A loud thwack off to my side startles me. I jump back and see workers tossing debris into a construction bin, but beyond that, something far worse regenerates my worries.
Oh, no.
Jeremy stands about fifteen feet away, head bobbing in every direction, eyes wandering the floor, and when he’s not doing that, he’s busy talking to staff members.
He’s looking for you.
Slowly, I back myself around the corner.
And he just came from Donny Ray’s room.
“What was he doing there?” I whisper.
They’re getting ready to take Donny Ray out of Loveland.
“And handing that crazed lunatic a license to kill again.”
I set my sight on Donny Ray’s room. The door is wide open, light shifting across the floor, with unfamiliar voices wafting out. Butterflies batter inside my stomach. Nerves climb the ladder to jittery.
They’re strategizing on how to stop you.
I look both ways, wait for the path to clear, then zoom across the hallway and into a vacant patient room across from Donny Ray’s. I peer out from behind the door. I keep watching.
Several minutes later, a shadow drifts up the hallway, then a guy wearing an orderly’s uniform materializes. I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen him here before, but there’s no question he’s got dirty written all over him. He walks into Donny Ray’s room, and about three minutes later, a second unknown man enters, also wearing the uniform.
Outside reinforcements.
I swallow hard, then people start filing out of Donny Ray’s room at an urgent pace.
Hurry! They’re on the move!
Just as I storm the hallway, Donny Ray himself comes walking out of his room. He wears freshly pressed jeans and a pinpoint oxford, his hair neatly styled, his shoes brand new. Two very large and disagreeable looking thugs in plainclothes flank each side of him as all three head straight toward the exit.
MOVE! Jeremy gave him his walking papers—they’re back-dooring him out of here.
Adrenaline pumps through my veins like dirty motor oil as I rush toward them. I won’t allow Donny Ray to leave this building alive. I cannot. My son’s life depends on it. I’ve got to keep him safe.
They continue walking him forward. I pull out my gun and spring toward them, heart jackhammering against my rib cage as the distance between us narrows.
At about eight feet away, I raise my weapon, but one of the thugs locks onto me.
“He’s got a gun!” the man cries out and points.
From behind me, I hear a stampede of feet beating a path my way. I aim my gun at Donny Ray, spit my words out like poison. “YOU’RE NOT LEAVING HERE! I’LL KILL YOU FIRST! DO YOU HEAR ME? I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU!”
Just as Donny Ray and his clan duck for cover through the doorway, I get a clear line of sight to him. I firm my hold on the trigger, but before I can pull it, an overpowering weight against my back hurtles me forward. My gun accidentally goes off, then I rapidly and repeatedly keep squeezing out more rounds.
A volley of gunfire flies across the room, ricocheting off the floors, the walls, everywhere. Plaster and tile crack and explode all around me. As I crash facedown, the gun flies from my hand and slides across the floor. Not a second later, I feel more crushing weight barrel down on me, so heavy it knocks the wind from my lungs. My forehead and cheeks are throbbing and numb, my nose and mouth oozing with blood. I hear frantic commotion, footsteps and voices all around me. A few heartbeats later, someone roughly yanks my arms back, slaps cuffs on my wrists, then pulls me sharply into standing position. Two men grab hold of each arm and fling me forward, and I stumble along with them.
“Sure!” I shout at the men. “Let a child killer walk the streets, and take me away! That makes a hell of a lot of sense! You people are depraved! You’re a disgrace!”
The men answer with a backbreaking jerk as they fling my body forward.
Then, with a face full of blood and chuffing for air, I at last get a glimpse of Donny Ray Smith.
Lying motionless on the floor.
Face to tile.
A puddle of blood rapidly spreading around his body.
Dead as dead can be.
80
Wake up, Christopher. Can you wake up?
I have to wake up. Someone is telling me I have to wake up.
I blink a few times, then look down at myself. Lying in bed, I examine the Posey Net that covers my entire body. Arms, neck, and legs pulled through the openings. Ankles and wrists secured with loop straps. I’m sweating, trembling with fear.
Footsteps move toward me, and I lurch back against the bed, hands clenching the guardrails, biceps flexing, breaths speeding. My restraints clatter; perspiration slides from sodden bangs down the bridge of my nose.
I raise my head, and the first thing I see are those evil eyes coming at me.
What the . . . Didn’t I just . . . ?
My vision wanders.
His room. What the hell am I doing in his room?
Donny Ray now stands a few feet away.
“Why am I being restrained?” I shout at him.
“You’ve been deemed a danger to yourself and others,” he explains.
I release an angry howl and violently try to jerk myself free; the bed rattles, squeaks, and shimmies. Recognizing my efforts as futile, I let out a tiny, helpless moan.
“It’s okay,” he tells me, keeping his body still and voice level. “Nobody’s here to cause you any harm.”
A low and inarticulate sound escapes through my chattering teeth.
