Sam let the notebook fall from his hands onto his lap. He was going nuts, that’s what it meant. He was sure of it. What kind of a person wrote this stuff and didn’t remember it? Was he scribbling it in his sleep? He wasn’t even a Civil War buff. He didn’t even know some of the terminology he’d written with his own hand, with his own pen. Wiping a palm across his forehead, he noticed he’d broken out in a cold sweat.
From downstairs Molly hollered, “Hon, I got the plastic. You ready?”
He had no idea. He tried to change gears and think about the window, the plastic, the gaping hole pouring cold air into the house, but he couldn’t do it.
A knock, quiet and hesitant, cut through his thoughts. “Daddy?”
Sam swallowed hard and steadied his voice. “Yeah, baby girl?”
“Do you have my notebook? The one I write my stories in?”
Prickles took to Sam’s arms. Her notebook. The one he’d been writing his stories in. He couldn’t let her see the entries. She couldn’t know what was happening to him. “Uh, yeah, I have it. Just a minute.”
Ten
THE MAN DROVE HIS 1998 DODGE INTREPID WELL INTO THE night. He didn’t bother noting the time. It didn’t matter. These days he rarely slept anyway. His metabolism was in overdrive, causing insatiable hunger and a terrible case of insomnia. Sleep was as rare for him as a raucous nightlife was for a nun.
His destination: Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. That hallowed soil had swallowed the blood of fifty-one thousand men over three days in the summer of 1863. He tried to imagine the carnage of that battle. The ground soaked and stained red. Dead bodies piled and bloating under the summer sun. The moans and cries of the wounded. The smell of rot and decay. One of the bloodiest battles in American history. He knew his facts. He had no idea how he knew them, but the numbers were there in his head, along with an encyclopedia of other junk. Useless stuff. Stuff like the population of Fargo (ninety-three thousand), the lifespan of the common housefly (about twenty-one days), and the world’s tallest tree (a Mendocino redwood in California, 364 feet).
But none of that mattered at the moment. The only thing that mattered was the target, and she was in Gettysburg.
He’d first been instructed about the target a few days ago, over the phone. The voice on the line had called him Symon, though he doubted that was his real name, his birth name. Fact was, he had few recollections earlier than a couple of months ago. They were spotty at best, like headlights whizzing by in the dark. Except these headlights were the stuff of nightmares, the kind that turned into fiery eyes above toothy jaws waiting to chomp down and eat him alive.
The male voice was familiar, though he couldn’t identify it. No amount of pondering could jar that memory loose from the concrete in his head. The man gave him information, directions, and orders, and he felt compelled to obey them—like a soldier following his superior’s commands.
Even as the voice kept him connected to this world, his thoughts wandered to a world of sketches and snapshots, of broken memories and lost history …
His earliest memory was of his stepfather stuffing him into a closet at the age of five. He can’t remember why he’d been put there or how long he stayed, but he tasted blood, warm and metallic on his lips, and he nestled back past the coats that smelled like his mother’s Miss Dior perfume. The darkness brought safety and seclusion. He tried not to focus on the line of light beneath the door. It was only as thick as his little finger, but it scared the stuffing out of him. There was no comfort in it. The light, that single line of light, reminded him of the cold world where mothers are beaten senseless and boys are locked away.
His next memory whizzed by. It was four years later. The drunk was still a drunk, maybe even worse—if that’s possible—and this was the first time Symon saw the man’s hands on Symon’s older sister. She was sixteen and had no friends. When she walked past the drunk in the Barcalounger, she tried to steer clear, but he leaned over and got his hand on her rear. She did nothing to push it away, and their mother acted like she didn’t notice. But Symon noticed, and he hated the drunk even more.
In the dark of the night, with only the dash lights to illuminate the Intrepid’s interior, Symon pushed a tear from his eye. He had no idea if the drunk was still alive; that wasn’t part of his flashcard memory. He did know, though, that the car was low on gas, and if he didn’t get a fill soon, he’d be stranded and lose precious time.
A few miles down the road, he pulled into a twenty-four-hour convenience store and stopped alongside a gas pump. A handwritten sign said:
Please pre-pay after dark.
