Orphans of Wonderland

by Greg F. Gifune

  “I’m sorry,” he muttered. “No police, no ambulance.”

  Then he fell into her as everything went dark.

  Moving…motion…lights mounted in the ceiling overhead slide past. Lying atop a gurney that is being wheeled down a long hallway, he is not strapped down or restrained in any way, yet he is unable to move. His eyes look up and try to see behind him, but all he can make out in the periphery is the shape of a man dressed in white, pushing the gurney, a surgical mask covering his face.

  Sounds. Strange sounds echo throughout the corridor from hidden speakers. Music and voices, but in short, peculiar bursts interspersed with loud noises—clangs and screeches and trumpeting—they assault his mind and make him uneasy, edgy, afraid.

  Where am I?

  The lights blink and he is in a room, a dark room.

  Colors and faces appear, drift, sliding along the walls and ceiling like ghosts. Odd tones sound, coming from all around him, as if alive and flying about the room in circles. A severe burst of blinding white light suddenly fills the room, and Joel tries again to raise his head. He fails, and in an attempt to look away from the bright light flooding down on him, looks to the floor.

  It is covered in a black-and-white checkerboard pattern.

  His eyes drift upward, just before the bright light goes out, and he realizes the walls are covered in the same pattern. “What’s happening to me?” he asks. Or did he only think it? He cannot be sure.

  Everything stops. Darkness and silence fills the room.

  All Joel can hear is the thudding of his heart in his chest.

  But he is not alone. There are others here with him, hidden in the dark. He can’t see them. He can feel them, their presence. Leering at him and coming closer and closer still, until he can smell and feel their hot, rancid breath against his face.

  He wants to move, has to move; he needs to get out of here, but he can’t move because they’ve done something to him and he doesn’t know what it is or where he is or what’s happening, but he’s so afraid, so very afraid. He can’t think straight and—

  Please, dear God, help me!

  Through the darkness, strange shapes converge on him.

  They’re touching me. No, I—I don’t want them touching me—please make it stop, please stop touching me please—

  Something is fitted to his head, affixed to his temples.

  Please, what are you doing to me?

  Fingers—smooth and tasting like chemicals—are forced into his mouth. He feels a liquid running across his tongue and down his throat. He chokes but it keeps coming, and just when he’s sure he’ll vomit, it stops and the hands leave his mouth.

  And then, pain. The worst pain Joel has ever felt in his young life.

  Were he able to speak, he would beg them for mercy, for death. But all he can manage are gurgling sounds and occasional wails of agony.

  The torture stops, only to begin again seconds later.

  In time, when Joel believes he will die—is dying from the daggers ripping through his temples and into his eyes—the pain gives way to something else.

  Floating. He’s floating. So peacefully floating. He’s sure of it.

  Like a butterfly, he thinks. I’m floating on air. How could that be?

  It is then that Joel realizes he can see the air, the molecules and the atoms and the whole of the universe right there with him. His brain is burning and changing and becoming something else. Something more.

  Spiraling down into the darkest pits of hell, he is reborn.

  Through a fog and haze, a woman’s pockmarked face and bleached-blonde hair came into slow focus before him, and Joel realized he was lying on a couch, covered in a blanket. “Bea,” he said, throat raw and sore.

  Seated next to him, she gently stroked his forehead and told him again and again that he was all right and not to be afraid. “I’m right here,” she assured him. “It’s okay. You’re safe now.”

  Joel tried to sit up. “How long have I—”

  She placed a hand on his chest. “Stay there. You need rest.”

  Exhausted and sore, Joel complied. His face hurt, and as he tried to move his arms, the pain in his shoulder reminded him of the knife wound he’d sustained. He winced. “Everything hurts. How long have I been out?”

  “Couple hours.”

