by Rio Youers
Bobby licked his lips, slid aside the screen door, and—his gaze still fixed on the refrigerator—curled his hand around the patio door’s handle.
Pepsi-Cola. Simply Orange. Poland Spring. I’m betting you’ll find some Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey in the freezer, too. Again, just saying.
Bobby shook his head. Sweat streamed down his naked upper body. He took his hand from the handle, then put it back. This decision is too big for me, he thought. Let’s turn it over to the man upstairs.
“Dear God in heaven,” he began. “If this door is unlocked, I’ll take it as a sign that I’m supposed to snaffle a drink of Pepsi and perhaps a mouthful of Chunky Monkey. If it’s locked—as it should be—then I’ll roll homeward, duly repentant, and with a promise to henceforth mind my own beeswax.”
He pulled the handle. The door slid smoothly open.
“Thy will be done,” Bobby said, and stepped inside.
———
Oliver Wray squatted in the shade of a yellow birch and ate wild blueberries and chicory and washed it down with spring water. Fragments of reality returned—points of light against a drapery of blackness, like watching stars appear. He became aware of the heat, the pain in his body, and who he was. I am human . . . a man. A man. My name is . . . Oliver . . . Wray . . . Not so long ago he had been something else. The radical centre. Take three circles: one each for man, animal, and bird. Intersect them. The point at which their axes meet is the radical centre, and this was as close as he could get to describing what he was—where he was. A thing between. A circular triangle.
I am vital. I am pure.
A falcon cried and swooped and came up with nothing in its talons but dead grass. Oliver wiped his mouth and moved on, out of the shade, into the bleached-hot day. He’d considered washing the mud and pigment from his body, but left it to give protection from the sun. As such he walked home, willingly assuming the man-circle, shedding the last of his feathers and fur and becoming Oliver Wray. He cut through a swatch of pine forest and joined Sanctuary Road close to his property.
He sensed that something was wrong before he even set foot on his driveway. Tapping into some residue of animal instinct, perhaps.
Somebody was in his house.
He snarled, crouched, shoulders hunched. Sheriff Tansy, he thought. Matthew told him, after all, and now he’s here, looking for evidence. The animal-circle grew solid and he intersected it. In my study. Reading my notes. My journal.
Still bleeding, half-wild, he prowled onto his driveway.
READING MY JOUR—
No, not Sheriff Tansy.
There was a bicycle leaning against the garage door and Oliver knew immediately who it belonged to—had seen him pedalling around town countless times, with his baseball cap turned backward and his ridiculous belly sagging over the crossbar. Bobby Alexander, who, for whatever reason, didn’t like Oliver. Didn’t trust him. That sack of shit, Oliver thought. That fat fuck. Not the police, and that was a good thing, although any relief Oliver felt was drowned in a boiling sea of anger. His heart rushed in his chest, his body low to the ground, hackles raised. I better find him sitting on the rear deck, he thought. And he better have a damn good reason for being on my property.
Oliver growled deep in his chest and skulked to the rear of the house.
I am . . . am . . .
No one on the deck, but the patio door was open.
I am . . .
Oliver crept up the steps and into his house, naked of everything except the earth colours tattooed on his skin. No one in the living room or kitchen (an empty juice carton on the countertop—fucking slob), but a distinctive sound from his study.
Clickety-click went the mouse.
I AM . . . AM . . .
Everything inside Oliver raged. From purity to pure wrath. It burned inside him as he prowled toward his study.
Three circles again.
I am the radical centre.
Chapter Ten
Bobby always said that his biggest weakness was his heart. Not that it was physically weak (although it was, of course), but that it was emotionally too large. He would do anything for anyone, and usually with a dumb, if slightly heartbreaking smile on his face. This often led to people taking advantage of him, and he rarely got anything in return. His heart attack shook him up. It made him see things—and people—in a different light. He came to realize that, while it was important to help others, he had to live for himself, too. Life was short, after all.