He waits in silence and watches me. A few moments later, my breaths slow and my jaw relaxes, but I turn away to refuse him eye contact. Hearing him move closer, I react instantly, shooting my terrified gaze directly at him, but now Donny Ray is the one who seems startled, staring into my eyes with what can only be recognition mixed with curious confusion. He examines my other features.
I keep hopscotching through time, don’t understand how I landed here, but one thing is absolutely certain. The man who’s been turning my world into an empty shell has now drawn me to the heart of the whirlpool, the epicenter of evil. The man who keeps broadening his web and pulling me deeper into it. I have no idea what he’s doing, but there’s not a doubt in my mind that Donny Ray has taken over complete control of this hospital. That there is only one way out of Loveland, and he’s holding the key.
“You have to take me out of here!” I blurt, voice fraught with desperation, eyes begging.
“I need you to try and calm down,” he says. “Do you think you can do that for me?”
A slow nod. A vulnerable expression.
A phone rings from somewhere off to the side. I jerk back. He raises a hand of assurance.
I settle.
Still mindful of my overall appearance, Donny Ray says, “I need to ask you a few questions.”
I’m fearful but compliant.
“Do you know where we are?”
“We’re at Loveland.”
“Do you understand why we’re here?”
“Please!” I shout. “Help me!”
“We’re going to find the truth. Whether that helps you or not remains to be seen. Are you able to tell me your name?”
“But you already know all this! What does it have to do with—”
“I need your name,” he says, this time as a firm mandate.
“Yeah . . .” I surrender. “Okay. It’s Christopher Kellan.”
“What’s your date of birth?”
“June twenty-ninth, nineteen seventy-six.”
“Can you tell me where you were born?”
“Johnson City! Why are you doing this to me?”
Donny Ray circles back to the original question I failed to answer. “Do you understand why we’re here?”
I
look down at my bound hands, look up at him and feel my expression change—something like nervous confusion diluted by distress. “I think . . . I mean . . . I just don’t know anymore! As many times as I’ve turned things around in my head, I can’t make sense of them. And then I keep forgetting things, and everything around me doesn’t fit, and that just makes it worse . . .”
“Forgetting things,” Donny Ray repeats.
I close my eyes for a moment, then open them. “Like I don’t know where I’ve been for a while.”
He leans in closer.
Tears start as I shake my head. “I’m not afraid of you . . . I’m not . . . ,” I tell him, but it feels more like an attempt to convince myself.
“You have nothing but fear, Christopher. Fear has taken you over, and because you keep hiding from it, you keep losing things, and you’re going to continue losing them.”
“What in God’s name are you telling me?”
“What in God’s name are you hiding from?”
“I’m not hiding!”
“Fear is the most powerful emotion we can feel, right?”
I don’t answer.
“It’s wired into us. It’s primitive. It’s instinctual.” He rubs his wrist. “Do you have fear, Christopher?”
“Why does any of this—?”
“DO YOU HAVE FEAR, CHRISTOPHER!” His voice is sharp, no longer posing a question.
“We all do.”
“No.” Donny Ray sweeps a finger across his wrist, faster now. “I’m not talking about everyday fear. I’m talking about the primal kind. The kind of fear that scrapes at your bones. The kind that sends your mind screaming. Your fear is what brought us together. You know that.”
The hairs on my arms start to rise. I’m quaking.
“And your heart will break, Christopher.” His eyes are a blaze of blue boreal fury. His voice climbs in pitch, the tone getting smoother, the speech pattern transmuting into one I recognize.
“Who . . . Who the hell are you?”
“You’ll have to accept that loss,” he says in the voice of my son.
I examine his eyes, his face, still no more certain now about their familiarity than I was from day one.
“Who are you?” I ask again, barely able to get past the quiver in my throat.
“You know who I am,” Donny Ray says, returning to his normal voice.
“Why? Why are you taking my son away from me?”
“To break your walls.”
“I . . . I don’t understand . . .”
“It’s my job, Christopher. It’s what I do, and it’s what you need. This is how it’s done.”
“How what’s done?”
“How you make someone see what they refuse to. You take away the things they love most. You make it all disappear. That’s how we find the truth.”
“By stripping away everything in this world that matters to me?”
“By stripping away everything in this world that you believe in. Now we can start rebuilding. Just you and me, partner, brick by brick.”
“Get me out of here! Let me go!”
“Are you finally ready to make that choice?”
“What choice?” I say, but it comes out more as a plea.
“If I take you out of Loveland, are you ready to face what’s on the other side of these walls?”
“Yes,” I say without hesitation. “Please! Take me out of here!”
81
I see feet moving, but in my disconnected fog it takes a few seconds to realize they’re my own.
Where am I?
It’s like I’m walking through a void. Everything around me is oppressively still and silent. Even the air has an unfamiliar, motionless quality.
Is this real?
As my vision clears, ahead of me I see the Loveland parking lot. The only car left is mine, a little boat floating on a sea of blacktop. I turn toward the building, and more sedentary absence looks back at me. Nobody in the surrounding area, nobody coming in or out through the main entrance. I raise my vision toward the upper floors and find more vacuity: every curtain pulled open, every window like a black hole punched into rust-stained concrete.
