by H. D. Gordon
It was him she was truly curious about. In fact, if she was being honest, she was more than curious, she was…excited. She supposed this had something to do with the way all the others got excited at the mere mention of the reverend, the way all the women, and even the young girls, would grow rosy-cheeked and glassy-eyed when they spoke of him, and how the men would adopt a look that was so similar to the ladies’ that it was almost a bit unnatural. They spoke of this man not as if he was a servant of the Lord, but…maybe the Lord himself. Which, no matter how mysterious and mystifying this “Father” seemed to be, was clearly not true, a laughable thought, even. One didn’t need a college degree to see that.
But that conclusion did not stop Christine from anticipating her first acquaintance with the man. There must be something extraordinary about him, if only the fact that he owned all these houses and these hundreds of acres of land and welcomed people who needed a place to go, sans questions. To Christine, a young woman who had been rejected by her parents and beaten by her boyfriend, that alone was rather amazing.
Now, she finished folding the laundry she’d been assigned and put another load in the washer. As she was rounding the corner out of the washroom, she ran face-first into someone who was built solidly enough to knock the wind out of her. She stumbled back, dropping the basket she was holding, towels and washcloths spilling onto the floor.
“Oh, sorry about that,” said a deep voice. “Didn’t see you there.”
Christine gathered the spilled towels quickly and replaced them in the basket before looking up. She meant to apologize in return, but for a moment she could only stare, her mouth slightly agape. The young man she’d bumped into had a decidedly beautiful face. It was a short moment of immobility on her part, just long enough to bring one side of his mouth up in a small smile and be borderline awkward, and then she regained her powers of speech.
“Sorry,” she said in return. Cheeks blooming roses, she stepped around the handsome young man—he couldn’t be much older than twenty-seven—and resisted the urge to slap herself in the forehead.
She made it only a few steps before he called out to her. “Hey,” he said, “are you new here?”
Christine turned back around, sheepish smile on her lips. “Uh, yes,” she said. She propped the laundry basket on her hip and held out her hand. “I’m Christine.”
He smiled in return, straight teeth and crystal blue eyes almost too perfect to look at. He’s the last thing you need, Christine, she told herself. You don’t ever want to need any man again…but he is beautiful, ain’t he? Well, that don’t matter none. This you don’t need.
“Beautiful name,” he said, and if Christine didn’t know better, she would have thought he meant it. “I’m Robert Reynolds, but everyone around here just calls me Bobby. It’s nice to meet you.” He reached out and took the laundry basket from her arms. “Here, let me take that for you. Where were you headed?”
Christine realized she was still smiling and composed her face. She’d never had this reaction to a man before, and found it disturbing, odd, and a little comical all at the same time. She knew beautiful women could make men stare and act like idiots, but it seemed that no matter what gender you were, if you saw someone good looking enough, you were at risk of turning into a moron. Well, Christine may have been uneducated, but her experience had taught her some things, and one of those things was that anyone who could make you act a certain way was someone you wanted to be sure to steer clear of.
“I was going to check on my daughter in the childcare room and finish up the other housework Missus Dorie gave me,” she said. She took the basket back from him. “Thanks for the offer, but I like to do my share.” She gave one last tight smile. “Nice meeting you.”
She caught a glimpse of his brow furrowing in confusion. He was probably not accustomed to being dismissed by ladies. Then, Bobby Reynolds shrugged and smiled. “Okay, then,” he said. “Let me know if you need anything. I’m sure I’ll see you later.”
Christine gave a short nod, and he turned and headed off down the hallway. Despite her determination not to get involved with anyone, especially someone as beautiful as Bobby Reynolds, it didn’t stop her from letting her eyes linger on him as he disappeared around the corner. When he was out of sight, she shook her head and told herself to stop acting like a stupid school girl. She’d been acting like a stupid school girl when she’d gotten pregnant at fifteen, and again when she went against her family’s desires and moved in with that abusive son of a bitch who’d fathered her child.
Which was why she needed to stay clear of men for a while, and Bobby Reynolds certainty fell into that category. Besides, she had the strange feeling that as she’d watched him walk away, that beautiful smile had still been on his face, as if he knew as well as she did that any attempts at resisting him would eventually prove futile.
This, of course, was ridiculous. She didn’t even know him, and she wouldn’t be here long enough to get emotionally attached to anyone, anyway. All that mattered was that for the time being, she was safe and Madison was safe and everything was going to be all right…right?
Something her mother used to say came to her then, and it made a chill crawl across her neck as the words flashed through her head.
Out of the frying pan and into the fire.
She pushed the thought away, because it was totally random and didn’t fit the situation. Christine Mattock decided rather quickly that, no, it didn’t fit the situation at all. She didn’t realize how important this hastily gained conclusion was—for both her and her daughter—because at this point, there was still a veil over the true painting, still the possibility of escape, but that window was closing, and it was closing fast.
