Irene stuck her tongue out at her mother, knowing it would exacerbate the situation. She pointed at the stair rail and yelled at the top of her lungs.
“That’s where daddy did it. He did it because Lenny tried to hurt Iris, didn’t he?”
Gina croaked as she spoke. Her own daughter became judge, jury, and executioner in a flash without considering the consequences or the long-term damage.
But it didn’t stop the girl clawing at her mother’s psyche for an answer.
To aid her desire for the truth, Irene launched into a sarcastic fit of antagonism.
“Once upon a time in Chrome Valley, there was an old man who wrapped a belt around his neck and killed himself—”
“—Irene, stop it.” Gina tried to assert her maternal authority. She changed the subject and ordered Irene down from the table. “Get down off that coffee table this instant—”
“—The police came and took his son away because he tried to hurt my sister.”
“Irene, please.”
The girl launched off the coffee table and stomped both feet to the ground. To Gina, the thud to the floor felt like an earthquake; as if Godzilla himself had smashed into the front room, grown a brain, and battered her grief with its giant fists.
“No. You could’ve stopped it, mom. You could’ve stopped it.”
Just then, a male, adolescent voice she knew well creaked across the ceiling.
Irene?
She looked up at the walls, but couldn’t see who had spoken. “What?”
Irene, are you okay?
She pointed at her mother, who appeared to have “paused” in mid-cry like a still image from a VHS tape; flickering and transparent. Irene saw the door to the kitchen through her mother’s shirt.
A leather belt slapped against the top rail of the stairs and snaked in and around itself.
“I’m okay, but she’s not. She ruined our family.”
Irene, get up. We can’t stay here. Give me the phone.
Young Irene looked at her hands.
Spats of blood seeped out through the creases in her olive-brown skin. “It’s not my fault.”
Nobody said it was, Irene. Get up, we have to go.
The end of the belt slipped through the buckle and tightened, coughing ropes of blood down the pristine white staircase.
“It’s not my fault.”
Irene, stop saying that. Get up.
Darkness…
Nicholas’ voice came from out of nowhere. “Irene, get up.”
A thin white line expanded horizontally, breaking the blackness in two. It expanded vertically and focused a blurry face of someone she recognized.
Irene felt the words tumble from her lips. “It’s… not… my… fault.”
Nicholas’s face sharpened in her eyes.
“Thank God, you’re okay.”
The hard ground pressed against the bones in her buttocks. Uncomfortable and unforgiving. She shifted her ass around and squinted at Nicholas’s head, just as it moved out of view. The theater marquee lights replaced his face and blinded her to the point of nausea.
“Ugh. I f-feel sick.”
She climbed to her knees and dropped the cell phone into her hands. “Did I faint?”
“I thought you were resting your legs. It’s better if you get up.”
With great obedience, Irene stood up straight and brushed her jacket with her hands.
Irene knew something had gotten to her brother-in-law while she’d passed out.
His opening remark caught her off-guard, and confirmed her fears.
“You know, up until about a month ago, it was manageable.”
She couldn’t help but notice the glare from Iris’s phone seep between his fingers. It was almost as if he was about to gesticulate with it to make his point.
“What was manageable?”
“Her sleepwalking.”
Irene prayed, quietly, that he’d not seen the email. “Oh. Okay.”
Withdrawn, Nicholas tried to piece the jigsaw of mystery in his mind. “I mean, sure, most nights were eventful. I’d catch her rearranging the meds in the bathroom cabinet. All it took to get her back to bed was a bit of reassurance from me. You know, I’d act all sympathetic. I think they look nice, I’d say, just to reassure her. It always worked.”
Nicholas shut his eyes and chuckled.
“One time, I even caught her vacuuming the staircase. You’d have thought the noise would have woken her up, but no. She had selective hearing when it suited her, but she always responded to my voice. Instantly, no hesitation, as if I had a direct line to her brain.”
