Charlie

by Elin Peer

  My mind was racing to find a way to interfere. Where’s the fire alarm? My eyes darted around, but this wasn’t a public building and there was no glass to break nor did I see any smoke detectors or sprinkler systems. I could run, but then what about the children?

  The selected five sat linked together with Carlos in the back and Sara in front.

  “I don’t know, Conor, I would have preferred to have a man between my legs,” Carlos joked and it made people laugh.

  Don’t they understand what’s going on here?

  I stared around me, hoping to find an ally among the drugged cult members, but they were caught in the mass psychosis and were oblivious to what was really going on.

  “Give them space.” Conor got us all to move out of the way so that we were standing in front of them.

  “Your job is to prepare for the big welcome party that we’ll have on the other side,” Conor instructed them. “The rest of us will be right along.”

  “Oh, leave it to me to arrange a fun party.” Carlos slurred and gave an exaggerated laugh while his movements were slow from the drugs.

  “We’re all going to count down from five and then you’ll press the triggers.” Conor turned up the music, which blasted with a heavy bass, and then he raised his hands in the air and did a few dance moves.

  I couldn’t believe how easily he controlled the minds of the poor people around me who danced along with him with uncoordinated movements revealing just how intoxicated they were. It was mindboggling how quick they’d been to accept this impromptu meeting as a party when it was anything but.

  “Let’s do it!” Conor shouted over the loud music and Sara and the other four raised the guns to their heads with big grins. The last time Sara had been in a similar situation her hands had been shaking, but this time, she didn’t seem the least bit concerned. Maybe she was convinced the gun would be empty again, but most likely it was the combination of whatever drug had been in the champagne and the hyped-up atmosphere around her.

  What if he killed them? I should say something to stop them, but I’d gone into survival mode and was terrified of drawing attention to myself. Keeping in the background, I dug in behind Maximum and spoke into the phone again. “He’s having people shoot themselves. Send help, Kit!”

  “One!” Conor led the countdown but everyone counted along with him.

  “Two!”

  “Three!”

  “Four, get ready to be freeee!!!” Conor was smiling from ear to ear and blew his five followers a kiss.

  Sara pursed her lips and sent an air kiss back while I tugged at Maximum’s and Atlas’ t-shirts and gestured for them to pull back with me. They turned to me just as the group shouted, “Five!”

  The gunshots were loud enough to be heard over the music. Sara, Carlos, Estelle, Maya, and Isabel, who had just been grinning and joking a few seconds ago, were now quiet and lifeless as they half sat, half lay in that bizarre way as a human train.

  Conor gave a jump with excitement and turned to the group. “Our pioneers have gone before us. Let’s follow and keep the party going on the other side. Who wants to go next?”

  Maximum swayed on his feet and raised his hand with a few others, but I jerked him back.

  As if he was trying to understand what had just happened, Atlas stood quiet with his eyebrows drawn inward.

  “Wait, are they dead?” Aisha asked with a hand to her face. She leaned forward squinting her eyes as if she wasn’t sure what she was looking at.

  “No, they’re not dead my love. They just took the elevator to the next level. And now, we’re all going to join them.” Conor took the guns from the corpses on the floor and dried the blood off with a beige-colored cloth before handing them to the next people in line who were getting down on the floor to continue the human chain.

  “What about you, Liv? Why don’t you go next?”

  I felt Conor’s eyes on me and people turned to look. Swaying on my feet, I felt sweat drip between my breasts and from my forehead as I pretended to be as drugged as them. “Sure, just hang on. I don’t want the children to miss out. I wanna go with them. Come, on boys, let’s go and fetch the others.”

  Without waiting for Conor’s response, I pulled the boys along and staggered to the stairs.

  “Hurry back down here. We’ll do a special round for you and the children after this one.”

  I felt like screaming with terror when the boys weren’t as fast or as willing to move as I wanted them to. It was like seeing a shark in the water and not being able to move away fast enough.

