by J. Thorn
“Calm down, honey. We’re fine.”
Drew pulled Molly and the kids into his embrace. They stood in the middle of the kitchen amidst a sea of red-penned homework, unopened bills, and the delightful aroma of Molly’s chicken spaghetti.
Drew took a deep breath. He put his bag down and proceeded to check every door. He turned the lock and yanked on each knob, testing its strength. Molly stood and watched him as the oven timer beeped. She released a wave of delicious dry heat before reaching in and grabbing the baking dish.
“When were you at Denison Park last?”
Molly waved the hot steam away with one hand before digging a stainless-steel spoon into the dish and turning it over. She looked at the ceiling, her mouth moving without producing words.
“The seventh? I don’t know, hon.”
“Can you think harder, please?”
Molly stopped stirring dinner and looked at Drew. His red eyes bulged in the sockets and his face flushed. She thought he looked drunk.
“Yeah, the seventh. We were there with Sally and her kids.”
“Do you remember seeing anyone suspicious or threatening?”
Molly gave up on moving the pasta noodles from one side of the dish to the other. She replaced the tin foil, folding the edges down over the outside of the glass.
“What is going on?”
Drew stepped through the kitchen and into the living room, where the cartoon du jour prattled through the airwaves and into the brains of Sara and Billy. Drew pushed the “off” button on the television, which immediately darkened the screen and produced a two-person choir of disappointment.
“Go downstairs and play something. Mom and I need to talk and we can’t hear each other over that thing.”
Sara crossed her arms and furrowed her brow.
“I’m not asking you again. Get down there or else.”
Sara stomped through the living room and slammed the door on her brother. Billy dragged his feet across the floor as if he was pulling a sled of granite. Drew shut the door and turned to Molly.
“Did you see anything weird?” he asked again, more out of desperation than anger.
“You know how that place is, Drew,” she replied. “It’s a zoo without the bars. And less manners. I swear if I see another parent texting while the kids are—”
Drew interrupted her rant on negligent parents. “What about on the benches near the street?”
Molly shook her head. She looked at Drew, extending her gaze around the kitchen bursting with dirty plates and soaking pots.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. It had been folded in half twice and attracted a host of pocket lint during its stay. Drew’s hands shook as he held it out for Molly to take.
She turned her head sideways and opened her mouth. She grabbed the edge of the paper and held it up. Drew could see the blood drain from her face.
“What is this?”
“It’s a photograph of you and the kids at Denison. Probably taken with a telephoto lens. I’m guessing it’s from the seventh.”
The grainy, gray-scale printout may have obscured the vibrant colors of children’s winter garb, but it left no doubt about the focal point of the image. Molly looked at herself in the picture and shook her head. She folded it up and handed the paper back to Drew.
“Where did it come from?”
He took the print out and tossed it in the trash.
“Don’t do that! We might have to give that to the police as evidence.”
Drew shook his head left to right. “We’re not going to the police.”
Molly slammed the stainless-steel spoon down on the counter. “Some psycho is stalking your wife and your kids, taking pictures, and we’re not going to the police?”
She shivered as she heard her own question and bent over to retrieve the paper from the garbage. She pulled it out and held it in the air, the pocket lint having attracted the skin of a clove of garlic from the top of the pile.
“Yes, Officer. That’s right. Someone took a long-distance photograph of my family in Denison Park and e-mailed it to me. Arrest him.”
“This was e-mailed to you? This stalker knows our name, your name, your employer, your e-mail address? Holy shit, Drew. Holy shit.”
Molly collapsed into the kitchen chair. She ripped the apron from her waist and threw it to the floor. He stood on the cold, dark tile of the kitchen, now sickened by the smell of Molly’s best dish.
“What should I do?” he asked in a wavering voice.
“Can we at least call Home Sentry and have them install an alarm?”
Drew smiled. Molly had managed to put her fear and emotion aside and think rationally about the problem.