Irene felt that Nicholas was testing her; checking out her facial responses to the stories.
“Close to thirty years, you know?” he said. “You get used to it. Build it into part of your life. You wake up, you eat, you go to work, you relax in the evening, you go to sleep. Then, you deal with the sleepwalking. Your body clock adjusts. Everything adjusts, and you just accept it. But it was always low-key. Never dangerous. Not really. And then, just out of the blue, things got worse.”
“When did they get worse?” Irene asked.
Suspicious, he explained his theory as if he’d rehearsed it a thousand times before.
“About a month ago. She started hitting the walls. Getting her back to bed was impossible. I found her in the yard on a number of occasions trying to set the grass on fire.”
“Oh, Jesus Christ.”
“She lashed out at me on more than one occasion. Kept screaming and pulling at my hair. Punching my chest. It got real violent.”
Irene felt a pang of self-loathing wander into her chest. Everything began to make sense now, particularly in light of what Iris had told her earlier today. “I had no idea.”
To compound her terror, Nicholas lifted the phone with the intention of showing her something. So lost was he in his speech, he lowered it again and continued speaking.
“It got so bad I had a lock fitted on the bedroom door. I installed a bed pan in the corner of the room for her. Something has happened in the past few weeks, Irene.”
Their eyes met for the first time this evening. Without missing a beat, he held up the phone with the email on display. “And I think this, right here, is the answer. And I know you know what it is.”
“Oh, uh, I don’t know—”
“—Bullshit. This is something. There’s something you know that you’re not telling me, Irene.”
Helpless, Irene grabbed at any stalling maneuver she could muster up, no matter how pathetic it may sound.
“I d-don’t know.”
Nicholas scrunched his face and clenched his free hand into a ball.
“My wife has gone missing and I know you know something. I know this message means something. Something about the estate up the road. Something about someone called Lennard?”
Irene lean forward and coughed hard as she clutched the side of the car. “I feel sick. Don’t say that name—”
“—What, Lennard?”
Nicholas cared little about how he’d get her to speak, or the mental damage it might cause. He’d say the name over and over again if he got his way.
“Nick, please—”
“—Lennard, Lennard, fucking Lennard.”
Irene’s jaw yawned opened and spewed the contents of her stomach into the gutter.
She coughed and held her stomach, thoroughly relieved of whatever she’d eaten for lunch that day.
“Eww,” Nicholas said. “Feeling better now?”
“A bit.”
He allowed her a few moments to regain her composure.
“Who is Lennard Smalley, Irene?”
She held her chest and heaved. “Okay, okay—”
“—Thirty years, Irene. Thirty years of perfectly acceptable behavior, suddenly turned to shit. Violently so at the drop of a hat. Did you know she almost killed herself in the bath last night?”
This was news to Irene, who gasped at the severity of the information. “No. No, I didn’t. What ha
ppened?”
“Tried to fry herself by dropping the radio into the water,” Nicholas explained. “I got there in the nick of time.”
“Jesus Christ, no. She never told me.”
“A few hours before that, she confessed she’d done something really bad, to use her words. I’m at the end of my fucking tether, Irene. I swear to God, you better start talking or I’m gonna start tearing shit up, woman. ”
Irene held her hand above her head and spat the last ropes of vomit-infused drool from her lips. “Please, Nick. Just stop. I’ll tell you. Just give me a second.”
“Speak, I ask you. Speak.”
Irene arched her back with full knowledge she’d been defeated. She would have to tell her brother-in-law everything. The dilemma worked its way back into her mind, and demanded intense scrutiny.
She had about five seconds to decide exactly how much of the story to tell, the same one his wife evidently had kept secret from her husband.
The whole hog?
Or just enough so that Nicholas got the general idea, but wouldn’t flip out and try to hunt the person responsible and kill him with his own bare hands. After all, it wouldn’t take a genius to twin the story he was about to hear with the address in his hand.