  “I wanted to go next,” Maximum complained when we were half way up the stairs.

  The music had been cranked up again, but I spoke into his ear. “Snap the fuck out of it. He’s killing people”

  Maximum giggled. “That’s a bad word. You can’t say the F word.”

  Another collective countdown sounded and looking over my shoulder, I saw another round of five people pull the trigger and kill themselves. Pushing the boys to move faster, I screamed into the phone to overpower the music. “Kit, I need help right now.”

  If she answered, I couldn’t hear it over the music and it took all my focus to get the boys moving down the long hallway. When I finally opened the door to River and Nathan’s room, Lumi came at me.

  “What’s going on? We hear loud music and fireworks.”

  “That’s not fireworks. Conor has lost his mind. He’s having everyone kill themselves and he wants us to come down and kill ourselves too.” I slammed the door shut behind me and locked it just as another round of shots were heard from downstairs.

  Lumi’s golden skin paled in front of my eyes and her hands covered her mouth.

  “But they’re not doing it, are they? They wouldn’t kill themselves.” River moved closer too.

  “I wanted to go next, we’re going to an awesome party on the other side,” Maximum repeated but this time I shook his shoulders.

  “Wake up, boy. There is no party.”

  Maximum and Atlas sat down on Nathan’s bed and only now that the music was playing low in the distance, and no one was giggling, did they seem to wake up a little.

  Loud bangs were heard and I closed my eyes, understanding that another five people had just killed themselves. That would make it twenty in total.

  “Wait…” Atlas pushed his glasses up. “Sara and the others. It’s not real, is it?”

  “Yes, it’s real. They’re not waking up, Atlas. That champagne you all drank. It was spiked with something.”

  “But…” Atlas shook his head. “But it was just for fun.”

  “No!” I moved over to stare into his eyes. “People are really dying down there.”

  “My mom?” Lumi shrieked and if I hadn’t stopped her, she would have run out the door.

  “No, Lumi, you can’t go down there. None of us can. We have to find a way to escape.”

  “But my mom…”

  “Your mother wouldn’t want you to die too. Tell me you understand.” As I stared into her large brown eyes where worry and tears showed me how scared she was, my heart beat in my chest like a war drum alerting about the severe danger.

  “I understand.”

  “Good!” I left her to open the window and look down. “Nathan, River, we’ll have to tie the sheets from your beds together and crawl down.”

  Bang! Again shots were heard and this time I wasn’t there to hold Lumi back. Before any of us could stop her, she sprinted over to unlock the door and ran down the hallway.

  “Nooooo!” I ran after her, the phone dropping from my hands. “Lumi, stop. Stoooppp!”

  CHAPTER 26

  Flying Bullets

  Charles

  “Liv… Liv… what’s happening? Answer me.” Kit drove like a crazy person and still I wanted her to go faster. I was holding her phone and every sound that we’d heard so far had scared the crap out of us. The countdowns, the shots, Liv’s panicked voice. I would never forgive myself if something happened to her.

/>   “I’m calling her back.” My foot was tapping on the floor of the car as the ringing went unanswered.

  Kit and I had been in the hotel bar when Liv first called and told us Conor was waking people up for a meeting. I had insisted that we leave immediately, and the drive to Howth that normally took at least thirty minutes had taken less than twenty. It was night and the streets were for the most part empty.

  Before we could drive up the driveway to the house, we were stopped by four uniformed police officers that motioned for us to stay back. Two police cars marked with the word Garda were parked to block the road.

  Rolling down the window, I called out to the one closest. “We’re the ones who called you. My girlfriend is in there.”

  “I’m sorry, but ye cannot go any closer and ye’ll need to move the vehicle.”

  “Why the hell are you out here when there’s a crazy man killing people inside?” I threw my hands around with agitation.

  “I’m moving the car right away.” Kit put the car in reverse and as she turned in her seat and looked out the back window, she explained, “Regular guards are not armed here in Ireland. Protocol doesn’t allow them to enter a house when there’s been a report of an armed incident in progress. All they can do is secure the area and protect the public from goin’ in while they wait for an armed support unit or the emergency response unit.”

