“We are not animals! We have it better than we did with Joel. We live in a castle!” He stared at me through the iron bars, his one good eye trained on me. “A castle!”
I had learned the local geography during my eight years here. There was only one place I knew that was ever called a castle. It was the Castle Peaks, the rough survey of rock that jutted up into the horizon some three hundred feet. When the sun set in the west, the resulting silhouette would form the illusion of a castle on a ridge.
I stood up and smiled. “The Castle Peaks, Earl?” His face collapsed and any color that might have been present faded to white. “Is that where we should go?” I studied his reaction.
“I don’t know where that is,” he said automatically, crossing his arms in front of him. “I don’t know where that is.”
“I think you do, Earl. I think that’s where your little hideout is and I think I’ll let the Sergeant know so he can take the soldiers there and bomb the living shit out of it.” I knew the Sergeant would approach those frightened and demoralized people with a solution rather than firepower, but for this purpose, I needed Earl to believe they would use force. “You’ve just become your own worst enemy. And now, not only will you die a wretched soulless piece of garbage, all your little accomplices will too.”
Earl studied his hands, clenching his fists. Snapping sounds echoed off the bars from his knuckles. He would repeat this over and over. “You know,” he began very solemnly, “Seth begged for his life. Before I had Kevin gag him. He kicked and kicked in his noose until he strangled to death. I thought it fitting. Just like his buddy, Gil. And then there were Caroline and Sid, I came upon them in the backyard, having escaped your little Barbeque.”
He was trying to hurt me now. A last ditch effort to come out on top. But I had always wondered who had murdered Caroline and Sid, and so, morbidly I listened.
“Caroline was coughing from the smoke while Sid tried to wave it away from her face. I watched them kneel down, behind the pool house and realized the fire was no accident, that you three had planned it. They were outfitted with heavy bags full of provisions and hauling the four gallon containers of water. I waited for you to show up so I could take you all down at once. But when you didn’t, I decided to ask them myself where I could find you.”
My eyes burned as I listened, remembering the night, the explosion, my friends.
“I was able to catch them by surprise. Caroline stuttered something and Sid was so confused. ‘Surprise!’ I said and shot the pistol out of his hand. Then I turned the gun on Caroline and asked where you were. ‘Where is she? Where is that bitch?’ I asked. Sid tried to jump me but I put him down with one shot. Then Caroline jabbed her knife into my foot and I shot her.” He laughed callously. “That foot never really healed right.” He showed it to me, lifting the heavy chains.
“You’re garbage, Earl.” My chin trembled, my face soaked in tears. I wiped them away with both palms, sucking in a deep breath.
“Maybe,” he allowed, lowering his foot. “But I am a survivor, like you. I took what I could carry from them, and made my way to the barn garden where I camped out for months, hoping one day you would show up, so I could finish you off.”
“But I didn’t,” I said defiantly.
“No, you didn’t.” He seemed almost respectful with that statement. “And what happened to that baby of yours?”
“Never mind my baby.”
“Come on, we’re just catching up here.”
“Fuck you, Earl.” I stood.
“So, you’ll tell your Sergeant about my hideout and then what?”
“You’ll hang.”
“I suppose I will.” His head bobbed up and down. Something about him had changed over the course of our conversation. He seemed somehow more relaxed, more in control of himself. I wanted him panicked, afraid of his fate.
“You’ll hang as an example. But no one will come to your funeral. Your body will be burned to ashes. No one will avenge your death, no one will care. You will not be martyred. You will only cease to exist.” I walked to the door and knocked for the guard. “You go to hell, Earl, and you stay there.”
Chapter Forty Three
The operation went off without a hitch. The soldiers stormed the hideout of Castle Peak. A few men were shot in the assault. But when they entered the rocky cavern, they found a community of women and children.
“They were frightened, but glad to see us all the same,” Sergeant Jones remarked as we sat in the mess hall the night of the raid, chewing on a stick of meat that had been dried and stored in one of the underground lockers years before. “They’re in the hospital now, with their children.”
“I heard. I’m supposed to help tomorrow with the dental exams. That’s incredible. How many were there?”
“Eight women, ranging in age from seventeen to forty-five, but we’ll gather that information along with their names, where they originated and how long they’d lived at Castle Peak.”
“And the children?” I felt awful for the children. I thought of Leif living under Earl’s rule, in that place, and it made me sad.
“Some seventeen kids, from newborns right up to six years old. They were living like animals, their clothes rags. And the dysentery. Jesus. They were dehydrated as well. I think that’s what pushed Earl to make this last stand against us.” He paused to drink from his cup. “It’s a good thing you did in there. You got exactly what we needed from him. You’re a good soldier.”
