Mr. 8

by David J. Thirteen

  But the police had identified the body.

  There were only a few sheets of paper in that file. The burned remains in the morgue were unidentifiable. No fingerprints to test. Dental records and DNA weren’t on file. But the police had expected it to be a particular person living under that bridge, just as Denton had. Assumptions had stood in for proof.

  “Alfred Reynolds?” Denton said standing up, feeling the need to gain height and perspective at the revelation. Forgotten, the tattered, gray blanked slipped from his loose fingers.

  The man’s head bobbed. The light from the lantern painted his features in grotesque blacks and whites.

  “So what now?” Denton asked in a tone of defeat. He was there, in a shack, in the woods, on Mt. Nazareth, talking with a man he believed to be dead. He felt an unraveling taking place at the edge of his consciousness. He skirted his thoughts away from it, afraid of what new horror was taking shape there.

  “This would have been better if we had this conversation earlier. I was certain you would come in this afternoon. Just goes to show, no matter how much I see, I can’t be right about everything.” He twisted his face into a smile, as though finding humor in his own modesty.

  Denton contemplated the words. It was more of a riddle than an answer.

  I’ve been calling you here. How much I can see.

  “What is it you can see?” Denton asked.

  “I can always see what is. I can sometimes see what will be.”

  Had the virus made him clairvoyant? Did he even have the virus? Denton struggled to remember that this wasn’t Patient Zero, who the boys burned. This man was someone else—something else.

  “So what? You’re supposed to be psychic,” Denton said with the skepticism bred into him from years immersed in science.

  “My grandmamma called it having your third eye open.”

  The coughing man at St. Fillan’s said one night in the early fall, he had met Ray. He had been excited about figuring out some truth and he wanted to share it.

  “So this third eye of yours just opened last fall?”

  Ray chuckled, but the laugh was devoid of humor. “No, I’ve had it all my life. Born with it.” He shifted on the bed, making himself more comfortable. “You see, I always had the gift. Some people said I was cursed. Others said, possessed. No one much liked it. No one much liked me. My father walked out two days before my ninth birthday. And when I was old enough, I left too. People caused too much pain, so I stayed away from them. I kept to abandoned places as much as I could.”

  “Like the train bridge.”

  “Yes, like that. No one else could stand being there for too long because of the noise.” He nodded to himself, remembering how good things had been there.

  “You see, I was born with my third eye open.” He pointed to a spot on his forehead just above where his eyebrows came close to meeting and left his fingertip pressed there. “It let me to see into people. Read their souls. Nothing anybody wanted me to see. Nothing I ever wanted to see. Did me no good whatsoever knowing the truth about everyone. Made me hate them. Made them fear me.”

  His hand made a small circle, as though it were getting tired of pointing at his forehead.

  “But then something miraculous happened. A few months ago, my forth eye opened.” His finger moved up half an inch to a new spot, pressed the skin against the bone, and then drifted back down to his side.

  Denton felt as if he were struck with a current of otherworldly energy. He felt his legs wobble. Two mystical eyes, one above the other.

  “Now this forth eye…” Ray hesitated. “It solves that problem.”

  “What does it do?” Denton’s voice was barely a whisper, a ghostly rasp competing with the sputter of the lantern.

  “The third eye allowed me to see. The fourth allows me to reach out. It lets for me show people their true selves. It lets me reveal their true cosmic potential. With it, not only can I see the truth, but I can make you see it to. And I can make you transcend it.”

  What had Radnor said in his apartment? I have looked into the eyes and I have seen the truth.

  “Is that what made them insane? What did you do to them?” Denton’s voice grew in volume. No longer tremulous, each syllable hit the air like the thrust of a knife.

  Ray brushed his upper lip with his thumb nail. “They don’t go insane. Not really. The truth takes a while to comprehend. The ego fights it. There’s a transition period as the power of the eyes burns into them. But it passes. Then you become stronger both physically and mentally. You become the person you were always meant to be.”

  “So what are you saying: you’ve been creeping around Bexhill, casting spells on people? Or did you call to them too?” Anger gave his words mass. The knife transformed into a club in the small echoing cabin.

  Ray shook his head and laughed. “I don’t cast spells, son. And I haven’t been in Bexhill since I discovered what I could do. I came here. I only share this gift with people who want it. People who come here and ask for it.”

  “What? Did Kaling, Radnor, Radcliff, and the others all come up here for your gift?” Denton spoke with as much incredulity as he could manage, trying to demonstrate his disbelief, even though it was no more outrageous of a concept than aliens and viruses. A belief he held wholeheartedly only moments before. An idea he had found completely preposterous when Eddie had spoken of it only a few days earlier.