“Nick, listen to me—”
“—No. Never mind all that bullshit, Irene.”
Nicholas scanned the email once again.
“Tell me everything, or I’ll go to this fucking place right now and find out from this Lennard guy firsthand. Or this “Joy PI” person, whoever that is, can tell me everything.”
Irene’s fears came true in a flash. Her sister had married a smart guy, to be sure. The pair were beyond false pretenses now.
No backtracking.
No playing it all down.
Irene took a deep breath and trusted her intuition. “She didn’t tell you, did she?”
Nick had just about enough of the woman’s infuriating and cryptic turnaround. “Tell me what? What are you talking about?”
“Why she is the way she is.”
“Some children experience somnambulism, that much I know. It’s meant to go before adulthood—”
“—No, no,” Irene corrected herself. “That’s not what I meant. There’s a reason for her night terrors.”
“Is there?”
“Yeah. She didn’t always have it. The sleepwalking.”
Nicholas held the phone up. “And you’re telling me this Lennard character has something to do with it?”
“Please. Stop saying his fucking name.”
Nicholas lost his mind. “I give up. Is this some black people thing that us white people don’t understand?”
Irene raised her eyebrows in shock. “Nicholas.”
“Because that’s the only thing I can think of right now, Irene. Some vital piece of her history that’s obviously been kept hidden from me until now. She’s been lying to me.”
“Iris hasn’t lied to you, Nick, I swear it.”
“She’s my fucking wife, Irene. I’m owed an explanation, aren’t I?”
“I swear. She hasn’t lied to you at all.”
“By implication, then, she’s been keeping something from me and I want to know what it is. And you are going to tell me what it is.”
Irene felt her forehead heat up in stark contrast to the shiver rolling down her spine. “No, no. She’s… no…”
“You’re not a very good liar, Irene.”
Irene manned up right there and then. She held out her hand and turned her palm up. “Give me her phone.”
“Are you going to tell me?”
“Uh-huh, yeah. But first, give me the phone.”
Unsure, Nicholas dropped it into her palm, and readied himself for the worst. Not so great the investigative journalist he purported to be, Irene’s face contorted in such a way that he knew the news he was about to hear would be far from good. Quite the contrary, it would prove to be devastating.
“Tell me.”
Irene hung her head in desperation. “It’s not mine to tell.”
Nicholas clenched his fist and threatened to punch her in the face. “Don’t make me be the bad guy, Irene. I’m serious. Tell me.”
“Please don’t hit me.”
“Tell me.”
“Nick, listen. If I do, it will change everything.”
Unamused, he grabbed the back of her head and steadied it, ready for a vicious blow. “Start speaking.”
“You’re h-hurting me.”
“Speak.”
“Okay, okay. I’ll tell you everything.”
He relaxed his grip on her head and expanded his fingers on his punching hand. Relieved, Irene caught her breath and gave up the fight. A pang of concentrated upset entered her head.
“Okay. Before I do, I need you to understand something.”
“If it makes you tell me quicker, then I’m listening.”
Irene struggled through her tears.
“It can’t be unsaid. It’s going to be your elephant in the room. It’ll be one that you can never, ever get rid of.”
Nicholas eschewed the consequences in a heartbeat. “Understood. Now tell me,” he snapped.
“Nick, it’s not going to be the thing your mind can’t avoid repeating over and over. It’s going to be your mind. Do you understand?”
Nicholas’ attitude softened; filled with regret for the violence he’d nearly perpetrated. He’d gotten his way, and failed to figure out the cost of the victory.
“I can’t not know, now. Irene, you cannot tell me that and expect me to be happy not knowing. I need to know.”
“I know. I’d feel the same way. I wish I could go back and have it just not happen.”
Nicholas fell utterly quiet and considered for the first time if he really wanted to know. The pedestrians walking past them weren’t of importance any longer. He felt alone and, for the first time, single and unmarried.
