Psycho Save Us

by Huskins, Chad

  “What do you mean?” said Kaley. Her tone suggested she was quite through with this game, and her eyes were smoldering.

  But Spencer wasn’t. “Well, you’re both damaged goods now. That’s for sure an’ for certain. O’ course, you both were damaged goods long before ya met Dmitry an’ his family.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you were born in the Bluff,” he said. “Ass end o’ Nowhere Important. You’ve lived there yer whole lives. You were just a pair o’ niggers from the Bluff. Now, one o’ you’s a raped nigger. But they’ll always say that. People that ya meet at school or at future places of employment. If they ever find out about yer past, where you’re from, the fact that you were kidnapped an’ raped,” he laughed mirthlessly, “they’ll cast judgment. Part of ’em will always think ya had it comin’, that you’re genetically predisposed to be victims. They’ll pigeonhole ya, see ya as weak, not worth granting promotions or respect to.”

  “You don’t know anything,” Kaley said.

  “I know the world’s filled with people, an’ that ya can’t trust one single one of ’em. I thought you would’ve learned that by now, too.” He glanced at her in the rearview, saw the enmity in her unblinking eyes, and smiled inwardly. That’s it. That’s what I like to see. “Nobody’s gonna care about your sob story,” he went on, turning right to get farther away from the police chopper. “You’re both alone now. Even with that gift o’ yers, it’s nothin’ but lonely nights from now on. Ya can’t trust any man, we can know that almost to a certainty. Even the ones that help you, you’ll fear them, too. Just like ya fear me.”

  “We’re not afraid of you,” Kaley said.

  “I am,” her sister put in.

  “The little sister is smarter than the big sister,” Spencer mused.

  Kaley gripped Shannon’s hand tight. She looked out her window, saw the liquor stores of Houston Street. This was familiar territory. It wasn’t all too far from Beltway Street, their home. She held out a secret hope that they would survive this night, after all.

  Back in that patch of woods, Kaley had panicked. She was too weak to carry Shan herself, and she didn’t want to go back to the house where it seemed hell had taken up residence. She just wanted to get away, far away with her sister, and Spencer had been her only means for that. But it had been a snap decision, and she realized now it might’ve been smarter to wait for the police.

  She looked at the driver’s seat, at the back of the monster’s head. “My sister needs a hospital.”

  “So you’ve said,” Spencer remarked.

  “Kaley?” Shannon squeezed her hand. “Kaley, is he gonna kill us?”

  “No, Shan.”

  “An’ how do you know that?” the monster posed.

  She looked at his eyes reflected in the rearview mirror. “Because, even though you’re a fucked up piece of shit—”

  “Kaley,” warned Shannon.

  “—you don’t have a thing for kids. You have a thing for…something else.”

  His eyes smiled. Kaley could still feel a slight Connection, a ghost of what was there before, and she felt the glaciers moving again. Cold happiness spilled over her, as well as moist intrigue. There was sour greed, and bitter humiliation. There were slippery slopes of morals, and burning rope bridges that crossed a chasm of logic. These things only made sense with the charm, and Kaley knew that she would forever have a vocabulary about emotions that no others would comprehend. No one, that is, outside of Shannon, once she became old enough to articulate. And even then, words wouldn’t do justice.

  “You’re right,” Spencer said. “Ya nailed it. But what about you? What’re you into?”

  “I’m not into anything,” Kaley said, feeling Shannon squeeze harder.

  “Damn right you’re not. Not anymore. It all stops. Right now, it all stops. Every dream ya ever had about bein’ a mother or a writer or a teacher or an astronaut, that’s all gone. Ya don’t even know it yet, but you’ve already given up. Jovita, Ricky, an’ the rest o’ the world doesn’t know it yet, either, but they’ve given up on ya too.”

  “You like to hear yourself talk,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

  And he didn’t deny it. “I do. Talkin’ helps me think.” He tapped his temple with two fingers, then snapped his fingers. “Keeps me sharp. But let’s get back to you guys an’ what you’re gonna do after all o’ this is over.”