“The e-mail address is anonymous. He keeps saying I need to pay attention to him, so it could be a disgruntled client. I have to check my records on cancelled accounts over the past year. There aren’t that many, so . . .,” said Drew, letting his comment drift away.
“Our kids, Drew.”
“I know. I know. I’ll call a rep from the company tomorrow and have them give us an estimate. In the meantime, be observant. Should we pull Billy from hockey this session?”
“He would freak out.”
“But that’s clearly a routine, an easy way for this bastard to make contact. Or worse.”
Molly nodded her head in agreement. Drew continued.
“Until I can make some headway on this, let’s keep the family activities down to a minimum. School. Shopping. That’s about it. The more random or unplanned, the better.”
Molly stood and hugged Drew. He felt her warm body against his and closed his eyes.
“We’re overreacting. This is probably some jerk angry with you about the way his design turned out.”
He pulled her tight. “I won’t let anything happen to us.”
Drew ate with Molly and the kids, both of them doing their best to maintain an air of normalcy. They played Monopoly after dinner until it was time for the kids to shower and prepare for bed. Drew followed the routine until they breathed lightly in their beds, slowly drifting into sleep. He walked downstairs and sat on the couch next to Molly. She curled her legs up to his and he put an arm around her shoulder. They stared mindlessly at the television through three sitcoms, complete with laugh tracks and loads of commercials. The eleven o’clock news began. Molly stood and went upstairs. Drew turned off the television and walked to each door. He checked the locks for the seventh time that evening.
***
Drew picked up the phone and made a few calls that he had neglected. The rest of the floor continued with an energetic buzz, full of rumors and wild speculation.
“I heard what happened. C’mon.”
Drew hit the last button on his keyboard, pushed the chair back from the desk, and stood. He pulled his shirt down and hitched his pants up on his hips.
“You working out?” asked Brian.
“Are you gay?” replied Drew.
With a shake of the head, he followed Brian through the cubicle rows to the private conference room on the floor.
“Here’s what I heard,” Brian began.
Drew stiffened and rubbed his eyes.
“The woman found in the Crooked Tail River last week is Vivian. It appears she was the victim of a crime, not an accident. They think her resignation was not her own idea, that it may have been part of her abduction.”
Drew shifted his weight from one foot to the other.
“And, the second body found in Crooked Tail River is Johnson.”
Drew shook. The grainy image of his family at the park flashed across his vision. Sweat broke out on his forehead and he wiped a bead from his upper lip.
“The guys in IT are working on the network infrastructure to get us remote access to critical apps so we can work from home.”
Drew shivered and shook his head. He opened his mouth to speak but could not find the right words.
“We’re all shaken, bro,” Brian said to Drew, reaching fo
r his arm.
Drew shrugged off the gesture and looked Brian in the eye before speaking. “I think I’m next.”
***
Ravna set the stainless-steel kettle on the stove top. He ignited the burner with a pungent whiff of natural gas, followed by the burnt smell of a long-forgotten meal that managed to bubble over the lid and rest in the drip pan. He looked at the microwave clock and did the math on the number of hours of sleep he would have if he fell asleep that instant. The calculations were not in his favor. Mashoka sat on the couch, staring at the television.
“Turn it on,” Ravna said.
Mashoka shook his head and dismissed the idea with a groan.
“Suit yourself. Gonna take another ten minutes for the teapot to boil.”
“Ten minutes? I don’t have that kind of time.”
Ravna deflected the old man’s sarcasm like a March snowflake, annoying and temporary. He opened several cabinets until he found crusty packets of artificial sweetener. He had saved them for this exact occasion.
“You never know when a senior citizen is going to drop in at 1:08 a.m. for a cup of tea to tell you a story about hungry ghosts from Japan.”
