Sacrifice

by J. S. Bailey

  Bobby could feel the Spirit nudging at his thoughts, guiding him on his way. He wasn’t even sure where they were going until he caught sight of a crowd up ahead on the left-hand side of the road.

  Colorful banners fluttered in the wind and row after row of food booths and carnival games were attended by more people than Bobby could count.

  It was the Autumn Ridge Summerpalooza.

  If he was too slow, it was here where Adrian Pollard would meet her end.

  BOBBY RAN onto the festival grounds, panting like he’d run a marathon. There were so many people here already. Where could Adrian be?

  He raced past a row of carnival games, nearly tripped over a little kid who’d toddled away from his parents, rounded a corner, and caught sight of Allison Mason sitting with her daughter and Janet Jovingo at a picnic table. Beverly Stilgoe ambled toward a drink booth, her back to Bobby, and Adrian strode up to a pair of unfamiliar men and started screaming at them.

  “Adrian, stop!” he shouted, knowing that those to whom she spoke were the very ones who would bring about the disaster he foresaw. “Get away from them!”

  ADRIAN HAD gotten out of the car, followed by Janet Jovingo, Beverly Stilgoe, and Allison and Ashley Mason. After the prayer session concluded, Allison had suggested they all go out somewhere, and Adrian had immediately objected based on Bobby’s supposed premonition.

  Beverly, a round black woman a few years older than Adrian who couldn’t stop smiling, had actually frowned. “Maybe we should stay here then,” she’d said. She had a slight accent. Jamaican, maybe.

  Janet had nodded in agreement.

  Allison had then appeared agitated. “But how do we know where you’ll be in danger? Something could happen here instead of somewhere else.”

  That had given Adrian pause. Allison was right. How could they know for certain that the Masons’ roof wasn’t going to cave in? What if leaving the house actually saved Adrian’s life?

  Her heart raced, and she wished she hadn’t left Bobby’s side. She knew so little about her son. How could she even know that Bobby’s “gift” was accurate? For all she knew, the man called Thane could have made Bobby imagine his premonition. Would Bobby be able to know the difference?

  In the end they’d decided that they would all stick together and not leave each other’s sides no matter where they went. Adrian had considered staying behind at the Masons’ house but didn’t want to be left alone.

  “Let’s go to the Summerpalooza,” Beverly suggested once they settled in Allison’s car. “I think we could use a little levity.”

  But once they strode onto the festival grounds, Adrian felt anything but cheer. Families with young children stood in lines in front of different games where the kids could win cheap prizes, teenagers walked around in groups texting and taking pictures of themselves, gray-haired citizens sat at picnic tables in the shade, and loud music broadcast from speakers filled the air.

  Adrian’s senses were on overload, and maybe part of that was because she had been shut away from the world for far too many days.

  Allison put a gentle hand on Adrian’s arm. “Adrian? Are you okay?”

  Adrian shook her head. “It’s too much. I shouldn’t have come here. I should have just stayed behind.”

  Allison brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes and frowned. “Janet? Beverly? Come back here a minute.”

  The other two women had been standing off to one side speaking in low tones. The skinny one named Janet looked worried. “What is it?”

  “I’m feeling a little overwhelmed,” Adrian said, casting her gaze across the sea of people. “I’m going to find a place to sit.”

  She eyed an empty picnic table near a booth selling funnel cakes and planted herself on it, trying to still the shakes that had taken hold of her.

  If a man named Thane had caused Bobby and his friends to see things that weren’t truly there, how could Adrian know she was here at the Summerpalooza? What if she was still at Bobby’s house? What if she was still locked away in a concrete hell?

  No. I’m here. I know it.

  Allison, Ashley, Janet, and Beverly took seats at the table with her. “Do you need me to get you anything?” Beverly asked. “You’re looking pale.”

  Adrian started to object but changed her mind. “Maybe a lemonade? I have a few dollars.”

  Beverly waved a hand in dismissal. “Oh, don’t you worry about that! I’ll get drinks for everyone.” The woman heaved her bulk off the picnic table seat and headed toward a drink booth across the way.

  Adrian watched Beverly’s receding figure. She strode past two men wearing polo shirts, khaki shorts, and sandals who lingered by another picnic table, eating hotdogs. They seemed out of place from the rest of the crowd. Maybe it was the Ray Bans they each wore, or the fact that neither appeared to be speaking. There was something strangely familiar about the two of them. One had frizzy red hair and too many freckles. She had seen him and his buddy somewhere quite recently.

  Then it hit her. This was the pair that had come to the basement cell and took little Monique away.

  A wave of heat washed over her as the world around her grew quieter. Her vision narrowed. All she could see was those two men, who lived in the daylight eating, drinking, and being merry while the children they bought languished in dark hells.

  A hand touched her shoulder. “Adrian? What’s going on?”

  Her feet were moving forward as if they’d taken on lives of their own—she didn’t even remember standing up. The red-haired man caught sight of her and stepped aside, thinking she was trying to pass him by.

  But she wasn’t about to do that. She grabbed onto the collar of his shirt and jerked him closer to her face. “You took Monique!” she screamed. “You took her, and you’re going to tell me where she is!”