  As Joel crept farther from unconsciousness, his other senses began to sharpen, and he smelled something good. Soup. Chicken soup. “You didn’t call—”

  “I didn’t call nobody,” she said. “You got a bad wound on your shoulder. I cleaned it up and bandaged it best I could, but I don’t know what the fuck I’m doin’. You need to go to the hospital. If that gets infected, you could—”

  “No hospital, no cops.” He pulled the blanket away far enough to see that he had no shirt on. She’d done a competent job dressing the wound with gauze and medical tape. Blood had seeped through the bandage, but the bleeding had stopped.

  “A doctor needs to look at that,” Bea said, standing. “And you got a huge gash over your eye this frickin’ long.” She demonstrated by pulling her thumb and index finger as far away from each other as she could. “I packed it with Neosporin and put a big-ass Band-Aid over it, but you need stitches. Lots of ’em.”

  “Thanks.” Joel struggled up into a sitting position, his legs still stretched out before him on the couch and covered with the blanket. “Where are my clothes?”

  “Your shirt was ripped and soaked with blood,” she explained. “I threw it out. I tried washing your coat off by hand, but it’s still stained. It’s hanging on the back of one of the kitchen chairs. There’s also another shirt out there on the table. Lonnie left a few things in the closet from when we were… Anyway… It should fit all right.”

  “I’m sorry for showing up like this, but I had nowhere else to go.”

  Bea folded her arms across her chest. “Do I want to know what happened?”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Hon, you need to see a doctor. For real.”

  Joel swung his legs around to the floor. “I won’t be here long, I—”

  “Where the hell you think you’re goin’? You’re not in any condition to go anywhere tonight. Stay right there. Unless you gotta take a squirt. Do you? Do you gotta take a squirt?”

  “No, Bea, I don’t gotta take a squirt.”

  “Don’t you make fun of the way I talk, you fuckin’ prick.” She waved a reprimanding hot-pink fingernail at him. “I been playing nursemaid since your stupid ass got here, okay?”

  “Sorry.”

  “You should be. Go showing up at my door lookin’ like you got mauled by a goddamn lion, for Christ’s sake. Scared the shit out of me. I’m still scared. Nobody else is gonna show up lookin’ to finish the job, right?”

  “There’s no reason for anyone to look for me here,” he said, head pounding.

  “When’s the last time you had somethin’ to eat?”

  “I can’t remember.”

  “Well, I made chicken soup,” she said softly. “Because I’m frickin’ awesome.”

  “I don’t know if I can hold anything down at this point, I—”

  “You’re gonna have some because it’s good for you.” Bea headed for the kitchen. “And because if you don’t, I’m gonna stab you in your other arm.”

  Rain sprayed the windows, startling him. With a sigh, Joel tried to move his injured shoulder. The numbness was gone, replaced with a horrible ache, and while he couldn’t move the arm before at all, he’d since regained limited mobility. But the pain in his shoulder was still nearly unbearable.

  Bea appeared with a small folding table in one hand and a steaming, oversize mug of soup in the other. She put the table down and opened it before him, then set his soup atop it. She left again and returned with a paper napkin, a tablespoon, a bottle of water and three aspir
in.

  He downed the aspirin and drank nearly the entire bottle of water in one attempt. Then he tried the soup. It was delicious. “Thank you,” he said.

  “You’re welcome. Can I get you anythin’ else?”

  “No, this is great.” He sipped more broth.

  Bea sat on the arm of the couch and lit a cigarette. “So you get run over by a truck or what?”

  Rather than answer, Joel had more soup.

  “Did the person who killed Lonnie do this to you?” she pressed.

  “I don’t know.”

  Bea reached down to the end table and scooped up a small, black plastic ashtray. “Yeah you do,” she said. “After all this, you could at least tell me the truth. Think I deserve that much, no?”

  Joel put the spoon down and wiped his mouth. “I don’t want you to get hurt, all right? The less you know, the better. Once you have knowledge of certain things, you’re responsible for it. Do you understand?”

  “Yeah, I speak English and I’m not a moron.”