  “No,” Kaley said, raising her voice. “No! I’m sick of this! I’m sick of your…your…your gloating! My sister needs to get to a hospital, and…and…we’ve fucking endured enough for one night! We know you don’t care about anybody but yourself, and that you’re so fucking smart and that you did all this and still didn’t get caught! You must be so fucking proud! We’re happy for you! Now,” she screamed, tears letting loose, “LET US OUT!”

  The car fell silent. Shannon squeezed Big Sister’s hand harder, if that was possible.

  In the driver’s seat, the Monster was unmoved. Spencer checked his driver’s side mirror, switched on his blinker, and merged left. He drove them another block, checking the blood leaking out the side of his face. He spat out the window. Then, finally, he said, “We’re all in this together, ya know?” He sounded different now. Kaley couldn’t quite say how, but he was a little less…cocky? “Monsters, saints, innocents, psychopaths and telempaths. This is the dance we do. The dance macabre.”

  Kaley felt a lurching inside her gut. She felt nauseous, exactly like she had in the basement, exactly as she had when she used to get vertigo. Then, she realized it was only because they were slowing down.

  Kaley looked out the windows all around her. The car had stopped in the middle of an empty street. There were no cars parked on the sidewalks, no people walking, no stores opened. The street was somewhat familiar. She believed it was Vernon Street, but she couldn’t be sure. “What’re we doing here?” she said.

  “What does it look like?” he asked. “And remember our bet. If it turns out a police officer was involved with the Rainbow Room, then I’ll be back in a few years to collect my money.”

  “What if I don’t have that much money?” she asked, stalling and she didn’t know why.

  “I’m sure you’ll find a way to raise it.”

  “What if you end up in jail? They’ll catch you sooner or later, you know.”

  Spencer shrugged, as if to say maybe. “It’ll be kinda hard. I won’t be in this country much longer. I’ve got a date with the rest o’ Dmitry’s family.”

  The hairs stood up on the back of Kaley’s neck. “What do you mean?”

  He smiled. “Genghis Khan said somethin’ else. ‘The greatest happiness is to scatter yer enemy, to drive him before you, to see those who loved him shrouded in tears, an’ to gather into your bosom his wives and daughters.’ Dmitry said he had daughters.”

  “You’re…you’re going after them?”

  Again, he shrugged a maybe.

  She looked out the windows again. “And you’re just going to let us go now?”

  Spencer said nothing.

  Kaley had felt hope rise and fall tonight, had been denied it, and now believed that if she moved, the monster might turn and kill her and her sister. It could be a trick, she thought. He can’t trust us not to talk. The fire that she had felt just seconds before left her. She felt depleted again.

  And the Monster knew why. “It’s called learned helplessness,” he said. “A puppy gets held inside its cage for a year. It sees other puppies running freely, playin’ an’ havin’ fun. Then one day you open that cage an’ let the puppy out, but when it takes a couple o’ steps you give it a shock with a stun gun or a shock collar. Next time ya open that cage, that puppy won’t come out. For the rest of its life, it’ll stay in that cage. It learned that it’s hopeless, that to even try to escape will bring pain.” He looked at her in the rearview. “You scared, puppy?” Kaley said nothing. She felt her knees shaking. Spencer smiled. “Yeah,” he laughed. “Yeah, you’re scared.”

 
Then, Kaley thought of Olga…and Mikhael…and Dmitry. She had kindling then, and burned them in her heart. “Fuck you!” she growled, and tore open the door and dragged her sister out onto the silent street. The Grand Prix squealed off before her sister’s feet had even hit the ground, and she heard the mad laughter until the car disappeared around the corner.

  And she would hear it every night for the rest of her life.

  Kaley helped Shan to her feet. Shan was sniffling and quivering, but as soon as she stood up she wrapped her arms around Big Sister and squeezed. Kaley could barely breathe, and didn’t care. They both fell to their knees, crying. The Anchor rooted them to that spot. Relief swelled in their veins, baptized them and, for a moment in time, they had each other and nothing else. No pain. No past or future conflicts. And, most importantly, no fear.

  Kaley was the first to pry them apart. “C’mon,” she said, wiping Shannon’s eyes and nose while Shannon wiped hers.