Thank you, Management.
When Symon inserted the nozzle into the tank and squeezed the lever, nothing happened. He squeezed again with the same result. A knock on the store window caused him to turn. A man was there, forty-something, pudgy, bald, rubbing his fingers together, making the sign of money. Symon smiled and entered the store.
“You gotta pay first, buddy,” the man behind the counter said. “You didn’t see the sign?” His tone called Symon an idiot. He had a high-pitched, almost squeaky Porky Pig voice that plucked at Symon’s nerves.
“Guess I missed it,” Symon said. “Let me get some supplies for the road first.”
The place was a dump, one of those stop-and-shop jobs that were dirty, dingy, never stocked well, and rarely frequented by the locals. Symon walked down an aisle and grabbed several candy bars, a bag of chips, a few snack cakes, and three Cokes. He dropped his supplies on the counter in front of the register.
Porky chuckled. Symon hated the way it made the man’s double chin quiver like a half-filled water balloon. “Got a long trip ahead of you?”
Symon didn’t return the smile. “What state is this?”
The amusement disappeared from Porky’s face. “You don’t know? You’re in Virginia, man. Just outside Lynchburg.”
“How far to Gettysburg?”
“Pennsylvania?”
Symon said nothing.
“Um, well, if you get on 81, it’s ’bout five hours maybe.” He gave a nervous laugh. “Depends on how fast you drive, you know?”
Symon looked from the supplies to Porky. “I do.”
“You some kind of Civil War buff? ’Cause we got—”
“Thirty in gas,” Symon said.
“OK. Thirty it is.” A thin film of sweat had formed on Porky’s expansive forehead. His nervousness pleased Symon. After ringing up the supplies, the clerk said, “That’ll be forty-four dollars and sixty-two cents.”
Symon looked around. “You here alone tonight?”
Porky looked at his watch. His right eye twitched. “Actually, it’s morning.”
“Do you like working the graveyard shift?”
Porky didn’t answer right away. He stuck one finger—the thing looked like a stubby hot dog—in his collar and loosened it, revealing dirt-crusted creases in his neck. “Forty-four dollars and sixty-two cents, please.”
“Do I look familiar to you?”
The question obviously caught Porky off guard because he removed the finger from his collar and swallowed hard, forcing a weak smile. “No … no, sir. I’ve never seen you before. Never at all.”
Symon leaned over the counter and drilled him with a stare. “You sure? Look closely. It really is a matter of life or death.”
The sweat had increased on Porky’s forehead and now beaded on his cheeks and chin. His lower lip quivered. “I, uh … well, I … maybe, I mean, I can’t be sure, you know, we see a lot of customers around here, tourists moving through, people just like yourself, and, you know, so many faces it’s hard to tell.”
“Have you ever been robbed?” Symon had had enough of Porky’s blathering. “Held at gunpoint and forced to do something you didn’t want to do?”
The clerk’s hand moved from the countertop to his side. His eyes were wide and buggy, and his lower lip trembled even more now. The quiver made it to his neck and jiggled the fat surrounding it. It disgusted Symon. He hated th
is man, this common gas station clerk. He reached into his jacket pocket, wrapped his fingers around the grip of his handgun.
In his mind he saw how it would play out. He’d put three holes in Porky’s thick neck, driving the man back into the pane of glass shielding stacks of cigarettes. He would slip to the floor as crystalline rain fell around his writhing body.
Porky’s eyes darted from Symon to the ceiling and then back to Symon. The security camera. He couldn’t leave a trail. It would ruin his entire mission. So instead of the Beretta, Symon pulled out a money clip and handed the clerk a fifty.
With shaky hands Porky counted out the change and gave it to Symon, with no further words being exchanged between the two.
After filling the Intrepid, Symon got back on the road toward Gettysburg.
Three hours later, after consuming most of the candy bars and one and a half Cokes, he saw another memory creep toward him with its fiery eyes and toothy snarl …
He was fifteen. Angry. He hated his sister for letting the drunk use her up. He hated his mother for keeping the man around. And he hated the drunk for a variety of reasons. A montage of still images stuttered by:
His mother on the kitchen floor, crying, her jaw displaced and bleeding.
