevail. Some people belong to the darkness before they are born, like Alice, and others are lured into its spell later, like Leslie, who is attracted to its power. The darkness becomes their master and blows out their light forever.”
“You’re scaring me.”
“I’m just telling you the truth,” he says. “The darkness preys on fear and anger and latches on like a parasite to ambivalence, selfishness, and desperation. It grows when people turn their back on what’s right and stop fighting for the good. You’re part of the good, so you need to fight for it and you can’t give up now.”
“Please. I’m so tired.”
“You have to do this for me.”
“I can’t beat Alice and Leslie.”
“The evil makes them strong, but you’re stronger. You have so much goodness in you, but you never realized it because you felt guilty about what happened to me,” Ben says.
“I don’t see much good in myself. I never did.”
“It’s in you and all around you,” Ben answers. “Don’t you see it? You need to fight for it now just like I fought for you. Don’t you remember? The night the man came, I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking about how summer was over, and you and I didn’t even get to have too many adventures. I decided when I got older, I would take you wherever you wanted to go and we would just pick up and leave whenever we felt like it because we could.”
“I know you would have,” I say. “I always wondered who you would’ve turned out to be if you’d just gotten the chance. I know you would’ve been someone wonderful.”
“You were the one who wanted to check to be sure the sliding glass door to the courtyard was locked that night, but I told you not to.”
“I didn’t want you to think I was a scared baby. I wish I hadn’t listened to you.”
“I could see a shadow by the screen door, and I knew something was wrong,” Ben says. “You were still sleeping. I picked you up and hid you in the closet so you would be safe. That’s why you never could remember what happened in the room that night. You were sound asleep the whole time. As soon as I shut the closet door, the man came through the screen.”
“Parker?”
“No. The man with the scar. He came for both of us,” Ben answers.
“Me too?”
“When he didn’t see you in your bed, he started to search around and was heading to the closet. My baseball was on the dresser, and I threw it at him. I nailed him right in the head. I couldn’t let him find you. The man . . . I swear, he looked like a giant . . . put his hand around my mouth to keep me from screaming, and he dragged me into the courtyard and out into a van. There was another guy in the driver seat.”
“What Parker said was true then,” I realize.
The puddle of water around my feet continues to rise and I look down to see it lapping above the top of my shoes.
“The man with the scar turned away from me for a second to say something to the driver, and I saw my chance. I reached for the door handle and made a run for it. But the man with the scar was too big and fast. He pulled me back inside the van. Right before he slammed the door shut, I looked out for a second and I could see the stars, bright and hopeful, and I prayed you would be all right. I would do it all over, a million times again, as long as you would be safe.”
“Who took you, Ben?”
Ben stuffs his hands in his pockets and stares down at the floor.
“Just worry about yourself right now. There’s not much time.”
A searing pain shoots through my lungs as though a hundred-pound weight is strapped across my chest.
<
br /> “What happened to me wasn’t your fault. Now you know. It will make you stronger in your battle. You’re good. You belong to us and you always have.”
Howard Cosell’s voice booms from the television set. “After all the furor, after all the hassling, it comes down to this!”
Ben walks over to the TV just as Reggie Jackson begins to round home plate.
“I need to know what happened to you. Where are you now? So many times, I begged you to let me know you were okay, but you never answered.”
Ben flashes me his trademark crooked smile again.
“You just weren’t listening. There’ll be something for you on the table. Use it to fight the bullies, Julia. Use it to cut a hole in the darkness.”
“What is it?”
“Hit it out of the park for me, Julia,” Ben answers. “I love you. I’ll always love you, forever and ever.”
“I love you, too,” I answer. “I promise, I’ll fight as hard as I can.”
Ben gives me a smile one last time.
“Is this real?” I ask. “I really want to believe it is, but I’m afraid this is just a hallucination.”
“It’s okay to believe in magic sometimes, kid.”
Ben walks out of the room as the grainy TV screen fades and then shuts off with a sharp click.
CHAPTER 20
A high-pitched scream rings in my ears and the pressure in my lungs builds until I am sure every part of my body will imminently explode.
I gasp for precious air and seize upon my first breath as though I am entering the world for the very first time. I flick open my eyes and find myself on the floor, soaked to the bone and lying next to the cast-iron pot still filled with freezing-cold water.
The hopelessness of my situation comes back to me as I hear an angry buzz start up between Alice and Leslie, who are huddled just outside the door of the shack exchanging heated and worried words.
“They’re at the house. I saw them,” Leslie cries. “I was running after the boy, and I saw the lights of a car. It pulled into the driveway of the main house.”
“Are you sure?” Alice asks.
“Yes, I saw the lights. I told you. Someone is at the house!”
The Last Time She Saw Him Page 25