  They got to their feet and staggered down one street after the next. Signs seemed to pass them. Jerry’s Car Titles & Loans. Ray’s Auto. Fancy Eats. Cynthia’s Furniture Store. Kaley stopped at each of these, slamming her hand on the windows to see if anyone was working there. The sun wasn’t up yet, but the sky had gone from pure-black to navy-blue. The clouds were parted, and tearing off in different directions.

  Kaley rattled the cage doors of each store, and cupped her hands to look in through the windows. She grabbed Shannon’s hand and pulled her on. Her little sister’s pants were soaked with blood, and Kaley had almost asked the question before Shan said, “I’m okay, Kaley.” These words sounded more mature somehow, not quite so tiny. Kaley didn’t know it yet, but those exact words would be repeated back to her by Little Sister for the rest of her life, through many discussions. “I’m okay, Kaley,” she would say whenever Big Sister gave her a call in the middle of the night for no reason. “Really, I’m okay. Are you okay?”

  And that was the question, wasn’t it? Despite being so young—or perhaps because of it?—Shannon seemed to be taking what had happened to her better than Kaley was. What had scared Shan the most was the house, and everything about it. She’d been mostly unconscious throughout the entire ordeal, yet still she had experienced it somehow. Tectonic plates had shifted, ruptured even, causing a serious realignment of Shannon’s person. Kaley would eventually theorize that she hadn’t just empathized with her sister throughout the ordeal, but that she had actually absorbed some of her sister’s pain, like a sponge. I am my sister’s keeper, she would come to think, and often. I bared the burden to lighten her load.

  The house.

  The memory came back to her, rattling her. It…it wasn’t so much what she’d seen as what it all implied. If the Monster was correct, then hell and punishment had no aim, no direction, and there was no “prime directive” of heaven. Some powerful being had made the universe, perhaps as an afterthought, an offshoot of some other experiment, and then had walked away from it without giving it a second thought.

  What if he’s not even aware that we’re here? Kaley pondered, even as she pulled her sister farther down the street. What if it’s, like…like when you make some clay jar for your mother in second-grade art class. It sits on the shelf a year or two, maybe you’re proud of it, but eventually…

  “Eventually everyone forgets about it,” she said to herself. The clay jar is not just misplaced, it’s forgotten. It’s as though the clay jar never was. If it falls in a garbage dump and gets shattered, who knows that it needs fixing? What’s worse, who cares? The universe was a happenstance, a side alley to other things, a—what had the monster called it?—a Forgotten Place. Like Avery Street, a place left unchecked, and now occupied by whoever took advantage first.

  Aunt Tabby, you were both right and wrong. There is a god, but he doesn’t even know about us. He’s moved on.

  “And so should we,” she whispered. Beside her, Shan looked at her. She squeezed Big Sister’s hand, this time to give reassurance, not to get it.

  All at once, Kaley knew where this thinking was coming from. It was her brief but intense shared link with the Monster. Some of him had spilled over. She hadn’t kept all his skills at lock picking, but she had retained something. Something in his character was imprinted onto her, absorbed, just as she’d absorbed some of Shan. Something…pensive.

  “Kaley?” Shannon said. “I think I hear a car coming.”

  Headlights coming around the corner up ahead. The motor was getting louder. Kaley and Shan stood alone on the sidewalk. She touched grabbed her sister’s hand and pulled her close to a lamppost and a pair of newspaper stands. They huddled there, watched it drive past. After it was gone, Kaley realized that the Monster had been right. She would never trust another car again. Not another night. Not another stranger. Not another person who looked even remotely like the Oni family.

  They plodded on, through the streets, through their lives, searching for someone who cared, for someone who could be trusted, for someone they could love.

  The icepack was laid across his face, and Leon accepted it gratefully. He lay on his stretcher, looking across to the body of Agent Porter, who was DOA when the medics got there. A white blanket was laid over his upper torso and head, his hands at his side, and one of the officers saying a prayer over him.

  The oxygen mask was placed over his face, and he began to breathe. “Detective?” someone was saying. “Detective, can you hear me? Give me a thumbs up if you can—good. Very good. All right, let’s load him up.”