His sister near the counter, hands over her mouth and blood on her shirt.
The drunk hulking near the door, gripping a baseball bat in both hands, face twisted like a demon’s.
Then motion returned to Symon’s memory. He ran from the kitchen, eyes blurred with tears and hatred, as the drunk hollered something foul at him. He was in his bedroom, with the .22 he had snuck into the house and hid under his bed. He’d never used it, saving it for a time such as this. Quickly, with trembling hands, he made sure the magazine was securely in place, clicked off the safety, and stumbled down the stairs.
Back in the kitchen his mother was still crying, her whimpers muffled by her hands. His sister was screaming something incoherent, and the drunk was cursing, telling them both to shut up. Just as Symon arrived, the drunk raised the bat to bring it down on Symon’s sister. In one swift motion, yelling like an idiot, Symon lifted the rifle, pointed the barrel at the bulk of the drunk’s torso, and squeezed off a shot. He didn’t even hear the concussion of the gun. The drunk snapped back, dropped the bat, and clawed at his gut. Symon didn’t hear the boom of the next three shots, and the next three after that.
His final memory, another snapshot, was of the kitchen linoleum coated in sticky red.
Eleven
MOLLY AWOKE IN THE DARKNESS WITH THE FEELING something was wrong. She’d had no nightmare, no dreams of any kind, in fact. The smoke detector wasn’t screaming; there was no acrid smell of smoke in the air. Sam was next to her, asleep. Wide-eyed, she lay still on her back, hands clasped to her chest, and listened. Outside the wind howled, and she imagined a hundred long-haired, snaggle-toothed, hollow-eyed ghouls circling the house, crying a mournful dirge—an image from a recurrent childhood nightmare.
Molly heard a voice from down the hall, carrying over the baying of the wind and the occasional creaks of the house. It was Eva. On the bedside table the clock’s numbers clicked from 3:01 to 3:02.
Molly’s first thought was that Eva was talking in her sleep. It wouldn’t be the first time. Last year she’d gone through a bout where almost every night she emerged from her room in a lazy sleepwalk, mumbling nonsensically about needing to do this or watch out for that, asking how the green water got on the sofa and where it came from. Her pediatrician said that the stresses of first grade sometimes manifested themselves in children sleepwalking and talking in their sleep. Within weeks the episodes sputtered out and never surfaced again. Until now.
Molly pushed off her covers and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. Behind her Sam grunted, then rolled over. Eva was still jabbering away, though Molly couldn’t make out what she was saying. Nothing unusual.
As long as her daughter wasn’t wandering the halls or navigating the steps, Molly would just tuck her in, pat her head, give a little kiss, and let her continue her harmless prattling.
Out of the bedroom and down the hallway Molly walked, shuffling her slippers so as not to stumble on one of the toys left out from the previous day of play. She stopped at Eva’s closed door. Her daughter was holding quite the conversation with her sleep friends.
“… Max likes to play hide-and-seek. That’s his favorite game of all time. He’s really good too. His best hiding place is under the bed. And he’s not even scared of the dark under there.”
There was a break in the rambling, and for a moment Molly thought Eva was finished. Then she started up again.
“No, I’m not really scared of the dark. Well, sometimes I am. Not when my night-light is on, though. And not when you’re here with me.”
An electric static buzzed over Molly, and every inch of her skin tightened. This was not the idle chatter of sleep talk. It was too coherent, made too much sense. And as far as Molly knew, Eva had no invisible friends. She was a child with an active and colorful imagination, but she’d never taken it in that direction. Her feet had stayed firmly rooted in the soil of reality.
Molly pushed open the door and found Eva sitting Indian-style on her bed, the covers clumped at the foot of the mattress. She was holding Max in her lap and appeared wide-awake, as alert at 3:00 a.m. as she had been at 3:00 p.m.
Uneasy, Molly approached her daughter, hoping Eva’s conversation was with Max the stuffed dog and no one else. “Eva? What’re you doing, baby?”
Eva looked from her mother to the corner of the bedroom, causing Molly to glance back over her shoulder, but the room was empty. No uninvited visitor lurked in the corner. “Nothing,” Eva said. “I couldn’t sleep.”