  “Word of mouth has spread. People learned that I could teach them how to escape the shells that trapped them. Break them out of all the fears and sins that held them down. Each one came to be reshaped into a higher form of human being. A being that would reshape this world we live in.”

  Ray leaned forward and gazed up at Denton. “The only one I called to was you, because I hoped to tell you the truth before any more of my children came to harm. But I failed.”

  Could it be possible? It was a stretch to think of Radnor seeking out a guru in the forest, but Agatha Radcliff he could easily see coming up here filled with hope, eager for some new avenue to enlightenment. Were they all just some cult? Did they come up here and drink in this man’s madness and bring it back to Bexhill with them?

  Kaling had been scared when he mentioned the mountain. Was he worried that Denton’s plan was to come here to kill this man? Did he fear for his spiritual leader?

  “I only wanted to talk to you and let you know there wasn’t a virus spreading through the town. Let you know that nothing harmful was coming for you or Linda. Tell you could put your misguided quest aside.”

  The room’s smell of mold and lumber burned his sinuses. It had become stifling hot. Denton’s body was coated in a prickly sweat. None of this made sense. How could this man know these things?

  “Who told you about me? Who told you I was trying to stop a virus?” He leaned down and shouted in his face. He would have grabbed him and shook him, but the dread of his very existence made Denton keep his distance.

  “You did. I can see your soul, Denton Reed. I know you. Now the question is, are you ready to know yourself. You are soaked in guilt. The truth will wash you clean. Will you accept it? Are you ready to find out who you really are?” There was a smugness about Ray, as though he already knew the answer. As though Denton had no choice but to accept, like it was all preordained.

  Denton turned. He kept himself from falling over with a hand pressed against the wall, as he looked into the heater’s shimmering orange burner. It stared back at him like some satanic eye.

  Ray sat patiently, waiting for his answer.

  What a fool he had been. Instead of following the evidence, he had blazed a trail. He had made the clues fit the story he was telling himself. A story built on the inanities he heard while imprisoned at the lodge. A story where he was both the hero and the victim. A story of a man trying to save the world while something inside of him slowly ensured his own death. He was a
s guilty of using the Gasher story to justify his crimes as Danny was.

  Now, he stood there, the punchline to his own horrifying joke. There was no virus. No aliens. There was only Ray. And there had been the people Ray changed.

  He should just walk out, leave without another word to Alfred Reynolds. He could go back and accept punishment or treatment, or whatever they decided to do with him. He could go back and admit he was wrong. Tell Linda he was sorry. See her beautiful face again, even if it were only on visiting days.

  But if he left, would this all be over? Would it really be the end?

  No. It would keep go on and on without end. Yesterday it was Eddie and his friends, today it was him, tomorrow it would be someone else. Who? Perhaps Bill. Perhaps between Denton and the Knowles woman, they had managed to infect him with the idea.

  Whether he intended to be or not, Alfred Reynolds was a monster. So long as he kept spreading his truth, there would be someone out there trying to stop it, someone who saw the diabolical in the behavior of his followers. There was a virus out there, but it wasn’t one built on germs. It was constructed of ideas.

  “You are a very stubborn man, Denton Reed,” Ray said, shattering the silence. “Most people would leap at the chance to be released from their guilt and their fears. Can’t you see what I wonderful gift I will bring to the world? Join me. Spread my word, and we will rebuild what you have destroyed.”

  Such confidence—it were as though the man could read his doubts. There was no going back for Denton. He feared a mental ward too much. Just as he feared death. That only left one other alternative.

  In that moment, Denton could feel the distance between them contract.

  We are each playing an equal part in this story. We are two sides of the same coin. Two rings in the same eight.

  His brother’s advice came back to him—a whisper fighting against the tide of years.

  No. Denton would never let this man change him. Did Kaling or Radnor seem enlightened? This man’s truth was a poison. Besides, he already knew enough of the truth. He knew all the truth about himself that he could handle.

  Ray was right; he was stubborn. “So I’m bullheaded,” he said to himself. The phrase invoked the memory of his dream. His lip twitch into an uncomfortable smirk.

  There is a virus in this shack. And now there is a demon.

  He took his overcoat off. It was a horrible mess, even more tattered than it had started out that morning. Removing the flask, he lowered the soaking mess to the floor and picked up the blanket. Nothing had ever felt more real between his fingers than its rough fibers.