A lifetime of suppression of the truth gnawed at him; a feeling he knew he’d not be able to live with for much longer.
It was as if Irene could read his mind, and he knew it. She could forgive the violent temperament he displayed moments ago. Hell, she’d have reacted the same way in the same situation. Now was the time to let the cat out of the bag.
“My dad. Our dad. He killed himself because of it. You don’t know this, Nick, but Iris and I had an older brother—”
The theater doors burst open after she launched into her explanation.
Ruined.
The moment well and truly dead.
The theater attendees raced down the stairs, enacting what they’d just seen on stage. Most were in high spirits.
“Yeehaw,” one of them screamed as he pointed two fingers in the air and shot at the moon.
Nicholas shook his head and let out a bewildered quarter-chuckle. Always the wrong place at the right time, he thought, as the crowd exiting the theater swarmed around he and Irene.
Irene opened the car door and nodded at the steering wheel. “Let’s get out of here. I’ll tell you in the car.”
Chapter 17
The Place with No Name night club suffered a heavy tragedy on this warm, Friday night.
The Mack truck trampled its way to the middle of the dance floor, crushing through scores of dancers and party goers at a merciless pace.
Those who weren’t in its path dived out of the way, screaming for their lives.
Big Six yanked on the handbrake and took in the carnage that lay behind the windshield. A bank of multicolored lights revolved dead ahead on the wall, in front of the turntables.
“Fuck this.”
Big Six snatched the green duffel from the passenger seat and kicked the driver’s door open. Noxious fumes filled the area and seeped into the fake smoke being pushed onto the dance floor by two giant machines.
His silhouette snaked through the smoke as he lifted his gun at the injured dancers. A mixture of males and females, all in varying states of distress.
“Get out
ta my way,” he screamed, before firing three shots into the air. The bullets hit the roof, sending one of the lights hurtling to the ground.
The turntables rocked as three vinyl records continued to play the deafening trance music through the speakers.
Two hands squeezed the edge of the deck, followed by a black face wearing a pair of shades. He turned his head left, then right, with little choice but to watch those who hadn’t been crushed under the weight of the truck run for their lives.
Some had difficulty moving. Others randomly grabbed injured survivors and carried them away from the dance floor.
The DJ stood up straight and threw his arms into the air when he spied the gun in Big Six’s hand.
“Man, wh-what are you d-doing’?” the DJ stuttered with fear.
Big Six pointed his gun at the tall, dark figure and slung the duffel over his shoulder. “Yo. Had a bit of an accident. Sorry about your place, man.”
“Th-that’s cool,” the DJ said, hoping to not get shot. “Wh-what happens now?”
Big Six surveyed the area.
A litany of freshly-killed bodies scattered the floor, in amongst some that were chilled to the bone, having tipped out of the back of the truck. He knew he was dead, too, if he hung around too long.
Big Six licked his lips and considered his next course of action. He had a gun and the money, after all. All he had to do was run - and fast.
And no witnesses, alive or dead.
“Sorry about this, my nig.”
He thumbed the hammer on his gun, locking it into place, and aimed the sight on the DJ.
“M-Man, what ya doin’?” came the petrified response. “Don’t shoot me, man.”
“You seen my face. Now I gotta to put a bullet in yours.”
No sooner had Big Six’s index finger touched the trigger, than he relaxed the pressure on it when he saw the DJ point at the chasm in the wall created by the truck’s arrival.
“No, man. Look.”
“Huh?”
Big Six turned around, greeted by one headlamp throwing a Godly light in his face.
“What the hell?”
The Bugatti rolled through the crater in the wall and stopped alongside the truck.
Big Six chuckled heartily to himself. “Well, well, well. Look who showed up.”
Freddie hopped out the back and pointed his gun at Big Six. “Bro, I dunno who you are, but put the gun down. Let’s talk about this. Shit’s fucked up, yeah?”
Somnambulist Page 17