  He collected his thoughts. “I was almost killed tonight. Someone saved my life. If it weren’t for that, I’d be rotting in a ditch somewhere right now. I don’t want any of that darkness anywhere near you.”

  “Thanks, ’cause I’m not already scared out of my mind or anythin’.” She took an angry draw on her Camel. “Like I need any of this shit.”

  “I know, and I’m sorry. I’ll be gone in the morning.”

  “Story of my frickin’ life. Am I ever gonna know what happened?”

  Joel reached over and put a hand on hers. “It’s better that you don’t.”

  She nodded but wouldn’t look at him.

  “If anything happened to you because of me, I’d never forgive myself,” he told her. “Once I’m gone, forget all this. Go on with your life. Be happy. If anyone comes around—and I mean anyone—you don’t know me and we’ve never talked. You’ve never even met me, got it?”

  She exhaled a stream of smoke and gave a quick nod. “What about you?”

  “I don’t know.” He took up his spoon and had another mouthful of soup. “Maybe I’ll make it, maybe I won’t, but I have to end this. I don’t have a choice.”

  “There’s no other way?”

  “Not anymore. I’m in too deep.”

  “You got somebody back home that cares about you.”

  “You think I don’t know that? She’s my whole world.”

  “And you’re hers, right? You need to remember that. She’s your wife. Somethin’ happens to you, what’s she supposed to do?”

  It was a good question, but one Joel didn’t have an answer for.

  “You got to be there for her,” Bea said. “Don’t leave her alone, Joel. It’s an awful thing to be alone. Makes you feel like you could disappear or die and wouldn’t nobody notice or care.”

  “I’d care, Bea.”

  “Don’t be a retard.” She winked at him, then rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean.”

  “Yeah,” he said, managing a slight smile. “I know what you mean.”

  “Eat your fuckin’ soup, you pain in my ass.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He had another swallow of soup as Bea’s two calico cats appeared as if from nowhere. One jumped up on the back of the couch while the other curled up in his lap. Across the room, in a window, the black-and-white cat sat watching the rainy night.

  A thudding sound emanated up through the floor from the apartment below, then fell silent. Bea kept smoking and pretended not to hear it, but Joel could see the fear in her eyes. “You don’t have any ties here, do you?” he asked her.

  “Not anymore.”

  “You said you have a daughter in Connecticut.”

  “Yeah, and my grandbabies.”

  “You should leave the city, Bea. Go there and live. Leave all this behind.”

  She crushed her cigarette butt out in the ashtray. “Been thinking about it.”

  “You need to get away from this building.”

  “You mean Lonnie’s apartment.”

  He nodded.

  She clutched the ashtray with both hands. “What’s down there?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But there is somethin’.”

  “Yes.”

  She cleared her throat and tried to appear calm, but her terror was rising and it showed. “Is it Lonnie?” she asked in a loud whisper.

  Joel didn’t answer right away. “No. It’s not anything even close to Lonnie.”

  “Somethin’ else I don’t want to know, right?”

  This time he didn’t answer at all.

  “Is it gonna come out of there?” she asked.

  He thought about the same things moving around in Pete Fernandez’s cottage. They hadn’t left the house even though he and Pete were right outside. Maybe they couldn’t. “I think they might be…confined.”

  “Does it want to hurt me?”

  “Just stay out of there.” He pushed the soup aside and sat back. “Get away from it. Get away from all this. Go be with your family. There’s nothing good here, Bea.”

  She put the ashtray down and picked up one of the cats. Petting it gently, she held it close to her chest. “Makes you wonder if there’s any good left anywhere.”

  “There’s more than we know.”

  “Says the guy somebody almost killed tonight.”

  Kavon’s face flashed before Joel’s eyes, a face full of confusion as his neck popped and shattered and he fell away, swallowed in darkness and rain. So much violence, he thought. The cackling homeless man reappeared in his mind, alive and gulping down stew one minute and dead with his brains sprayed all over him the next.

  Almost killed.