His mother insisted that having a big heart wasn’t a weakness at all—that it was, in fact, an honourable strength. She would further insist that Bobby had no weaknesses, as such, merely a few (very small) soft spots. One such spot would be his inclination to involve himself in other people’s business. If it ain’t your tail, don’t wag it, she’d say. But sometimes Bobby couldn’t help himself.
He knew that cycling to Oliver’s house and peeking through his windows was wrong. It was an invasion of his privacy, no different than opening his mail. He reasoned that—as long as Oliver didn’t find out—there was no harm done. It was therefore easy to blot out objections, or his mother’s voice telling him—and Matthew had said the same—that he was apt to get the tip of his nose snipped off if he couldn’t keep it from people’s affairs. Events would have transpired differently if he had listened to his mother, or even if he had limited his curiosity to peeking through the windows. But he didn’t. Couldn’t. He pushed too far, pried too deeply, and in so doing found something unimaginable. The danger was bigger than anything he’d ever known, but by the time he realized, it was too late.
———
He would later think—while cycling for his life—that he should have stolen a quick drink and blown out of Dodge, leaving everything as he had found it. But he would think many things during those timorous moments (that he should never have cycled to Oliver’s in the first place; how foolish he’d been to enter the house; that the unlocked patio door should have warned him that Oliver hadn’t gone far). He did wonder why the air conditioner was running, but figured that Oliver—having more money than sense—would sooner return to a chilled house than save a few bucks on the utilities bill. Just one of many oversights, and imprudent actions, that could prove his undoing.
He’d found a half-full carton of orange juice in the refrigerator door, but that was all. No bottled water or soda, and no ice cream—Chunky Monkey, or otherwise—in the freezer. Bobby drained the juice in one hit, his lips forming a seal around the spout to minimize spillage. He drank with grateful grunts, his eyes screwed shut, as if this would enhance his drinking pleasure. When finished, he crammed the carton beneath the refrigerator’s water dispenser and half-filled it again. Three drain-like swallows and it was gone. He placed the empty carton on the countertop, belched wonderfully, and dispensed a handful of crushed ice. This he smeared all over his chest and shoulders, gasping with satisfaction as his body temperature dropped to a more comfortable level.
“So good,” he said, smiling as chilled water dripped from the broad lip of his belly. He took a deep breath and gazed around the kitchen and living room, thinking that he should quit pushing his luck and get out of there. But thinking never progressed to doing. The décor grabbed his attention, everything expensive and ultramodern. He was pretty sure he’d seen Gil Gerard strolling around something similar in an episode of Buck Rogers, only there had been a distant galaxy on the other side of the window, as opposed to the forestry of the Catskills.
Despite the state-of-the-art styling, and the precise placement of everything (definitely OCD, Bobby thought), there was something missing, and it didn’t take Bobby long to figure out what it was.
No warmth, he thought, noting the irony. It was a furnace outside, but Oliver’s house was cold and spiritless, and not because of the air conditioning. Bobby lived in a house that was adorned with photographs and pictures, plants and o
rnaments. They offered colour and character, and reflected the people who lived there. Oliver had nothing, and surely this reflected something, too. Bobby thought that a millionaire graphic designer would exhibit more imagination.
“You’re a peculiar man, Oliver,” he said, sweat trickling into the creases at the back of his neck. His curiosity piqued, he ventured deeper into the house . . . into the hallway, with doors closed on several rooms. This didn’t stop him. He nosed in Oliver’s bedroom (as bland and modern as the living room), and opened the door to the basement. That’s where the meth lab will be, he thought. Or the arms cache. Gotta remember to take a look before leaving. And then he nosed in the bathroom, peeked in an empty spare room, and pushed open the door to Oliver’s study. The window blind was pulled down, but thin enough to let the sunlight through, and Bobby saw everything clearly: an L-shaped mahogany desk, a bookcase crammed with textbooks and computer paraphernalia, a huge printer/copier, a filing cabinet. There were two computers on the desk—a MacBook and an iMac—along with a gooseneck lamp and various trays and folders. As Bobby stepped farther into the room, a voice at the back of his mind chirruped that he’d taken things too far, that entering someone’s home was in a different league to opening their mail. Even police needed a warrant to—
“Yeah-yeah,” he cut off his own thought process, even flapped a hand at the air: Sure, I hear you. Now shuddup, already. Something had caught his eye. The corner of it poked out from one of the folders on Oliver’s desk. Clearly a photograph, black and white, but the only (possibly) interesting thing he had discovered thus far. He stepped toward it. Just a little look-see. Ten seconds—max—and he’d be on his way.