For a moment her daughter’s eyes looked glassy, and Molly thought she was indeed still asleep. “Baby, are you awake?”
Eva grinned. “Yeah.”
“How many fingers am I holding up?” She held her hand at face level, all five fingers splayed. This was the test she always used to determine if Eva was awake or not.
Eva’s smile grew bigger. “Four … and one thumb.” Molly wanted to laugh but didn’t. Definitely awake. She sat next to Eva and ran her hand over her daughter’s soft hair. “Who were you talking to?”
Eva glanced at the corner again. “Jacob.” She pointed. “He’s right over there.”
The prickles were back, tickling Molly’s skin like insect legs. She saw nothing but Eva’s dresser in the corner.
“I don’t see anyone.”
Eva continued pointing. “He’s right there. He’s all shiny, like someone dipped him in glue and rolled him in sparkles.”
OK, so maybe Eva did have an invisible friend. That was normal for kids, right? And it didn’t surprise Molly one bit that Eva’s friend would be sparkly, since her daughter loved anything with glitter or sequins.
Molly smoothed Eva’s hair again. “All right, beautiful, but it’s time to go back to sleep now. You have school in the morning. And your brain needs some rest. OK?”
Eva flopped back against her pillow. “OK, Mommy. I guess I am a little tired.”
“Thatta girl.” Molly stood, pulled the covers up to Eva’s shoulders, and folded them back at the top. Molly thought of her own childhood. Having a father with a short fuse, she had acquired some dysfunctional ideas of what a friend should be like. And her imaginary friends hadn’t always been kind.
She knelt beside the bed. “Eva, is Jacob nice to you?”
“He’s the nicest grown-up I know. Besides you and Daddy. He tells me to be brave and to pray for you and Daddy all the time. You would like him.”
“He’s a grown-up?” Molly wasn’t expecting that. She had it in her head that Jacob was a fellow seven-year-old. A child. The playmate that Eva missed by not having brothers or sisters.
“Yeah. He has really white hair.”
“What else does he tell you?”
Eva shrugged. “All kinds of stuff. He tells me how special I
am and how much God loves me. But mostly he tells me to pray for Daddy. I think he’s worried about him.”
Twelve
MORNING CAME AND WITH IT THE PADDING OF LITTLE FEET on the steps. Eva was awake. Sam heard her from his seat on a barstool at the kitchen counter, where he was watching Molly throw together some scrambled eggs and toast. Eva rounded the corner still in her pajamas, holding Max close to her chest, rubbing her eye with her other hand. Sleep lines crisscrossed one side of her face.
“Morning, baby,” Molly said.
Sam tousled his daughter’s hair. “Good morning, sweetness.”
“Good mornin’.” Eva gave Sam a hug, laying her head on his lap. “I love you, Daddy.”
Eva’s words from yesterday came back to Sam. The words from the strange visitor in her dream. He told me to tell Daddy I love him every day and make sure he knows it. And he said Daddy’s real scared and needs my prayers.
“I love you too, little buddy.” He rubbed her back in slow circles. These were the moments he wanted to bottle and put away on the shelf, that shelf in the root cellar of his mind, where memories were sealed and catalogued for a future time when tenderness would seem alien and sentimentalism a priceless medicine. In these moments he loved her so much that it hurt right down to his bones.
Eva looked up at him. “What’s the matter, Daddy?”
He said Daddy’s real scared and needs my prayers.
“Not a thing. Don’t you worry about me.”
“Are you scared?”
“No,” Sam said, sounding as confident and nonchalant as possible. “What makes you ask that?”
Eva did not respond to his question, but the look on her face said it all: because Jacob told her he was. Instead she said, “No reason. Just making sure.”
Molly filled three plates with eggs and toast. “Who’s hungry?” she said.
Popping up like a jack-in-the-box, Eva shouted, “I am,” and climbed onto a barstool.
Molly put a plate in front of her. “Look, chick, when you’re finished with this, I want you to run upstairs and get dressed for school. Your clothes are on your dresser. We have to get going soon, all right?”
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