  His face became impassive. “You’ve got the wrong guy, ma’am. I don’t know any Monique. Now if you’ll kindly let me go…”

  “Oh, you don’t know her? Allow me to remind you, then. She was the little brown-skinned girl stuck with me in a concrete cell, and you bought her!”

  Someone screamed behind Adrian, but she didn’t know what they were saying. All she knew was that people needed to know the truth about these two men. “These men are criminals!” she shouted. “They buy little girls so freaks can have sex with them!”

  Pain shot through her side, and she looked down at herself. Crimson was spreading across her shirt. Even as she watched, a second place below her breastbone bloomed with red.

  Maybe I’m imagining it. Maybe I’m…

  BOBBY WATCHED, horrified, as one of the men drew a weapon out from under his shirt and fired it.

  The gunshots, muffled by a silencer, quietly punched into Adrian’s gut.

  Stunned, she staggered back half a step, grimaced, and crumpled onto her side.

  “Stop those men!” Bobby’s voice sounded raw as he pointed. “They’ve just shot a woman!”

  A man wearing a National Guard t-shirt dropped his fountain Coke to the ground and ran toward the men, who were already making a beeline toward the exit. He tackled the one who’d fired the gun while others followed suit, nabbing the shooter’s accomplice.

  Too bad nobody’s going to shoot them, he thought bitterly.

  Bobby rushed to Adrian’s side and rolled her onto her back. Bright crimson seeped through her shirt as she trembled. Her face twisted in agony. No. No. This can’t happen. This can’t happen.

  But it was happening. Bobby grabbed Adrian’s hand and held it tight. “Mom?”

  ADRIAN FORCED her eyes open. Bobby leaned over her with tears in his eyes.

  The pain in her midsection was eating her alive. She couldn’t bring herself to look at it now. The damage might not be so bad, but would her son really look so stricken if that were so?

  “Bobby?” she managed to whisper.

  “I’m here.”

  Her mind conjured an image of him as a newborn baby, when the doctor first placed him into her arm
s. He’d had a patch of black hair atop his head and rosy cheeks that made her think of a doll baby she’d had as a little girl.

  Another wave of agony drove the image away. “Find Monique,” she gasped. “They took her.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Just do it!”

  Bobby looked bewildered. She was vaguely aware of frantic people running past him. “Okay?”

  “Thank you,” she whispered. “For saving me.”

  She drifted away on a cloud of relief.

  Everything would be okay after all.

  ADRIAN STOPPED moving.

  “No,” Bobby breathed. A high-pitched whine hummed in his ears. “Wake up. Wake up!”

  The festival grounds erupted into chaos as more onlookers caught sight of what had happened. Security rushed over to help detain the pair that had killed his mother.

  His mother. Bobby’s heart was tearing itself into pieces. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. Adrian was going to get her act together and over time they would form a bond like parents were supposed to have with their children.

  “Why?” he whispered.

  She is at peace now. No harm will come to her again.

  He imagined Adrian and his father walking toward each other on the sandy shore in his mind, embracing each other like long-lost friends.

  He sat back on his heels and broke down into tears.

  SIX DAYS later, Bobby found himself dressed in a suit standing beneath a sweltering July sun in the Holy Trinity cemetery in Eleanor, Ohio: a town he had not set foot in for two years. He’d forgotten how oppressive the humidity could be, and he certainly didn’t miss it.

  Upon his arrival in town, he’d found that many things had changed during his absence. Buildings that had sat empty for years following the recession contained new businesses. The old truck stop had been revamped under new ownership. New houses went up while older ones had been torn down. Several streets had been widened, the ubiquitous potholes filled in.

  The village of Iron Springs, Kentucky sat across the river, as silent and seemingly as distant as always.

  Even though Adrian had been away from Eleanor for so long, her funeral service in church drew quite the crowd because apparently she’d been related to about half the people in town—something Bobby’s father and stepmother had failed to tell him. After the service let out, a large chunk of the crowd dispersed to go about their own business, leaving only a handful to attend the burial.

  Carly, Randy, Lupe, Phil, Allison, and Ashley had flown out to Ohio with Bobby to keep him company. Even though it made him feel awkward, Carly stood at Bobby’s side holding his hand as Adrian’s casket was lowered into the ground.

  If someone had asked him days ago how he would feel if his birth mother died, he would have told them he’d feel nothing since she meant nothing to him.

  Boy, how things had changed.

  She shouldn’t have come looking for me. She’d still be alive if she’d stayed put.

  The Spirit wrapped him in a warm embrace. He hadn’t quite thought about it before, but knowing that the maker of the entire universe and everything in it could touch him so personally and know him so well gave him the chills. Bobby was less than a speck of sand, but as a child of God, that speck was cherished and loved.

  He started crying again. “Why did this have to happen?” he choked.

  “We could all ask the same thing,” Randy said.

  “You might feel alone in your pain,” Carly said, “but you’re not. We’re here for you if you ever want to talk about it, because we’ve all lost someone close to us.”

  “But that’s the thing,” Bobby said. “Thanks to what she did, we weren’t close at all.”