Not a human anywhere. Everyone . . . gone.
Disappeared.
“Now it’s just you and me.”
I look to my right. Donny Ray is beside me, and I realize we’ve just walked out of Loveland together. He keeps his gaze aimed ahead. Like he’s leading me someplace.
But where?
“Now we can get to work,” he says with a single, affirming nod. “It’s time, Christopher.”
“You’re not taking Devon from me!”
“It has to happen,” he says gently, reassuringly. “You know it does.”
“Why are you destroying my life?”
“I’m helping you see your life. The destruction you feel is a result, not a cause.”
“I won’t let you wreck my world!”
He stops walking. “Christopher, wake up. Can you wake up? The world as you once knew it has slipped away and lost its shape. But this is actually progress. It won’t be long now.”
“Long for what?”
“Your truth is waiting.”
The glass shatters.
The white light goes off.
82
I’m parked under the Evil Tree.
This goddamned tree, this bastard that keeps pulling me back. I look up at the hideous beast, hovering so tall and proud, so arrogant, shielding what little light there is, casting me deeper into darkness.
A strong wind picks up, and the Evil Tree vigorously rattles its branches, shaking pollen over me like black rain.
Anger boils. Hatred reaches fever pitch. Outrage turns viral. I squeeze the wheel, chew my bottom lip, and hear a snarl deep inside my chest.
“YOU’RE THE REASON FOR ALL THIS! YOU’VE RUINED MY LIFE! YOU HEAR ME? YOU’VE MOTHERFUCKING RUINED IT!”
Tears stream down my face, and I erupt into hysterical laughter, so instantaneous that it startles me; then just as unexpectedly, that laughter turns into heaving sobs. Several seconds later a new emotion emerges, so powerful that it sends my body into a racking tremor.
Unadulterated fear.
You’ve got to get out of here.
“I’ve got to get out of here.”
Go! Go!
I start the engine, hit the gas pedal, and my car flies into reverse, but the exact moment my tires hit pavement is the exact moment a raging storm swoops down, unleashing a wrath like I’ve never before seen. Wrath that, with each passing second, gathers furious intensity.
An angry clap of thunder explodes that could shatter bone. On its heels, a volcanic flash of lightning fractures the sky and sets it afire. Night turns to day, and ahead in the distance, my enemy again reveals itself. The tree speaks directly to me as if all along it’s been waiting for this precise moment to deliver the message, one that couldn’t be clearer.
This is where it all started, and this is where it all will end.
More wind, more rain, more thunder, then another pop of lightning falls over the tree, and I catch something at the base of its trunk, but through the shielding rain, can’t tell what it is. I fling open the car door, leap out, and take off running, eyes focused on the one spot, wind belligerently shoving me forward.
And then I see him, and then my heart breaks into a thousand pieces. A sob escapes my lips, but a sharp gasp sucks it back in. “NO! NO, NO, NO . . . NOOOOOO!”
I fight my way through a thick wall of rain, feet stumbling into an unsteady zigzag.
I reach my son, my Devon, muddy and rain-soaked, lying across the trunk’s base like a tossed-aside rag doll. I collapse beside him, reach around his cold and lifeless body. As I lift him up, he arches away from me, head falling back, arms hanging loosely at his si
des.
“NO, BABY, PLEASE!” I press his face against mine and rock him. “PLEASE! NO!”
But I know that there is nothing left of my son. That my world has collapsed around me, and that the only thing that held it together is now gone.
I lower him to the ground. I study his sweet, wonderful face.
“My baby boy . . . ,” I say, body shaking with the kind of grief that, before now, I never knew was humanly possible. I lean down, press my lips against his cold forehead, and a feeble whimper escapes me.
It’s that sleep of death, Christopher.
At last, the meaning is revealed, because I know that this world is worth nothing without my son in it.
I don’t belong here anymore.
I aim my gaze skyward. Rain mercilessly falls over me, battering my face and beating away the tears, but it’s nothing compared to the immeasurable torture my mind is only beginning to comprehend.
“I’m going with you,” I say through a defeated whisper.
I gather Devon up in my arms and carry him to the car.
With tenderness and care, I lay his body across the seat, then take one last look at my broken and beautiful son.
Tonight, I just want to save you.
But I couldn’t save him.
It was just an accident, Daddy.
This one won’t be.
I get behind the wheel, gun the engine, slam the car into reverse.
At fifty feet back, anger replaces pain, disgust overpowers regret, because I know that standing before me is the reason why my life has been so irreparably destroyed. My foot lands on the gas pedal. I hit the gearshift, hit the accelerator, and the car responds instantly, firing me forward at vicious momentum.
“C’MON, YOU BASTARD!” I shout with tears streaming down my face. “BRING IT ON! GIVE ME EVERYTHING YOU’VE GOT!”
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