In less than a week’s time, she would come to know her folly. Unfortunately for her, she was the type of girl who had to learn everything the hard way. The only question was, would she survive to have the opportunity to put the upcoming lesson to use?
Because that was the thing about learning the hard way, if one wasn’t careful, it could lead straight to a dead end.
Chapter 5
Maddie
Little Madison Mattock sat at a low table in a small chair with three other children around her age. She didn’t want to be here, wherever here was. She wanted to be home with mommy and daddy, playing outside in the summer sun and staying up late eating popcorn and watching movies, because school wouldn’t pick up again in the foreseeable future, not in the foreseeable future of a six-year-old, anyway. She didn’t like these people, not a single one of them, not the grown-ups, nor the kids.
And Maddie didn’t need to pinpoint a reason for the discomfort she felt on this farm…or Ranch, as that ugly lady Missus Dorie had called it. Being a child, the feeling alone was explanation enough. She didn’t like it here. She wanted to go home.
The Ranch had bad mojo.
On top of that, she was still confused about all that had happened in the past week. She was at an age where she was picking up way more than grownups thought she was, and sorting it out on her own was proving both painful and difficult.
She knew daddy hurt mommy a lot. Knew daddy made mommy cry and bruise and sometimes bleed. She knew mommy was scared of daddy but didn’t have anywhere to go because daddy was all mommy had. All they had. She knew that despite mommy insisting it had nothing to do with her, and that mommy and daddy both loved her more than anything, it felt like a tiny monster that ate love was slowly devouring the inside her chest, where she knew her heart to be.
And now she was here. It was funny how life could just flip over on you. One minute, you could be sitting on your swing set, trying to remember if the new Adventure Time episode was going to air tonight or tomorrow, and the next moment you’re being loaded onto a smelly blue bus asking mommy questions that she can only cry in answer to.
But even if these things hadn’t happened, Madison thought she still wouldn’t want to be here. It was too much like school, only even more structured, though her voca
bulary couldn’t give it that designation. It seemed every hour of the day was filled with some activity, every step planned as closely as a dance routine. Right now they were having “free time”, or at least that’s what the teachers called it. Maddie thought “free time” meant you had a choice in what you were doing, but all the children were just coloring pictures quietly at the little tables, as they’d been instructed, so she thought a better name would be “color time”.
She felt her eyes burning a bit and pushed the thoughts away. She didn’t want to cry in front of all these strangers. Instead, she focused on the sheet on which she was coloring, noticing for the first time since she’d picked up the black colored pencil that something rather interesting was unfolding on the paper. For a moment, she forgot her worries and could only focus on the way her hand was moving, the way the picture was beginning to take shape. A funny feeling swirled around her stomach, and it reminded her of the feeling she’d gotten when she’d been next in line for the big rollercoaster earlier this summer at the fair. Fear and excitement, the opposing urges to carry on and run in the other direction equally weighted.
Or in this case, to look or not to look. Her hand was just beginning to slow when one of the teachers spoke over her shoulder. It was the young one, the one that wasn’t as mean-looking and wrinkly. Maddie didn’t know either of the teachers by name, as the children only addressed them by “teacher” or “ma’am”.
“Oh,” the young teacher said, “That’s very interesting, Madison. You’re a talented artist.”
Maddie looked up at the teacher for a moment and back at her drawing. It was a just a road. Only, the details were so clear, the perspective so exact that just looking at it made her feel as though she could be standing on it, looking down the road and deciding to either head on, or turn back. As Maddie stared at the drawing, that’s exactly what it felt like, actually, and the world around her, the windowless room with the bright colors on the walls, the too-quiet children and adults with no names, disappeared the way sidewalk chalk does on a suddenly rainy day, and Maddie would have sworn she really was standing on that road.
The only thing was, looking down it, at the road ahead, she could only see so far. The center of the drawing was shaded almost completely black, as if the road led into shadows...or to nowhere at all.
A Road to Nowhere, she thought, and she shivered a bit. The title fit the picture perfectly.
Another voice, not so pleasant, snapped her out of her trance and back to reality, and Maddie looked up into the wrinkled face of the older teacher, the one with peeling red lipstick, thick lines of black liner around her eyes and dry, dyed black hair puffed out around her head. “What do you say, young lady?” she asked.
Maddie’s brow furrowed, and she had to give an honest effort to keep the disgust off her face as she looked up at the woman. If her mother had taught her anything, it was manners. “I beg your pardon, ma’am?” Maddie said.
The older woman let out a puff of breath, and Maddie caught a fleeting apologetic look on the younger teacher’s face before the old one spoke again. She gestured toward the younger woman. “Your teacher here gave you a compliment. What do you say when someone gives you a compliment?”
Maddie swallowed, but now she was fighting a scowl. “Thank you, ma’am,” she said.
The old woman nodded briefly and turned on her heel. “Time for lessons,” she said, and began clapping her hands. They slapped together as loudly as two rough pieces of leather, and Maddie could do nothing but follow as the other children put up their art supplies and quietly took seats on the rug in the center of the room. She exhaled a silent sigh of relief when the older teacher whispered something to the younger teacher and left.
