“I want you to leave,” I told Allie at home.
I hadn’t told her about the envelope last night, but I told her now. I told her about Ruby the Redneck Psychic, the Facebook pictures of her and Abby and the website the Bald Man had directed me to. A preview, he’d called it. A preview. I told her about my dreams in great detail and although she flinched, she did not interrupt. Only when I finished did she speak.
“A premonition,” she said.
“A forecast,” I said. “And to be honest with you, I don’t know if he’s put it in my head to fuck with me, or if…I don’t know…God put it there as a warning. But something’s going to happen, and it’s going to happen here, in this house, and it’s going to happen soon. So I need you and Abby gone.”
“Where will we go?”
“Pennsylvania,” I said. “With your mom and dad. I’m pretty sure you’ll be okay there. He hasn’t hurt you yet because the time hasn’t been right. Just to make sure, though…”
I pulled Craig’s Smith & Wesson .38 revolver out of my belt. It hadn’t looked like much at first glance; a snub-nose meant for concealed carry, it lacked the heft and visual impact of something like my AK-47. Yet on my kitchen table, it glowed with a deadly aura.
“I want you to take this,” I said. “Just in case I’m wrong and he does come after you. Or sends somebody. But I don’t think you’ll have to use it.”
Allie stared down at the revolver, then up and me. She shook her head slowly and closed her eyes. “Kevin…”
“I know. It’s crazy.”
“This is not good. This is not good at all.”
“All the more reason for you to get gone. If I’m acting crazy, do you really want our daughter to stay here and watch her dad’s downward spiral?”
“I think you’re having a nervous breakdown,” she said.
“Maybe. But this shit is real. You guys need to go.”
“Abby’s got school.”
“She won’t miss more than a week. It’ll do her good to get away from all this for a few days. Visit her grandparents. Reconnect with her Yankee heritage.”
Devoid of makeup, flushed from her workout, hair in a messy ponytail, her beauty twisted my insides. I experienced a moment of unholy terror at the thought of sending her away—something akin, I imagined, to the idea of leaving your newborn baby unattended at a flea market in Tijuana. But the moment passed, and I returned to the solid conviction that come nightfall, she could not remain here.
She looked up at me.
“We have to let her finish out the school day,” she said.
“No,” I said. “You guys need to leave now.”
I shoved the pistol and a box of bullets I’d picked up at Wal-Mart on the way home across the table at her.
“I’ll help you pack,” I told her. “I have a feeling he’s coming tonight.”
35.
Today—this evening, really—Dr. Koenig wore a suit. The remnants of one, more accurately; the wrinkled trousers screamed for a visit to the drycleaner’s and the white shirt begged to tag along. He had rolled the sleeves up to his elbows, the collar unbuttoned, the red and blue striped tie loosened to reveal the collar of a crewneck undershirt. When he shifted in his chair, the faintest outlines of a sweat stain showed through around the white collar. It was April now, and growing warmer every day. The blast-furnace days of summer stirred in the near future.
He started in about me not bringing Allie almost right away, but he stopped when I told him I had a plan for ending all this. I told him I’d sent her and Abby to Pennsylvania. Now he crossed one leg over the other and tapped his pen on his legal pad, frowning. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
I nodded. “It’s the only idea. He won’t hurt them if they’re not home.”
“This is the man—the creature, really—who makes golems and sends them after you.”
I nodded.
“What makes you so sure he won’t send golems after them?”
“Because he’s had a million opportunities to do that and he hasn’t tried it,” I said. “I get up in the morning and I go to work. I stay at the office all day, sometimes part of the night. We live out in bumfuck, so if he wanted a shot at them…”
I turned my palms up to the ceiling and shrugged.
“…then I couldn’t stop him. It’s always been like that. He wants us all together. Because this…thing he wants to do only has power if I’m there to watch. He doesn’t just want to destroy my family, Doc. He wants to destroy my soul. Everything I am. He wants this to be my fault. He wants to show me. Because I am defiant.”
“So your plan is…”
“I’m going to throw down,” I said. “Tonight.”
Southern Rifleman, another tight little tube. I had switched plastic covers to one less clear, but also less clingy. The translucent but textured plastic cover allowed me to roll it any way I wanted and it wouldn’t bind. I rolled it now.
“I’m going to lock and load and I’m going to sit on my stairs and I’m going to say game on, bitch, bring it. Don’t send your people out here, you pussy, you come out here yourself.”
“And he’s just going to…come?”
I raised my head and lowered it in a slow but certain nod. It did sound a little crazy, spoken aloud—but I believed it.
“He is.”
“How do you know this?”
“You ever have a gut feeling about something and you know you’re right, you just can’t put your finger on how you know you’re right? Like, have you ever had a patient and before you’ve talked to him five minutes, you know he’s crazy?”
The stare he gave me in reply told me very clearly that I was just such a patient.
“That’s it,” I said. “I’ve been having this rape dream for months, but only recently have I woken up remembering it. And I can’t help but feel like he’s coming to do it soon. It’s just a feeling Doc. Call me psychic.”