Another groan from Mashoka told Ravna that he had spoken too loudly. The teapot threw steam in the air and the lid rattled as the water inside heated. Before it could launch into a full-blown whistle, Ravna turned the burner off with a sharp click as it moved past the igniter and suffocated the last of the natural gas in the line. He poured the hot water into two mugs, each with a dollop of honey at the bottom and a tea bag dangling on the inside of the mug. Ravna crumpled the tea bag wrappers into a ball and tossed the “Chai Tea” into the garbage.
“It’s like ‘Tea Tea’,” he said, looking for a reaction from Mashoka.
The old man had not moved since he entered the apartment, and his eyes were closed as he gained control of his breathing.
Ravna carried the tray to the table, clanking the silverware and cups together. “Sorry,” he said to Mashoka.
“Are you finished?” he asked Ravna.
“I said sorry,” Ravna replied.
Without preamble, Mashoka came back to the story he had begun in the coffee shop.
“After the odor forced me to vomit, and while I was still in hiding, I sat to collect my thoughts. I knew the bombers were no longer flying over the island and yet I had left the trail and entered the cave forbidden by the adults of the village. Here I was, sitting behind a rock while two entities argued in a language I could not understand. The pervasive, grisly noise and foul stench made me think that it was not a place I was meant to be.”
Ravna poured the water over the tea and honey and slipped a spoon into his mug. He pushed the spoon through the water, careful not to ding the side of the mug with it.
“Every cell in my body wanted out. I wanted to flee, run as fast as I could back home and into my mother’s arms. The cave frightened me more than the bombings or the heinous crimes of the rogue soldiers. My feet would not move. I slid my legs to the side of the large rock in hopes of finding out exactly what was happening. The stone felt damp and slick on my face and it repulsed me to the edge of nausea. I fought the feeling and had regained my breath when the tearing sound increased threefold.
“I eased my head out from behind the rock until the entire scene unfolded, a scene I have spent decades trying to cleanse from my soul. I saw three pitiful creatures shackled to the cave wall. I must call them creatures, as they no longer resembled human beings. Each one’s arms crossed at the elbows and were bound to an iron hasp at the wrists. Their emaciated frames hung like light sheers on an open window. They were men at one time in the near past, but their ages and races were beyond recognition. Do you remember the story of the Buddha?”
Ravna tilted his head to one side and stopped mid-sip. He put the mug down. “Yes. Why are you asking me that now?”
“Do you remember the carvings of the Buddha at the end of his six years of renunciation? Can you recall his thin flesh, sunken eyes, and protruding bones?”
“Yes,” Ravna replied, shaking his head. “He was eating one grain of rice per day and drinking his own urine. As the story goes, he was probably a few days from death when the village girl offered him the rice porridge.”
“That is how the creatures appeared. They had large heads and protruding abdomens, and their eyes lost the sparkle of life before receding back into the skull. Bedraggled hair stuck to open sores on their skin. They sat in darkened pools of waste. Their mouths opened and closed at random intervals, neither speaking nor acquiring sustenance. The creatures hung at death’s door without enough strength to die.
“But they were not the source of the sounds. Another creature sat with its back to me, facing the captives. I recognized the green fatigues worn by the Americans and knew this man was a Marine. His weapons lay in the dirt as if tossed without care. A green helmet lay beside the one wall. He was sitting, hunched over so that I could not see anything above his shoulders. The man’s elbows shot out randomly but in conjunction with the ripping sound. I thought of a jungle tiger huddled around its kill, tearing the flesh with its teeth. I knew he did not know I was there. I wanted to turn and run, but my feet became loose and moved me towards the cavern, not away from it. Tears stung my face and I struggled to keep the odor from releasing the last remnants of food in my stomach. A force pulled me closer to the beast, and when I could no longer fight the inertia, my bladder gave way. I felt the warm liquid running down my leg.
“The creature froze and I heard a sniffing noise. It raised its head, a short military cut bespeckled in grime and the filth of war. He had heard me, and yet I still could not run.