  “So why aren’t they here yet?”

  “The ERU are coming from Dublin like us. They’ll be here any second.”

  “I’m not fucking waiting when Liv is inside.” As soon as Kit had stopped the car, I got out and ran in the direction that I knew would take me to the trail leading to the back garden of the house.

  Kit followed me. “Where are you goin’? Backup is on their way.”

  I was too busy running to answer her and soon I arrived at the back yard over a small trail. With the night air singing with the sound of sirens, I stopped to look up at the house and heard Kit’s running footsteps catch up to me. “That window on the corner, where the lights are on, is River’s and Nathan’s room. I can crawl up the drain pipe and get them to let me in.”

  “What if ye fall?”

  I ignored her and moved forward.

  “At least be careful,” she called after me.

  It was dark and when I reached the building, I heard gun shots from inside. Adrenaline gave me tunnel vision and all I could see was the pipe that would take me up to Nathan and River’s window. The bass from the loud music they were playing inside was like the soundtrack to a movie I didn’t want to be in. I crawled up as fast as I could, ignoring the many scratches I got on the way because the pipe was so close to the wall that it didn’t leave much room for my hands.

  Looking through the window, I saw Maximum sitting on the floor while Nathan and River stood to the side of the door with white sheets in their hands.

  When I knocked on the glass, River dropped her sheet and ran to the window. “It’s Charles.”

  I didn’t get a chance to ask her questions before she started talking. “We don’t know where the others are. Lumi ran down to save her mother, and Liv ran after her. We tried to stop Atlas from going because he was acting strange, but he wouldn’t listen to us.”

  Climbing through the window, I scanned the room again, and noticed that furniture had been pushed in front of the two doors. “What’s with the sheets?” I asked Nathan, who stood holding the edges of the fabric.

  “I couldn’t find any weapons to defend us, but if someone storms in here, I’m going to make a surprise attack and throw a sheet over their heads so they can’t see. And then we’ll run.”

  “Is he all right?” I nodded to Maximum, who looked to be in his own bubble as he sat surrounded by Star Wars toys.

  “No, he’s being weird. River and I didn’t want him to go downstairs, so I told him he could touch everything tonight.” Nathan was panting from talking fast and breathing with fear. “Liv said Conor is making people kill themselves downstairs and we hear sirens. You have to stop them, Charles.”

  “Did you hear the shots being fired?”

  “Yes, at first we thought it was fireworks.”

  “How many rounds of shots have you heard?”

  “A lot.”

  “Two? Three?”

  River and Nathan looked at each other. “More like five.”

  “Shit.” I knew from listening to Liv’s phone that five people were killing themselves at a time. With Liv, there were thirty-four people living here, and five rounds of shooting could mean that twenty-five group members were already dead.

  “Stay here. I’m going down.”

  River nodded and the kids helped me push the table to the side that they had used to block the door.

  “Lock the door after me,” I ordered before I ran down the hallway. The music got louder the closer I came, and when I was by the staircase I walked down far enough that I could spy on the group and get a sense of what was going on. If I was to save Liv and the others, I needed a plan.

  Think Charles, think!

  But my mind was paralyzed from the sight of my friends sitting in a long line between each other’s legs. Each was tilted backward or to the side with a bullet hole in their head.

  My hand grabbed for the bannister of the staircase as my head spun and I felt like vomiting. The loud music was still playing as I stared at all the dead bodies in a line so long that it went out of the living room and into the foyer towards the main entrance. It was unfathomable.

  “No, Mom, don’t do it.” Lumi was pulling at her mom, who was moving to the front of the line.

  Conor had a gun in his hand but held up his free hand and spoke over the music in a placating tone, “It’s okay, Lumi, you can join your mom and the two of you can go together.”