  Even then, amid all the horror, Joel knew the likely identity of the phantom. He just couldn’t bring himself to acknowledge it, then or now. It all felt like a blur, a nightmare where nothing made sense, yet everything fit together as if it did.

  “That’s why evil lives in the dark,” he said quietly. “The rest belongs to us.”

  Without saying a word, Bea sat next to him on the couch. Still holding and petting the cat, she slowly let her head come to rest on Joel’s good shoulder.

  And together, they waited out the night.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  By morning the rain had turned to snow. Joel left Bea asleep and snoring softly on the couch, her cats cuddled up all around her. A fresh shirt and his coat were in the kitchen, just as she’d said. It felt odd putting on something that had belonged to Lonnie, but he distracted himself by inspecting his coat. One shoulder had a tear and bloody hole in it, and though a good deal of blood had dried or been washed clean, quite a bit was still evident. He threw it on anyway, went back to the living room and, ignoring the pain throughout his body, bent down and gently kissed Bea on the forehead. She stirred and moaned but didn’t come awake.

  Downstairs, Lonnie’s apartment was quiet. Joel stepped out into the cold morning air. Big, fluffy flakes fell slowly and steadily, draping the still and quiet city in a beautiful shroud of white, the morning light causing it to glisten like it had been sprinkled with tiny diamonds. He found his car where he’d left it, two blocks away. Nobody followed him, and the streets were empty, the snow still fresh and undisturbed, as if the entire neighborhood was still asleep. Perhaps it was.

  He drove toward New Bedford, and the cemetery waiting for him there. He’d put it off long enough, but it was time. There would be no more chances.

  Although it was located in the middle of the city, Saint Joseph’s Cemetery covered more than fifty acres and sat atop a large hill surrounded by pine trees. Ornate wrought-iron gates opened onto a paved path that the led up the hill and to a sea of headstones, tombs and mausoleums for as far as the eye could see.

  Joel slowly followed the narrow avenues, doing his best
to remember the exact spot he’d come looking for, and within a short time was able to find it. He sat there a moment with the engine running and watched snow fall across the graves.

  So beautiful, he thought, even amid all these monuments to death.

  His mother’s body had been cremated, per her wishes, the ashes scattered in the Atlantic Ocean, but Joel often wished she’d been buried instead. Whenever he wanted to visit his mother’s memory, he’d go to the ocean and watch the waves. There was something so vast and impersonal about it though. He envied those who had a more specific spot to grieve. A spot like this, where one could stand before a headstone, something tangible and directly related to the person one missed.

  Somewhere in this cemetery they’d buried Lonnie, but he hadn’t come here for that. One day perhaps he’d return and visit it, just not today. Not now. Not yet.

  Joel got out of the car and walked toward a headstone bookended by a small pair of granite angels, winged cherubs kneeling on either side of the grave, stone faces forlorn and tortured, one’s tiny hands folded in desperate prayer, the other’s reaching skyward as if for mercy or aid.

  He walked closer, through the flurries, until the name etched on the stone came into clearer focus: CYNTHIA MARIA MELLO, followed by the dates of her birth and death.

  Heart sinking, he moved closer and realized that although a good portion of the headstone was obscured by snow, there was a second name etched into it as well. The large stone sat before three plots, one containing Cindy’s remains and two more for her parents. A second grave had been filled since Joel had last been here.

  He crouched a few feet from the family plot and read what he could of the stone. Cindy’s father had died five years ago. Joel wrestled with his emotions, that poor man’s tormented face forever burned into his memory, his soul possessed by crippling sorrow beyond comprehension. Somewhere in the back of Joel’s mind, he’d convinced himself that one day he’d make things right and at least help bring Cindy’s daughter’s killers to justice. He’d believed his book would help facilitate just that. Instead it had become a joke, and now fate had beaten him to the punch. Joel could only hope the man’s questions had been answered, and that, wherever he was, he’d been reunited with the daughter he so adored.