by R. G. Ryan
“Mikey!” Brett Hansen, Vanessa’s new brother-in-law, hailed from the table where a beautiful wedding cake was displayed. “It’s time, bro.”
“Sure thing…we’ll be right there,” Michael answered.
I said, “You need any help navigating between here and there?”
He looked up at me, and then at Cassie who still sat on his lap.
“Well, if you can help get this loose woman off my lap, I think I can manage.”
“Oh,” Cassie replied with raised eyebrows. “Loose woman, is it? May I simply say—and, Uncle, you may want to cover your ears—you have no idea just how ‘loose’ I am prepared to be, mister!”
With a laugh, she started to climb off his lap when he grabbed her, holding her in place.
“What?” she asked, a smile dancing playfully around her eyes.
“Oh, I was just thinking that I have waited a long time for this day. Twelve years if you’re counting.”
“Twelve years? How do you figure?”
“Well, I’m twenty-eight now and when you proposed to me…”
“When I proposed to you!” she replied.
“Yeah, don’t you remember? That day in study hall when you announced that we were going to be married?”
“I remember it,” I said. “In fact, you told me about it when you got home from school.”
She waved off my comment.
“Oh, that? I was just trying to get Michael’s attention. I can’t believe you remembered that.”
“Well,” he replied. “You definitely got my attention and have held it ever since, I might add.”
“Now what is this?” Muriel exclaimed as she and Aaron came up behind them, followed by Eddie, Gabi and Vanessa.
Cassie had made good on her promise to Eddie that she’d have a place to live when everything was over. It had, therefore, been decided that Muriel would purchase Cassie’s condo and live there with Eddie and Vanessa until the day Aaron eventually got around to making a proposal of marriage to Muriel.
“Looks like a private love-in, you ask me,” Aaron said with a smile.
As Cassie climbed off of Michael’s lap, he asked for everyone’s attention.
“In case I don’t get a chance to say this, you have all been life and breath to us over these past few months. There’s no way this wedding or my recovery could have happened without you.”
“Oh, please,” Gabi said. “It was our pleasure.”
Gabi’s response was echoed by everyone.
In the background we could hear Kirk Whalum’s classic, “In This Life,” as it played over the speaker system.
Michael and Aaron together sang sincerely, but badly, “The only dream that mattered has come true. In this life I was loved…by you.”
We all laughed, probably louder and longer than we should have, but it felt so good we couldn’t resist.
Muriel moved close to Aaron, literally wrapping herself around him and playing with the buttons on his tuxedo.
“The Minister is still here, Aaron…we could, you know…”
“I, ah…I don’t…” he said, as a flush crept up his neck.
“Yes?” her eyes twinkled with pure pleasure at the discomfort she was inflicting upon him.
“Guys!” Brett hollered from the cake table. “We gonna do this or what?”
A look of relief flooded Aaron’s features as he hollered, “Saved! Yes, indeed.”
Muriel batted her eyes demurely, “So, was that a ‘yes?’”
“Now cut that out!” Aaron said as he pulled her tightly to his side and began to walk toward the rest of the gathering.
Having been asked to present the wedding toast, Michael’s father, Sid, moved behind the table and accepted a glass of Champagne from Vanessa’s sister, Laurie.
When the conversation quieted and he was sure he had the group’s attention, Sid said, “It gives me great pleasure as father of the groom to make this toast.”
Everyone held their glasses aloft, beaming good will toward the bride and groom.
“Michael, Cassandra, this is a great day. But if there is one thing your mom and I have learned after forty years of marriage it’s this: this is only a beginning, for the process of becoming one will last a lifetime. So here’s to you…Mr. and Mrs. Michael James Harvey. May you feel no rain, for each will be a shelter to the other. May you feel no cold, for each of you will be warmth to the other. May beauty surround you on the journey ahead and through all the coming years, and may happiness be your constant companion until you find the place where the river meets the sun.”
The glasses were drained and an energetic ovation sounded from the small but boisterous gathering.
When it had died, Abby, Vanessa’s eight year-old niece said, “Okay, no more speeches and no more kissing! Can we please eat the cake.”
We all laughed.
And then we ate and laughed some more.
And then we danced to the music of the Aaron Perry jazz trio.
And it was good.
Eddie approached shyly and asked Gabi if she would mind if I danced with her.
“Oh, not at all,” Gabi replied. “But, I have to warn you…he’s terrible!”
“I am not terrible,” I said in my defense, although the indictment was indisputably and demonstrably true. “I’m just…how should I put it…”
“Terrible!” Cassie, Muriel and Gabi all said in unison to everyone’s amusement.
Promising to grant me a full measure of grace, Eddie led me out onto the dance floor that had been laid over the sand.