He opened the folder and looked down at an old photograph. Nothing remarkable, or even interesting, about it: a dark-haired man standing with three children. The quality wasn’t great but Bobby thought the little ones were crying, while the man—their father, probably—wore a grin like a shard of glass. Kinda creepy, Bobby thought. Probably Oliver’s freaky great-grandfather. He picked up the photograph and turned it over, thinking that people sometimes wrote names and dates on the back of prints. No date on this one, or name, but Oliver had scrawled “ORIGINAL ME” in one corner in angry uppercase.
“Freak,” Bobby said. He slipped the photograph back into the folder, closed it, stepped toward the door, and then paused. He’d noticed a newspaper clipping in the folder, beneath the photograph. Ever curious, he went back to it and saw not just one clipping but a sheaf of them secured with a binder clip. The headline of the top one read: PSP WIDEN SEARCH FOR MISSING GIRL and there was a photograph of her, Courtney Bryce. Bobby’s heart dropped in his chest, as it always did whenever he saw her face in the news. Only eleven years old, and missing for over a week. He flipped the clipping and saw that the one beneath was also about Courtney Bryce. Different newspaper, same photograph. The third clipping was from USA Today. The headline read: PARENTS’ TEARFUL APPEAL TO FIND ETHAN. Another heartbreaking photograph, this time of Ethan Mitchell’s anguished parents. Ethan was last seen outside his New Jersey home twelve days ago.
“What the hell?” Bobby said. He looked at the remaining clippings. There had to be thirty of them, at least, from various newspapers, and all concerning the disappearance of either Courtney Bryce or Ethan Mitchell.
Frickin’ ghoulish, Bobby thought. He flipped back to the first clipping and looked into Courtney’s eyes. A beautiful eleven-year-old girl, smiling as if the world were not a ruptured place, and no harm could ever come to her. He wiped a mist of sweat from his brow and looked at the old photograph again: the three children, all of them in tears, and the man with the twisted smile.
Original me.
A bell sounded inside Bobby’s head. A dull peal that sickened him.
No way, he thought. He didn’t like Oliver, and had never trusted him, but he couldn’t believe he had anything to do with these missing children.
But why the clippings?
“Maybe he’s researching something,” he said to the empty study. He flicked through the articles again, the headlines flashing in his eyes. “Maybe he’s starting a charity, or something.”
Yes, maybe, but his eye was drawn, again, to the old photograph.
Original me.
Bobby shivered, as if he’d just emerged from warm water into cold air. He looked to see what else was in the folder: pages printed off the Internet. He glanced through them, catching underlined sentences: SIX DEAD; EIGHTEEN PEOPLE WERE BURNED ALIVE; IT WATCHES US. IT REMEMBERS. Random articles that made no sense, and Bobby couldn’t link them to the missing children, or Oliver’s possible involvement.
He tossed the folder back onto the desk. It hit the mouse pad. The mouse jigged and the iMac pulled itself from standby mode with little whirs and ticks. The monitor bloomed and showed Oliver’s desktop. Like his house, it was bland and blank.
Bobby didn’t pause to think about it. He sat in front of the computer, opened Safari, and checked Oliver’s browsing history. It was empty. He went into preferences and saw that it was set up to delete every twenty-four hours.
“Okay,” Bobby whispered. His heart thumped hard, not through heat or exhaustion, but with nervous energy. He closed out the Internet, checked the hard drive, and found numerous Word documents. One of them was titled: NOTES: JOURNAL 2010.
Bobby opened it. The first thing he read filled him with dread and turned his world into a different place. A broken place:
January 1, 2010.