I loved it when he called me that. “I’m here to serve,” I said, sending him a weak salute.
“It’s incredible that you knew him too. That you lived in that house with him and your friends. That’s unbelievable.” He meant it too; it was pretty unbelievable, after eight years, that Earl had taken the same direction I had, at least physically. Of course, our lives could not have ended up more differently.
“There’s lots more to that story I haven’t told you, but now that he’s here, I’d like to volunteer more information. More crimes he committed against my friends, which he’s never answered for.”
“He’ll hang for what he’s done regardless. But if it will bring you peace, we’ll hear it at his trial.”
We rose and left to go our separate ways, him to his wife and kids, and I to the daycare to pick up Leif. The children were practicing a play for the coming holidays. It was nice to celebrate the holidays again. All that time at Joel’s house, we’d celebrated just one birthday. God, it seemed like several lifetimes ago. Funny, that thought brought back what Leif had said about reincarnation. What if hanging Earl wasn’t the end of Earl?
“Sara!” It was Jess, a girl from the daycare staff. She was waving at me from across the compound while running in my direction. “Sara!!”
“Yes, Jess? What’s up?”
“It’s Leif, Sara.”
My heart stopped. “What about Leif?” I felt a distinctive pain in my chest and my left arm began to tingle. If anything happened to Leif, I would not survive, I knew this.
“He’s missing.”
Chapter Forty Four
Where was my son?! The Blank Man was to blame for this. Or the angel, or whatever it was. That omnipotent presence which had embedded itself into my life like a tick, preaching destiny to my boyfriend, and now, to his son. What if Leif’s destiny had him running away from here, from me? Panic rising, I gathered myself up and ran towards the daycare, Jess hot on my heals. I was trying to rationalize where Leif could be. Could he have wandered off on his own? It wasn’t like him, and this certainty was causing my anxiety to grow exponentially.
I stopped Jess at the door to the day care to catch my breath and turned her to face me. Her eyes were red and teary.
“Don’t blame yourself, Jess. He’s somewhere. We’ll find him.” I didn’t want her burdened by guilt. I needed her to be sharp, to remember everything. She nodded and smiled.
“I need you to tell me exactly what he was doing and where he was situated in the room the last time you
saw him.” She nodded again and we moved into the daycare. It was empty now. The rehearsal had ended and the group disbanded. I scanned the room for Leif’s favorite toys.
Jess pointed toward a corner next to a toy chest. “That’s the last place I saw him. He was sitting on the chest and playing with a toy, talking to it.”
“Okay, good. Do you remember what time that was?”
“It must have been just after seven, Sara. We had finished a snack for break, so it must have been 7:15.”
I walked to the corner and picked up a doll. It was a soldier doll, twelve inches tall. I studied it for a moment. “And you checked my room, and the washrooms?” I asked her.
“I checked everywhere I could think to check before I found you.”
“We need to announce this to the base.” I said. “I’m going to call the Sergeant.” I picked up the intercom and dialed Sergeant Jones’s room number. When he answered I quickly told him what I knew.
“I’ll send an announcement to the base. We can mobilize a search party right away. Sara, it’ll be okay, we’ll find him tonight. He’s probably just hiding somewhere.”
“Thanks. Thank you.” I was becoming frantic, I could sense it. My resolve was starting to crack.
“Sara, meet me at the hospital. We’ll start there.”
I hung up and went to my room for a final check. I was hoping I’d see him sitting on his bed, waiting for me to take him for a bath or change into his pajamas. He was not there.
“CODE AMBER. SEARCH PARTIES FORM IN THE COMPOUND. REPEAT CODE AMBER.” The base had several codes for search parties, and several search parties designated to each code. In the case of a “code amber”, everyone was involved.
Chapter Forty Five
What felt like hours took no more than twenty minutes. The search groups were designated to specific sites. My group searched the perimeter in case Leif had found a way out. My eyes focused on every inch of ground as we followed the fence line, looking for something he may have dropped, some escape route he may have invented. All I saw was dirt, dry and dusty.
Finally, the soldier in charge of our crew heard a crackling sound on his walkie-talkie. I rushed forward to hear the news, full of dread. “We’ve found him.”
“Roger that.”
I waited.
“He’s in the stockade.” The stockade? “We will reunite him with his mother at the hospital.” With that I set off running.
He had been found by one of the soldiers in what should have been a locked stockade, sitting opposite Earl. They told me he was unharmed. Although he had not a scratch on him, I knew Earl, and I knew he had more than one way to hurt a person. They had not been able to get an answer out of Leif as to how he had ended up there.
After we were reunited, Leif and I went to the showers where I washed and dried him and took him to bed. I was silent the whole time. He knew he had done something very wrong. I was fighting back tears of joy, but also anger. Why had he gone to see Earl?