After a few turns she said, “I have a question for you.”
“Okay.”
“It’s kind of an odd question.”
“Now you’ve got my attention.”
She sighed.
“What do you see when you look at me? And I’m not fishing for compliments.”
I pulled back as if appraising her.
“What do I see when I look at you? Well, it goes without saying that you are a beautiful young woman. I mean, look at you, Eddie. You have the attributes that every woman dreams of having…in abundance!”
“I know, I know…the body, the hair, the looks. But besides that…what do you see?” she reiterated impatiently.
Sensing a moment, I chose my words carefully.
“Why, I see in you the promise of a life yet to be lived. Of joys yet undiscovered—of hope rediscovered. I see…my friend.”
We stopped dancing and she hugged me. Tightly. As if she never wanted to let go.
“Oh, thank-you, Jake. You have no idea how much that means to me.”
Then she kissed me lightly on the cheek and walked away, wiping tears from her eyes.
Eddie was facing a long road ahead. I had walked it before with Muriel, Vanessa and Cassie, and as a family we were now walking it with her. Out of all of them, Eddie had suffered the most. But she was coming along. She was definitely coming along.
“What was that all about?” Gabi said as she stepped in to fill Eddie’s vacated place in my arms.
“That was the start of something.”
“Can you be more specific?”
“Well, maybe. Let’s just say that the seeds we’ve all been planting these past six months are finally starting to germinate.”
“Wonderful,” she breathed against my neck. “I just love gardening. Don’t you?”
The guests stayed way too long but no one seemed to notice, certainly not the bride and groom who remained at the center of things until nearly everyone had gone. The few of us who were left eventually moved the party back inside and now sat in a circle in Michael’s den, talking quietly…wearily…while sipping our preferred vintage.
Michael’s parents had gone back to their hotel leaving the rest of the celebration to us “young folks.”
Abby was sleeping on Brett’s lap—who was also asleep himself—while Vanessa and Laurie talked about Vanessa’s upcoming
semester at the Morgan Sommers Dance Academy in Hollywood.
Aaron, Michael and Pete Tolles—former bad guy for hire and now trusted associate—were discussing Pete’s boast that he could more than likely pop a wheelie in Michael’s wheelchair, a boast that Aaron seemed close to calling him on.
Muriel, Eddie and Gabi sat quietly, just observing and listening. The smiles that lit their faces didn’t seem to want to leave.
Cassie sat with her head leaning against my shoulder.
“You know, Uncle,” she started quietly. “After Michael was released from the hospital and I finally, you know, wanted to tell him about the HIV…I really didn’t know where to begin, or how to even bring it up.”
“I’ve been wondering about that,” I mused.
“Yeah, well, it was the most amazing thing. I started to tell him and he reached over and put a finger against my lips, shushed me and said that he already knew.”
“How is that possible?”
“Remember that first doctor in Seattle who examined me?”
“The one in the ER?”
“Yes. Well, Michael’s dad reached out to him after I had come back home.”
“I remember that. He actually asked my permission before he did it. He wasn’t being nosey. He was just concerned and wanting to do whatever was necessary to bring you back to health.”
She nodded slowly.
“The doctor told him that while he couldn’t speak to the specifics of his diagnosis, what he could tell him was that besides being addicted to several drugs, I also showed signs of, as he put it, ‘prolonged sexual brutalization.’” Her voice broke with emotion at the memory. “And that…that while he couldn’t test me without my permission, given my sexual history, he said there was a high degree of probability that…that I would test positive for HIV.”
“So, Michael knew all along.”
She nodded silently, then a soft, “Yes.”
I shook my head slowly at the revelation.
“He knew about it for years and yet he was willing to be with you anyway.”
“It’s remarkable, isn’t it? And to think that I almost left him because I didn’t have the courage to tell him something he already knew.” She paused and then continued, “Before everyone got here today, he called me into his bedroom and had me sit on the bed. Then he said, ‘I don’t know if I can explain this, but let me try. Being infected with HIV was a potential death sentence for you, and perhaps me as well…even if we were careful. And learning about it when I did and how it all came about broke my heart. But I guess I just figured—as you informed me that day in study hall—because we were meant to be together, that ‘together’ didn’t have to be perfect, it just had to…be. No strings attached, no conditions. In other words, way before this day when the minister will make it official, in my heart I had already promised to love you in sickness and in health, ‘til death separates us. So there was never any question of whether I would be with you, because in my heart…I have always been with you.’”
I let her sob quietly for a few moments before saying, “You’ve been given such a gift, Cassie. I’m not sure of everything that happened down in that mine, but I know something happened—something happened to you, to all of us. Something that none of us deserved. Aaron calls it, ‘grace.’ I’m not sure I understand all of what that means, but I’m working on it. And, I’ll take it…I’ll definitely take it.”