Last night I dreamed that one of the children clawed their way out of the mountain and came back to me. It may have been Victoria Guy. Or Connor Wright. Impossible to be sure. His/her fingertips were bleeding and he/she said in a cracked, small voice: “You don’t even know what it wants.” And then he/she turned into a horde of rats and attacked me. I felt them biting my flesh, eating my eyes. What a way to start the new year.
Bobby leapt back as if the monitor had sprouted arms and reached for him. He shook his head, feeling his peace of mind fray at the edges and unwind. His heart galloped uncomfortably in his chest. He looked at the old photograph. Original me. He looked at the newspaper clippings. Courtney Bryce smiled at him, her red hair draped over one shoulder.
Jesus Christ, what do I do? What . . .
“This isn’t happening,” he said. His voice was fractured, like sand falling through an hourglass. More sweat ran into his eyes and he palmed it away. The monitor stared at him with its pale, unblinking eye.
It’s Oliver. Holy shit, Oliver took those kids, he TOOK them . . .
“No,” Bobby breathed. It was too big for him to comprehend. He held his chest and whimpered. Oliver’s face flickered in his mind. What are you going to do about it, Bobby? he asked. I’m the King of Point Hollow. Everybody loves me. So what are you going to do to bring me down? How can—?
Bobby scrolled to the next entry:
January 12, 2010.
Snowed all day. I drove into town and helped plow some of the smaller roads. I also plowed the Chase Bank parking lot, and a few of the longer driveways. Mrs. Stone gave me a plate of—
He shook his head, clicked on the little bar on the right of the screen, and dragged through a few months:
April 3, 2010.
Spent all day surfing the ’net for information about town’s history. Nothing new. Now I feel nauseous and tired but I know I won’t sleep. It’s late. My eyes are aching. Think I’ll take a bottle of bourbon out on the deck and see how long it takes me to get shitfaced.
What are you going to do, fatboy?
“I need proof,” Bobby said. “Real proof.” His heart rolled a little harder, responding to the panic lights flashing in his mind. He tried to control his breathing, but managed only shallow sips that felt like knuckles pressing against the inside of his ribcage. Courtney Bryce smiled at him from the newspaper clipping. Courtney, he thought, and placed his trembling fingers on the keyboard
. He hit command + F. The “Find and Replace” dialog box bloomed on the screen.
He typed “Courtney” in the field.
I don’t want to do this, he thought, gasping, shaking. I don’t want to know.
Find All . . . click.
He read:
July 25, 2010.
Courtney Bryce. Eleven years old. Deer Grove, PA. I used the hands-full trick to grab her and she took the bait like I knew she would. It was a long drive home, with the little girl crying and struggling most of the way, and the mountain screaming at me. I carried her right into its belly and it fell silent almost at once. The silence—although it has only been a few hours—is as close to heaven as I can imagine.
I’m tired now. Going to bed. I think I could sleep for days. I pray the mountain doesn’t wake me. I pray it’s over.
Please let it be over.
If it’s not . . . if it booms again . . . wants more . . .
No. Please God. No.
Bobby moaned and buried his face in his hands. His back hitched like an old machine rumbling into life. Heavy sobs rolled through his chest and tears crept from his eyes.
I can’t do this, he thought, and with his face in his hands he didn’t notice the man-shaped silhouette float across the blind. I just can’t. It’s too big for me. He wiped his eyes and the screen came into focus.
—the little girl crying and struggling most of the way—
She looked at him from the newspaper clipping. Her eyes shone.
—carried her right into its belly—
Anger touched him. Fear. Shock. He swayed in the chair and his eyes blurred with tears again. He blinked them away. His mouth was a trembling line.
He searched the document for Ethan Mitchell.
July 22, 2010.
The grab was reckless but I was desperate, on the verge of madness. The evening news is buzzing with the story of how seven-year-old Ethan Mitchell disappeared outside his New Jersey home. No one saw me grab him, but that was too close. Abraham’s Faith must have been looking after me.