He folded his arms and studied me. I didn’t much care for the way he looked at me, because I’d looked at Brandon Cross that same way when he first told me about sliding. When he’d told me he was a Navy fighter pilot with a recurring nightmare that he was a retarded kid in Burlington.
“I want her in here,” Dr. Koenig said, completely ignoring what I’d just said, “but you’ve kind of ruined that for me by repeatedly not bringing her. So why don’t we call her and conference her in on the rest of today’s session?”
“I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because she’s driving. I don’t want her talking on the cell phone and driving at the same time.”
“I see,” Dr. Koenig said.
“You see what? There’s nothing to see. She’s on I-95. You’re a Yankee; you should appreciate somebody not wanting his wife yakking on the cell on a road like 95.”
“It’s just interesting to me how you keep coming up with these reasons to not bring your wife to our sessions.”
“No offense,” I said, “but I have other things to worry about right now other than making you happy.”
April showers bring May flowers; the kiss of spring comes in the rain, not cold but cool, the vanguard of nature’s awakening. I had never minded spring rain nor the gray skies that normally sent me into a depressive tailspin, because they heralded winter’s permanent departure. The gray skies and rain meant no more frozen mornings. April served as a mop-up operation, locating and neutralizing the remnants of January and February. So I could deal with April showers. I could deal with them just fine.
But I had a wife and child on the road that afternoon, so on that night, April showers made me worry. After dinner, the idea that they would get in a car accident possessed me, which led me to call Allie eight times between the hours of twelve and three. When she didn’t call back, I resorted to text messages. Like the telephone calls, these grew progressively more desperate as the hours wore on. By the time my phone finally beeped at 7, my nerves had frayed so much that I jumped out of my office
chair.
A text from Abby’s phone.
We’re here. Im on Abbys phone.
Why didn’t U answer my calls? I texted back.
My phone died. U on your way home yet?
Still @ office.
B careful. ILY.
I actually typed my response all the way.
I love you too.
I arrived home that night later than usual. The house stood in total darkness, no windows glowing, no exterior lights burning. Inside, I found only silence. I stood in the kitchen and listened to it.
“I’m home!” I called out.
No one answered, of course; I had sent my family away for their own safety. Tonight, it was just me. Me and this big, isolated, silent house.
This is what it would be like, I thought, if I’d hesitated. If I’d let those fuckers win.
But I hadn’t let them win. And their boss man, the Bald Man—I wouldn’t let him win, either. Instead of climbing the stairs to change, I headed directly into the basement. I opened the gun safe and took out the AK-47. I sat down at the bar and stripped it down, the way Bobby had showed me. Then I cleaned it.
Clean it good, Bobby said. Or the shit’ll jam on you. All you need is one hung-up shell casing to end your game.
I put it back together. Not a single speck of dust remained.
Looks good, he commented.
“Thanks,” I replied.
Now lock and load.
I had two magazines for the AK-47, and now I loaded each with thirty rounds of ammunition. I didn’t expect to need all of them, but a man never knew. I suspected no one in history had ever ended a fight thinking damn, I brought too much ammo.
Like the Boy Scouts say, Bobby said, be prepared.
“Damn skippy,” I replied.
When I’d loaded each magazine, I slammed one into the receiver and chambered a round. Then I headed upstairs to the ground floor. I stepped out on the porch and stood there with the door open behind me.
There was no breeze. There where my yard ended and the woods began, the trees stood stock-still, silently crowding the gravel drive down to 62. I looked at the place where the drive disappeared into the darkness and pictured the bald man.
Game on, bitch, Bobby said.
I licked my lips. My right hand tightened on the rifle’s pistol grip, my left on the barrel. My eyes narrowed.
“All right, motherfucker,” I said. “Bring it.”
36.
He didn’t come.
37.
“So,” Dr. Koenig said at the start of our next session. “Is it all over? Did you have your big showdown with the Bald Man?”
I had just seen him yesterday, but he wanted to see me again today. I didn’t ask why; it really didn’t matter.
And, honestly, given everything going on, I needed this extra session. The Bald Man hadn’t shown up last night, but I had woken up on the couch in the basement with my fully-loaded AK-47 clutched across my chest like some kind of fucked-up teddy bear. I woke up that way because I carried the rifle everywhere I went in the house. Right now, I had it in the trunk of my car. So, if my therapist wanted me to come in for a few extra sessions, I felt it entirely appropriate.
“He didn’t show up,” I muttered.
“Your gut feeling was wrong.”
“No,” I said. “Just premature. I didn’t say I knew when it would be; just that it would be soon.”
“Ah.”
I scowled at that—ah, like I’d just lied to him. I reminded myself that I had told this man I believed I hadn’t ever killed a single human being, but rather golems conjured by the Devil personified. I had to understand that I’d given him just cause for skepticism.
“Allie and Abby still in Pennsylvania?”
“Yes. It’s a long drive. Not exactly a place you go overnight and then come back.”
“You told me yesterday that you sent her and Abby there to get them away from the Bald Man,” he said. “Why didn’t you just send them down to Jacksonville to stay with Bobby and Kate?”