  Someone grabbed one of his hands. “Yo, Leon!” It was McDevitt. His partner Keitrich had been taken away, but whether he was alive or dead or simply dying, Leon didn’t know. “Yo, man, you’re gonna be all right. Hear me? You’re—”

  “David,” he said. “David went…to the house…”

  “We’ll find him, man. Don’t you worry about that, all right? You just focus on you right now.”

  “Find him…find David…”

  His stomach growled.

  The time on the dashboard read 6:02 AM when he rolled onto Blankenship Avenue, then down Donald L. Hollowell Parkway from the north. This one took him to another street that looked familiar. There was a closed car wash, two small grocery stores, and a car title pawn shop called Strike Gold. Whattaya know? Beltway Street, my ol’ friend, we meet again.

  Not a mile down the road, there was the flashing sign, missing its letters: D ds n’s St e.

  Spencer didn’t know where else to go at the moment. He cut a few more pieces of cloth to absorb the blood, which was still pushing out but with less intensity than before. The strips of cloth he’d used earlier had soaked completely through. He’d read somewhere that you should never remove the old blood-soaked bandages, rather you should add new ones to the top of the old ones, to keep damming the flow.

  Spencer had been considering Dmitry’s last words. He already didn’t really trust his eyes with all he’d seen, and wondered where Derbent was on a map. He didn’t think he’d ever heard of it. He supposed he could get a smartphone from Hector in Memphis and look it up on the Internet.

  He pulled the Grand Prix to a stop right in front of Dodson’s Store, and hopped out. The sky was lightening. Morning was come. The street was completely empty. Not a creature was stirring, Spencer thought, not even a mouse. He smiled, and that was a mistake. It hurt, and more blood flowed out of his face. He checked himself in the mirror. He was turning pale. If he didn’t find some blood clot soon and someone to stitch him, he could be in serious trouble. Luckily, he knew a guy outside of Atlanta, and Hector up in Memphis. The two of them ought to be able to hide him for a time. It meant leaving behind Pat and the job he’d been given, but things were too hot for him to stay here now.

  His stomach growled. But first, a fucker’s gotta eat, he thought, stepping out of the car. He spat a gob of blood onto the pavement. When he stepped inside Dodson’s, the chime over the door jingled. The music now playing wasn’t Akon’s, but Nicki Minaj, telling the world that if s
he got a certain look from a man then her panties were coming off. He tapped his feet to the beat for a minute.

  “What…the…?”

  Spencer glanced over to the counter. “S’up, Mac?” he said. The big man was standing behind the counter, his little TV showing Star Wars. By the look of it, it was that first disaster, The Phantom Menace. Mac was still wearing his Falcons jersey, and still as fat Spencer remembered.

  “What the fuck happened to you, bra?” He had started to walk around the counter but stopped, either because he couldn’t fit or because he wasn’t certain what he was going to do with a man bleeding to death in his store.

  “Ya got any bandages? Alcohol an’ some swabs? Any kinda medical aid section?”

  Mac just pointed a fat finger.

  Spencer tipped a cowboy hat he wasn’t wearing. “Much obliged.” He went into the back, and was pleasantly surprised to find that Dodson, whoever the fuck he was, had stocked just two small containers of QuikClot. “Niiiiiice,” he said, lifting them off the shelf. There were nine boxes of bandages, and Spencer took all of them, as well. At the counter, he said, “Another burger if you would, please.”

  “Fuck, brotha, you look like you in mad need of a hospital.”

  “I’m fiendin’ for a burger right now, Mac. I need it. I need it like you need to take that jersey off an’ throw it in the dumpster.”

  “I ain’t got no more burgers, dawg.”

  “Somethin’ quick then. Like a, uh, I dunno, a fuckin’ reheated hot dog or some shit. Nachos to go. Ya got anything like that? An’ a Coke…no, bottle water?” Mac studied him a heartbeat longer, then nodded and went to get it. When he came back, he tossed a bottle of water and a reheated hot dog onto the countertop and stared at him a minute. Spencer’s eyes had gone to the TV. “You ever seen Plinkett’s review o’ those Star Wars prequels?”