  It was as if I saw him for the first time. How had I not seen what a sadistic puppet master he was? His eyes were crazed as he handed a gun to Ciara and picked up another one to give to Atlas. “See, Atlas and Ciara will go together with you, your mom, and Liv. I’ll bring Maximum, River, and Nathan and then we’ll all be together again.”

  When he pushed a gun at Liv, she stepped back. “No, I don’t want to kill myself and nor should any of the others.”

  Lumi kept pulling at her mom, who got back up from the floor with a careless giggle. “It’s okay, darling. We’ll be fine. It’s a new beginning. We can trust Conor.”

  Lumi’s eyes were wet from tears as she pleaded with her mom. “No, we’ll die. There’s nothing waiting for us. Don’t do it.”

  “You don’t want to go?” Aisha raised a hand and dried away one of Lumi’s tears in a clumsy way. She was so drugged that she spoke in a slurred way and had a hard time balancing on her feet. “Don’t cry, sweetheart. There’s nothing to be scared of but if you don’t want to go, I’ll stay here with you.”

  Lumi wrapped her arms around her mother and wept. “Thank you, Mom, thank you.”

  “No! I love you all too much to leave you behind.” Conor lifted the gun in his hand, his voice sharp and demanding. “We’re doing this together as a family.”

  Lumi shook her head and clung to her mother. Aisha seemed confused but her love for Lumi made her step in front of her daughter and confront Conor with her palm up. “Stop, Conor, you’re scaring her.”

  “Dad, this isn’t right.” Atlas stood leaning against the doorframe as if he found it hard to balance. His speech was slow and slurred and his eyes on the gun in his hands.

  I needed to find a weapon, but nothing in my proximity would match the gun in Conor’s hands.

  Conor pointing to the long line of our dead friends. “Trust me, son, we’re so close and we don’t want to let the others wait. Come on, get down.”

  Atlas pushed out from the door frame and took a step toward the twenty-five dead people. By now, the only ones left in the house were Ciara, the five children, Liv, Aisha, and Conor himself.

  “No, Atlas don’t do it,” Liv pleaded and held on to him while shouting at Co
nor over the music. “You’ve killed enough people.”

  “Oh, but dear Liv, I’m not killing anyone. They all made a choice.”

  Her voice shook with anger. “And now we’re making one too. If you want to join them, go ahead, but the rest of us choose to stay here.”

  Conor leaned his head to one side and narrowed his eyes. “It’s not nice to reject an invitation. I’m afraid that I have to insist that we all go together.”

  The moment Conor pointed his gun at Liv, my brain shut down. Nothing could have held me back, and I stormed down the stairs without a plan; I just knew I couldn’t let him kill Liv or the others.

  “Charles.” The surprise on Conor’s face, as he looked up the stairs to understand where I’d come from, was quickly exchanged for a smile. “I’m so glad to see you. You’re just in time for the biggest event in the group’s history. I always knew you’d be back. We’re the only family you ever had.”

  I pushed Liv behind me and spread out my arms to make myself large enough to shield both her and Atlas. “Conor, stop this. The guards are outside. There’s no need to kill more people. Just let us go.”

  He waved his gun through the air and scrunched up his face. “Why are the guards here? I’ve done nothing wrong. All the accusations against me are malicious and untrue. You know that Charles, I already explained it to you.”

  My voice rose as my hand pointed to the train of bodies. “You killed them.”

  Stepping closer to Liv and me, Conor lowered his voice to a threatening sneer. “They poisoned your mind against me. I’m not letting anyone stop our family from moving on to the next level together. Either you all get down on the floor or I’ll shoot you right here.”

  “Conor, what are you doing?” Aisha blinked her eyes while comforting Lumi, who was crying and clinging to her. “This isn’t like you.”

  Ignoring Aisha, Conor turned to Ciara. “My love.” He nodded his head in the direction of Atlas.

  “You heard your father.” Ciara walked over to take Atlas’s hand but Liv wouldn’t let go and I stepped between Ciara and her son.