Cassie laid her head on my chest.
“I was thinking. What if that whole thing—you know with the kidnapping and everything—happened just so that I could be exposed to that…whatever it was up there on the bluffs? So I could be normal? There was no other way, you know. Nothing short of a miracle could have done it.”
“Then I’d say that it was almost too wonderful to comprehend.”
Later…much later, after Michael and Cassie had departed for their honeymoon, we all fell asleep to the music of the night birds whose plaintive cries, carried softly on the midnight breeze, wafted through the open patio doors.
Safe in the shelter of the love we all had for each other.
Safe in the company of dear friends.
Safe.
Author’s Notes
“The Haunts Of Cruelty” began its life in early 2000. Back then it was called, “Desert Dreams”, and was the first novel I’d ever attempted. It was also the birth of Jake Moriarity and his family. However, in the original iteration, Michael Harvey was the protagonist—still Cassie’s fiancé—Jake was a secondary character and Aaron Perry was called Eddie Washington.
Over a period of eighteen months or so, I worked very hard on the novel and eventually saw it through to its 122,000-word completion. After that, I did four re-writes; spent seven or eight months editing, writing a synopsis and a query letter and sending it out to eight literary agents. None of them hated it. It just wasn’t what they were looking for at the time and to a person they encouraged me to stay at it because I was not “without talent.” Which I figured was a kind way of saying, “Well, you don’t suck, kid, but you really don’t have what it takes either.” It was a bitter pill to swallow, so I stepped back and shelved the project for an entire year.
During that year, I attempted to ascertain what had ever possessed me to think I wanted to be a novelist. I mean I had enjoyed many successful years as a songwriter, recording artist and producer. Why not be content with that and simply get on with things? Having no good answer to my query, I made another attempt, this time changing the name to, “The Haunts Of Cruelty”, switching the POV to first person and featuring Jake as the protagonist. Jake’s opening line in Chapter One of the novel you have just completed, was actually contributed my great friend and frequent collaborator, John Vertefeuille, a quite gifted novelist and one you will be hearing much about in the future.
I batted the poor thing around for another couple of years and in the meantime wrote and finished two one-off’s and started another Jake Moriarity novel called, “The Wood Between The Worlds,” which is, at present, the next novel in the queue. But I always knew “Haunts…” had to be completed at some point because, let’s be honest, Paul Morgan had to go.
He had to.
I had a lot of fun devising various and sundry terminations of his life, some of which were quite bloody and violent. But, I quite like the final result.
Multiple personalities—in contemporary parlance commonly referred to as Dissociative Identity Disorder, or DID—can be officially traced to 1791 and a case of “exchanged personality”, with some historians claiming that the condition dates back to Paleolithic cave paintings and reports of demonic possession. While historically thought to affect very few people, recent estimates place the occurrence at somewhere around one percent of the population.
Mr. Morgan’s drug of choice, FLAKKA, is a very real thing and represents a growing problem in our country. It is easily available, cheaply acquired and highly addictive. It is also one of the more lethal drugs in its class. It comes in crystalline rock form—thus its alternate name, “gravel”—and can be swallowed, snorted, injected, or vaped. Besides elevated heart rates and blood pressure, users’ body temperatures can spike to 106º causing massive kidney damage.
Use of the drug can lead to “excited delirium,” as experts call it—a condition marked by violent behavior and, what CNN reported, as being its ability to “give users what feels like the strength and fury of the Incredible Hulk.” While there is scant clinical evidence to support this contention, anecdotal evidence exists in sufficient quantities to justify endowing Paul Morgan with these symptoms.
Regarding the supernatural/metaphysical elements encountered by Cassie, Jake, et al. in and around the Ransom Mine, I chose to simply describe their experiences without drawing any conclusions. There is enough historical, even empirical evidence regarding the existence of places in the earth where seemingly miraculous healings have occurred, to at least merit serious consideration. As for whether this is due to nat
ural or supernatural manifestations, I will leave that conclusion to the reader.
To my support team—my ever-faithful and capable editor, Cheryl Gollner, without whom I would be deemed a driveling fool; cover designer, Rob Weidenfeld; my advance readers, Bob Book, Sharon Walling, Steve Betz and Sarah Wagner—my undying thanks and gratitude. This never has been, nor shall it ever be all about me. You guys make it all possible. I also wish to thank Dr. Roselynn Irawan for expert medical guidance as well as Ron Slack for many desert adventures from which I derived incalculable inspiration for this story.
And, as always, thank-you for reading. Jake and his merry band have many more adventures to experience and I intend to keep writing while there is yet breath in my lungs.
R.G. Ryan
Ocean Beach, CA
July 2018