The younger one took a seat on a chair in front of the rug on which the children were sitting. “Okay, children,” she said. “We’ll pick up where we left off before free time. Remember what we were talking about?”
Little hands shot up all around Madison, held high and straight and stiff. She didn’t remember what they’d been talking about, not exactly, because this would make the fifth “lesson” today, and it was all starting to jumble together. Despite this, seeing all of her peers with their hands raised so surely, their backs so straight and attentive, she had the almost undeniable urge to follow suit, like she was sticking out like a sore thumb if she did not. Which, of course, she was.
Luckily, the young teacher called on a little boy in the front and the moment passed. Unluckily, she would find life was about to fill up with these moments, these moments of follow or stick out.
The boy said, “We were talking about the road to salvation, ma’am, and how the Father knows the way.”
All around Maddie, little heads nodded their agreement. The young teacher gave the boy who’d answered a huge smile, reached into a bag beside her chair, pulled out a plastic-wrapped chocolate-covered pretzel, and tossed it to him. He caught it, tore it open and shoved the whole thing in his mouth, grinning around chocolaty teeth.
Next time a question was asked, Madison Mattock’s little hand went up right along with the rest of them. She followed them, but her strange drawing kept coming back to her, along with that warring feeling in her gut and that shiver-inducing title.
The Road to Nowhere.
Chapter 6
Joe
We were getting nowhere, and I was tired from the drive home, so Mr. Landry finally told me I could go back to my apartment and get some rest. To my surprise, sleep came easy, and I didn’t dream. It seemed I was finally getting a handle on my nerves. Either that, or I was becoming numb to the horrors of impending doom. If the latter was the case, I’m sure that said something unpleasant about my evolving character as well, but I couldn’t care less at the moment. Easy sleep was a rarity I wasn’t going to spoil with pointless introverted analyzing.
When my alarm went off, telling me it was time to get up and go to work, I almost regretted telling my Aunt Susan that I could work the late shift at the bar tonight. I felt like I could have happily slept a couple years of my life away. I got up and got dressed anyway, because I would have woken up eventually, and then I would just be sitting around my small apartment drowning in my own thoughts. Better to help others drown theirs in alcohol, I thought.
My Aunt’s bar, aptly named Susan’s, was only a few miles down the road, and I got there twenty minutes later and began setting up for the night crowd. The place was empty save for a few regulars who usually left before the younger customers came in and turned the small bar into a loud, stuffy place. Though I’d only be gone a couple months, it felt like I hadn’t been here in forever, like a picture from the past. The familiar setting was relaxing; the glow of the jukebox that still only took nickels, the gleam of the dark wood of the walls, floor and bar, the single, scuffed pool table on the opposite side of the square room. Even the smells of liquor and fried food seemed to welcome me.
This was how life was supposed to be. Routine and familiar. I would never understand why people complained about doing mundane, ordinary things. I would fill my life up with the mundane and ordinary, if given the choice.
Aunt Susan came out from her office, snapping me out of my thoughts, and wrapped me in hug tight enough to restrict my breathing. When she’d gotten her satisfactory squeeze, she held me at arm’s length and looked me over.
“I missed you,” she said. “How you feeling, honey? You…uh, you have a good time at the cabin?”
I gave her as natural a smile as I could. She knew about my ability, but she also knew, after years of trying, that I would not let her get involved. She meant too much to me to burden her, to put her in danger by sharing with her the horrors of my life. It was bad enough Mr. Landry was hell-bent on being involved.
“I muh-missed you too,” I said. “And I’m fuh-fuh-fine. Thank you for luh-letting me s-stay at the cabin. I feel all buh-better now.” I added another smile I hoped was convincing.
She gave me a slightly dubious look. “Umm hmm,” she said.
“Well, either way, I’m glad you’re back. It’s been a damn busy summer. Seems like everyone in Peculiar picked up drinking as of late—not that I’m complaining. And you know you don’t have to thank me for the cabin. Mi cabin es su cabin. You need help setting up?”
Still smiling, I shook my head.
Aunt Susan laughed and rolled her eyes. “Okay, hot stuff,” she said, and began heading back to her office. Over her shoulder, she tossed, “And you can stop smiling like an idiot. I learned to stop asking questions a while ago,” then she disappeared down the hall.
Well, I thought, that made one of us. I was up to my ears in questions, practically choking on them, in fact. Who was this man in my drawing? What exactly was going to happen? Where was it going to happen? When? Most importantly, how was I supposed to stop it?
I was so distracted, setting up the bottles and glasses on auto-pilot, that I did not notice he had entered the bar until it was too late. I was staring down at the glass my hands, methodically polishing it with a rag, and it was only when he was close enough for me to smell the clean scent of the soap he used did I look up. Though I hadn’t seen him since the candle-lit vigil held at UMMS after the shooting, I knew it was him just by his fragrance.