  “She was still your mother.” Randy sighed, and his eyes took on a faraway look. “My own parents were cruel, but it still tore me to pieces when they died because they were still my parents. I mourned the people they could have been, not the people they were.”

  Randy’s words contained a note of truth. Nodding, Bobby swallowed an enormous lump in his throat and blinked back tears.

  “I wasn’t ready for this,” Bobby murmured again, staring at the box that held the woman who had given him life.

  Tears glistened in Carly’s eyes. “We’re never ready for the things that change us the most.”

  Bobby gave a wordless nod. As it turned out, Adrian’s death had not been in vain. The men who killed her had been arrested and interrogated, and the illegal brothel they’d run had been found, its occupants freed. Though names had not been released to the media, Bobby knew in his heart that the Monique with whom Adrian had been imprisoned was one of them.

  Another silver lining.

  When the funeral concluded, Bobby and his new “family” drifted off to one side to talk amongst themselves.

  “So what now?” Phil asked, looking stoic in contrast to Randy, who had quietly wept with Bobby throughout the whole service.

  Bobby looked Phil right in the eye. “I’m going to get in shape. If I’d been faster, Adrian might still be alive.”

  “Remember what I said about not thinking about the things that might have been,” Randy warned, dabbing a Kleenex at his face.

  “I know. But I’ll need to save other people. I can’t fail them, too.” Like Vincent.

  Phil cleared his throat. “I can help you come up with an exercise regimen as soon as we get back to Autumn Ridge.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Bobby?”

  Charlotte and Jonas were walking toward them. Charlotte had her thick brown hair brushed out and partly fastened back with a silver barrette, and she wore a blue skirt and white blouse, unlike the black garb of many of the other funeral-goers.

  Jonas wore a suit and tie and looked as though he had no idea what to say.

  “Do you all want to go out for lunch?” Charlotte asked. “Or you can all come back to our place and eat there instead.”

  Everyone looked to Bobby. He supposed it made sense that the decision would fall solely on him. “I guess we can go out,” he said. “I thought I saw a new bagel shop when we came into town.”

  Charlotte smiled. “Bagels it is, then.”

  Carly took Bobby’s hand again as they walked toward the parked rental car. She gave him a sidelong glance. “You know,” she said, “things may be hard for you now. But they get better in time. I promise.”

  NATHANIEL BAGDASARIAN sat by the window in his room at Arbor Villa glaring at a butterfly flexing its wings on one of the flowers in the courtyard.

  Something needed to change.

  Soon.

  But he had no way of changing it on his own.

  “Did you wish to speak to me?”

  Thane moved his tongue so the sensor in his piercing would turn the chair a few degrees to the right. An emaciated, yellow-eyed man dressed in rags stood just feet away from him.

  Though his companion had never appeared in such a way before, Thane knew exactly who it was without asking. “They found me out.”

  “And then you sang like a bird. It’s your own foolishness that let them know you exist. If you’d stayed under the radar, they would know nothing about you.”

  Thane tightened his jaw.

  His plan to use Jack Willard to kill Bobby Roland had failed, just as the plan involving Graham Willard and Randy Bellison had failed. He could find some other fool to bring about the young Servant’s end, but how great would be his chances of success? Based on what had happened twice now, very little.

  Bobby Roland, if you only knew how much I hate you.

  Bobby was the one who’d saved Randy from Graham. Thane had been too busy watching through Graham’s eyes to realize that Bobby had come onto the scene and called the cops.

  Another weakness on Thane’s part. He’d been so close to fulfilling his work, only to have it snatched away like leaves in the wind.

  “I’d like to make a new deal with you,” Thane said.

  “A new deal?” His companion let out a soft chuckle.
“Let’s hear it, then.”

  “Restore my body. Now.”

  The yellow-eyed man clucked his tongue. “Getting impatient, are we?”

  “My gift can only do so much. I can’t keep relying on fools to do my work for me.” I’d much rather do it myself.

  A grin spread across his companion’s face. “What would I get in return?”

  “If I fail to complete my task? My life.”

  “Go on.”

  “If I don’t do it by the end of the year, take me away from all this.”

  “You wish to forfeit your life?”

  “This is no life.”

  His companion pondered this. “I’ll consider it.”

  With that, he was gone.

  Thane looked down at his left hand, which like the right was clenched tightly in his lap. He stared long and hard at white fingers that rarely saw the sun. His old life—when he’d been as normal as the next person—was so far gone it felt like a half-remembered dream.

  He kept staring at his fingers—the ones that used to grasp and flex and point. While he watched, his index finger twitched.

  Thane’s pulse quickened. Was it possible?

  It twitched again. A long-forgotten sensation traveled from the nail up to the knuckle: the sense of touch.

  One by one, the other fingers on that hand regained feeling. Barely believing what he saw, Thane’s eyes filled with tears as he spread his fingers wide.

  “Thank you for this,” Thane said as the sensation of life crept up his arm and into his shoulder.

  Then his face twisted into a sardonic grin.

  He had a mission to complete.

  It was best he got started.

  Bobby’s story continues in

  SURRENDER

  Thank you for taking the time to read Sacrifice: The Chronicles of Servitude Book 2.

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