  Instead of wrapping it around himself for warmth, he draped it over the heater and the spare propane tanks.

  He looked down at the flask in his hand. The cheerful blue Kerosene sloshed in the glass container, like a Kool-Aid childhood memory.

  “Can you really see everything?” Denton asked.

  There was a sharp intake of breath behind him and Ray sprang to his feet.

  In his mind, Denton could see the glass vial slipping from his hand and tumbling end over end in slow motion, until it shattered against the heater’s protective cage. But in reality, he threw it against the heater’s metal top before turning to pursue Alfred Reynolds. Shards of glass burst outward and the oil sprayed the orange eye and the gray blanket.

  Denton caught Ray as he was fumbling with the door. Denton pulled him away and slammed him into the corner, holding him in a desperate hug. Ray struggled to free himself but was outmatched by Denton’s size and determination. He screamed as he tried to claw his way free.

  “Shh,” Denton whispered in his ear. “Isn’t this the real reason you called me here?”

  The world erupted in blinding light, as the blast pressed them both into the shed’s corner.

  Denton could feel burns scorching the back of his head and neck. Something sharp was embedded in his back just below his rib cage. The blood tickled as it caressed his skin and flowed down to his hip. The flames crackled behind him. The small shed filled with smoke. Ray coughed and made one last effort to free himself, his strength ebbing with the oxygen.

  He clenched his eyes tight against the pain. Memories of Linda flooded his mind and he was back with her at the party in Brooklyn where they first met, gazing at her from across a table overlooking Market Square, somewhere dancing with her—endlessly twirling with her across the floor.

  Denton held Ray closer, pulling him tighter into the embrace. It would all be over soon. He just had to hold a little longer. Another minute and the truth would never be able to escape the silence of the forest.

  Acknowledgments

  Writing is a solitary activity. We sit in a dark room, mumbling stories to ourselves, trying to translate thoughts and feelings into language. But writing a novel is never accomplished alone.

  I would like to thank my wife Jennifer for all of her loving support and encouragement. I love you more than words can ever express.

  I would like to thank my family for creating a loving, nurturing environment to grow up in. Thanks to my mother, Chris, for always encouraging my artistic nature. Thanks to my sister, Gail, for exposing me to non-age appropriate material that probably warped me—but in a good way. Thanks to my sister, Karen, for fostering a love for books in me and for teaching me how to read long before I went off to school. Thanks to my brother, Mark, for reading me bedtime stories and telling me all those ghost stories. And a very special thanks to my father, Phil. The sorrow of his passing is still fresh and deep. All the many things he did to shape me into the man I am will not be forgotten.

  I would like to thank my oldest and dearest friends, Jeffery and Michael. The two have you have been reading my stories since I first began writing them. Nearly everything was awful, but you read anyway. And that’s just one of the reasons why I love you both.

  I would like to thank Wattpad. Your organization freed me. Until I stumbled upon your forum, my writing really was just mumbles to myself. You gave me the opportunity to share it with the world and grow in the process. Thank you Gavin Wilson, Nazia Khan, and Danielle Thé for your support while I was writing this book. And thanks to all the people, who work hard to make this wonderful site possible.

  And thanks to all my wonderful Wattpad friends and supporters. While writing Mr. 8 you were my sounding board, my shoulder to cry on, and my mentors. Whether you knew it or not, this book would not have been possible without you. Thank you Alys Arden, Rebecca K. O’Connor, Anastasia Weil, R.D. Hale, Caasi Wendeh, Robert Daniel Brooks, Kate Hauxwell, Lily, Kuronoshio, LouAnn Rice, Godhand, J.S. Bennett, and Lindsey Clarke. But that is only the very smallest tip of the iceberg, if I had the space I could go on for pages naming all the wonderful people, who helped and supported me. I know after this is published, I will deeply regret many of the omissions I have made, but truly from the bottom of my heart, thank you all.

  I would like to thank my publisher Booktrope. Thanks to every one of you for believing in me and this project. Thanks to my amazing team: Gerald Braude (editor), Lydia Johnson (proofreader), Donald Cronkhite (cover designer), and Majanka Verstraete (book manager). And a huge thanks to Duke Miller for recommending this book for publication.

  And finally, a very special thanks to the crazy LARD club. Thank you Lucy Laird—one day when you have a writing empire, I hope you’ll remember the fun we all had in the fall of 2013. Thank you Ashutosh Moru—I wish I had one tenth of your enthusiasm and energy. And thank you so much Cathy LeMay—not just for your friendship that has meant so much to me, but for also leading the way and helping get this little book published.

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