“Bobby works,” I answered. “Kate works. They’re gone all day. Besides, Bobby’s my brother, not Allie’s. It made more sense to send her to her family’s house.”
He pursed his lips and nodded once, like he’d known I would say that. It irritated me.
“If you don’t mind me asking, Doc,” I said next, “what’s up?”
“Why don’t we give her a call? Let’s call her right now and conference her in.”
“It’s two in the afternoon. I’m sure she has things going on.”
He shrugged his narrow shoulders. “So? Big deal. Give her a call.”
“I left my phone at the office.”
“Use mine.” He reached into his briefcase and pulled out an iPhone just like Abby’s.
“That’s no good,” I said. “Her cell reception sucks at her parents’ house.”
“Call the land line.”
“I don’t know it. It’s in my phone.”
“You don’t know your in-laws’ home phone number?” He asked. “You’re married to this woman for fifteen years and you don’t know her parents’ number?”
“Like I said,” I told him, keeping a lid on my patience. “It’s in my phone. People don’t dial numbers anymore, Doc. You program a number into your phone and push a button when you want to call it. I don’t know Abby’s number off the top of my head, either. All that’s in my phone. If that’s really chapping your ass, I’ll try to remember the phone next time, okay?”
He leaned forward and rested his face in his hands.
“Listen,” I said, “things have changed here. Something’s going down.”
He looked up, although he didn’t sit up. His face was drawn, old and tired.
“Last night I went out on my porch with my rifle and I said come on, you bald-headed fuck. Bring it, bitch, game on. I’m not running from you, I’m not sliding out of this. You bring it, because I’m here. Let’s see what you got, you punk-ass, bald-ass motherfucker.”
He winced at all the profanity, but I felt no embarrassment. I was, I realized, channeling Bobby. And that was okay; Bobby was one hard son of a bitch.
Like me. The whole time I’d sat in here, I hadn’t removed my issue of Southern Rifleman from my briefcase; I hadn’t, if fact, removed it all day. The time for security blankets had passed.
“And what makes you think he’s coming tonight, given that he failed to appear the night before?”
I breathed in through my nose. Ki breath.
“I’m going to unlock all the doors and windows,” I said. “And I’m going to let myself fall asleep.”
38.
That night, I sat at my kitchen table with the AK-47 laying in front of me, and I screwed around with my phone. I talked to my father-in-law, each of us doing little more than blowing hot air. Everything’s fine, everything’s great, hope you’re getting along okay. That kind of shit. There came a long, awkward pause when I asked to speak to Allie. Just when I thought the connection had interrupted, he told me she wasn’t in.
“Where is she?”
Another awkward pause. Then he said, “Kevin…you know…I couldn’t tell you. Because I don’t know. I don’t know where she is. I don’t think anybody really does.”
I could have asked him why he didn’t know, but I already knew. She’s thirty-six years old, he would say. I don’t keep tabs on her anymore, even when she’s staying with us. Speaking of her staying with us, what’s this bullshit about bald devils popping in from alternate worlds?
Of course our conversation was awkward. Had Allie told him the truth, it made me sound crazy. If she’d hedged—she’d told me she would make up a story about just needing to get away for awhile—it would have sounded like we were having marital problems, severe enough to pull Abby out of school just a month before it let out. So I’d either gone crazy or made his daughter miserable enough to have to leave me. Either way, this wasn’t a guy to lean on right now.
So instead of a
sking to speak to my daughter, I just asked him to let Allie know I’d called. Then I texted Abby.
U doing okay?
She didn’t answer me right away. I held the phone and stared at it for two solid minutes before I got a response.
Im OK. U?
Great. Where is Mom?
Pause. I remembered that she could conduct multiple text message conversations at the same time. Maybe she could work as an air traffic controller when she grew up.
Out with high school friends.
Before I could text a response, she asked me:
When can we come home?
That made my stomach ache.
Soon, I responded.
WTF is going on? Why did we have to leave?
Instead of chiding her for the WTF, I closed my eyes and shook my head. How to answer that one?
It’s not safe, I finally replied. But Ill make it safe for U.
I want to come home.
U will, I typed. Really soon.
ILY.
I love U too.
There came nothing after that. I didn’t know if she’d fallen asleep or become so engrossed in some dialog with one of her text-crazy friends that she simply forgot about me. Either way, she was safe. And that was good enough for me.
I picked up the AK-47 and trudged down into the basement to turn on ESPN and hopefully fall asleep in front of the television. But before I did, I walked around and unlocked every door and window on the ground floor.
Game on, I thought as I descended the stairs.
Game on, Bobby repeated.
39.
In 1989, Ruby the Redneck Palm Reader told Bobby not to join the Army. The Soviet Union still existed then, hunkered down there behind the Iron Curtain with all of its tanks and missiles and men with red stars on their helmets; perhaps Ruby saw war. And perhaps not. Either way, she said stay out of the Army, and when 1990 rolled around and the time came for all young men of Bobby’s cohort to decide what they would do when high school ended, Bobby enlisted in the Marines.
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