In our room I asked these questions after tucking him in.
“It was Blank Man. He showed me where to go, where the key was hidden and…”
“You do everything the Blank Man says?”
“Mostly.” He shrugged, as though the question were somehow silly.
“What have I told you about the Blank Man? Haven’t I made myself clear? You do what I say, and tell me everything he says.”
“He’s not trying to hurt us, Mom.”
“Oh, really? Having you break into the stockade and then hold a conversation with a dangerous prisoner isn’t trying to hurt you?”
“He is in jail, Mom. He couldn’t hurt me.” His head pushed further into his pillow as he became more uncomfortable with the conversation. “He said he knew Daddy.”
Goddamn that Earl. “How does he know who you are?” I asked. “Did you tell him I was your mother?”
“That’s the first thing he asked when I got there.”
“So you told him.”
“Uh huh.”
“What else did you tell him?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t really do much talking.”
“What did he talk about?” I felt a sudden chill and rubbed my arms as I sat at Leif’s bedside.
“He said you were all friends.”
“I was never Earl’s friend, Leif. We all lived together before you were born, but I was never his friend.”
“He said you were. He said he saw Daddy in me. That I had his eyes and his nose.”
“That’s true: your daddy was a very handsome man. And so are you. And you’re smart too.”
“Like you, Mom?”
“Sure Leif, like me.”
“That’s what he said, that you were a very smart lady.” A compliment from Earl. That seemed unlikely, but Leif had no reason to lie to me.
“I still don’t understand why the Blank Man sent you to see him.”
“He said I should know my enemy.” My spine tingled.
“Did your Blank Man tell you why Earl was your enemy?”
“No, he just said I should know my enemy and then took me to the jail.”
“Well, you don’t have to worry about Earl becoming your enemy. In a few days he won’t be able to hurt anyone ever again.”
“That’s not what Blank Man told me.”
“Go to sleep, Leif. Sweet dreams, and remember, I love you.”
“I love you too, Mom.”
Leif fell into a deep sleep while I remained wide awake, wishing away the Blank Man. I watched his chest rise and fall, grateful he’d been returned to me unharmed. But the crazy circumstances that had taken him from me in the first place baffled me. Could I really believe in Blank Man? Was this spirit trying to harm my son? Were my witches wrong? Just as these thoughts circled through my head, I saw him. A shadowy figure materialized at the end of Leif’s bed.
Chapter Forty Six
I knew it was him. There was no face, just a form. And as quickly as it appeared, it vanished. Still I knew this was it. The same apparition that had caused so much heartache for myself and my friends so long ago. And now was controlling my son, guiding him right into the arms of my enemy. “Know your enemy” it had told Leif, but Earl was my enemy, not Leif’s. Besides, Earl would be hanged in just a few short days. Then I remembered the words that had been passed on to me through Leif. “We all come back.” A shiver overtook me at the memory. To think Earl might reemerge as some unsuspecting mother’s newborn made my blood run cold.
Something more began to work its way into my head as the thought evolved. What if I was interpreting this the wrong way? What if he escaped from his cell? What if he reestablished an army and came back? I couldn’t imagine that in his weakened condition he would have any hope of breaking free. So why did this thought continue to haunt me?
Checking once more to confirm that my son was asleep, I left the room, locking the door behind me. I found myself walking in the direction of the hospital. What if the women and children we’d taken in actually felt some twisted affection towards their captor? What if one or all of them decided to free Earl? Jesus, that was a concern. My pace picked up, and I began running across the compound towards the hospital. The clouds were gathering overhead, grey and black. It would rain very soon.
When I reached the hospital I threw open the doors and they crashed against the walls. The refugees were startled, as were the doctor and nurses. I scanned the large room and performed a head count.
“Sorry,” I apologized. “Is everyone here?”
“What do you mean, Sara?” The doctor approached me from his desk.
“The refugees,” I answered. “Are they all accounted for?”
“Yes, I believe so. Sonja, could we have a headcount please?” Sonja nodded.
“What’s this about, Sara?” He looked concerned. I rubbed at my arms. It was a cool night, and with the promise of rain I felt a chill rise in me.
“Just a hunch, Doctor.”
“Everyone is accounted for,” c
alled Sonja. A wave of relief. I would have to talk to the Sergeant about my concern. “All but one,” Sonja finished. My heart fell.
Shit. It would only take one. “Shit.” I said.
“Sara, what’s going on?” The doctor stood, placing his clipboard on his desk.
“Just a hunch,” I repeated on my way out.
As I began moving toward the soldiers’ barracks I stopped and turned to face the jail. What if I could stop it from happening? I decided to visit the jail first.
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