“The shackled wastes moaned but could not do much more. They also sensed my presence and could no more help me than I could help myself. I shuffled my feet closer and the smell became unbearable. To the left of the Marine sat a pile of human feces. Even at night, flies buzzed about it.”
Ravna held the mug of chai in one hand. The powerful scent of cardamom and cinnamon could not mask Mashoka’s description. He sniffled and wiped his nose.
“My eyes felt as though they might burst from my head. A ringing started at my temples and vibrated down my spine until my entire body shook. The creature turned to face me and I wished for death at that very moment.
“Excrement covered the man’s face as if it had been painted by a blind man. Dark streaks shot up from his lips and across his cheeks. He had piles of waste in both hands, and with a wet slap, brought them to his mouth. I caught an occasional flash of white from his teeth as he chewed and swallowed the vile substance. The man’s stomach would protest after several handfuls, sending the contents backwards and out of his mouth. He would pause, shake the browned saliva from his face, and then resume the profane feast. A golden coin hung by a chain around his neck, tangled with his dog tags. His hand would grasp it, caressing the object as he mumbled to his chest.
“I wanted to speak but my mouth would not obey. I felt fastened to the spot with only my eyes free to move. The man made no motion towards me. He did not stand and threaten or pursue me either. He simply continued gathering and consuming the feces dispelled by the captives.”
Ravna moved to the edge of his seat and opened his mouth to speak when the old man raised a hand in the air, indicating that it was not yet time for that.
“The man was a Marine and he appeared normal. It was the look in his eye that I can never erase from my memory. Pure evil, dark and malevolent. But it was more than that. The creature oozed desire, craving. The kind that cannot be squelched. It was as if he was an addict of the universe, unable to slake a thirst for the most wicked. The more feces he shoved into his mouth, the more he vomited, and the more feces he had to shove into his mouth. I could see the cycle continuing until the captives died or the man collapsed under the self-poisoning he continued to perpetrate.
“A rooster in the village shrieked. I believe that filthy bird saved me from this monster. It shook me fr
om the spell and I looked over my shoulder to see the first glimmers of the new day cresting the mountain. The beams of fresh sunlight split the darkness and crawled along the floor of the cave. I took a step backward until my heels struck the cave wall. The man stood and turned to face me. Again, I did not feel pursued but more like an animal caught in the snare. The hunter had no reason to rush the slaying of his prey as I was trapped by his gaze. He reached to his belt and removed an egg-shaped object which I later surmised to be a grenade. He looked at me with those eyes that made me want to die. The Marine held the object up and his hand removed the pin from the top. I realized what he had planned on doing so I broke completely from his power and ran for the opening. My feet propelled me as fast as they ever had and I began to count in my head. I had seen enough of the war to understand what was to happen next.
“I counted down. When I reached eight I was thirty yards from the entrance, thirty yards from fresh air and the survival of another day. Six and then five brought me closer, my heart pounding in my chest in a desperate attempt to put me clear of the impending doom. I remember the feeling of flight, of being launched through the air after getting down to three. The hot air pushed me out of the cave and dropped me into jungle brush before the fire followed and scorched the walls I had just run past. Loose pebbles and bits of stone rained down on my head as the thunder of the explosion rang in my ears. I turned to look at the cave. Several boulders had collapsed over the entrance and rolled to a stop, blocking the cave and effectively sealing it forever.
“I scanned the area and saw no sign of the captives or the Marine, and my lungs began to draw air again. I sat and brushed the pulverized stone from my garments when I heard the cackle. I stood and took three steps toward the cave, sensing movement in the jungle to my left. Thin trees waved as if moved by a silent wind. Before I could take another step forward, I saw his form climb onto the rock ledge towards the far end of the mountain. White and gray dust covered his fatigues, but I knew it was the Marine. As if reading my thoughts, he spun around and grinned at me, his bloody mouth covered in brown smears. He winked before climbing over the rock and dropping from my sight. I ran in the opposite direction as fast as I could until I found the trail back to my village.”