The Third Step

by William Lobb

  One day, I realized it was all a lie. It was an illusion. It lied to me and pulled me into another lie, a collective lie that people tell themselves to create the illusion. People like you, create the illusion with your friends and huddle together—to keep the reality that I live at bay. Darkness, evil, they are the reality. I am the reality. This world, this universe, is built to destroy. People like you are the things this world feeds on, that I feed on. You are beautiful and fresh and hopeful and alive. Please don’t stay with me. I can’t destroy another life.”

  She stood up, buttoned the last open button on her blouse, and without saying a word, walked to the door and left. All Frankie could think about was how badly he needed a Seconal. He spent the next two days in the motel, quite drunk, not eating, just drinking and smoking Marlboros and watching daytime TV. He felt like he was exiled from the world and left to this dark, moldy, stinking little corner of Hell. He called the police a few times, trying to find when he could get back to his truck.

  He made an uncomfortable trip to the liquor store, where the girl was polite but cold. He considered making small talk again but finally abandoned the idea. A very real part of him was happy he had acted the way he did. Frankie realized he could not carry many more stones. Spending this time alone and drunk was quite terrifying. The voices were back and it took more and more alcohol to silence them. He needed Seconal, but he wasn’t about to go out looking in a strange town, especially not in a strange town loaded with cops, where many of those cops considered him a murder suspect. Vodka, bum wine, and beer would have to do.

  He thought of Katrina often. Even though she had been insane and deadly and toxic and he was sure she would have killed him, there was something very real in his attraction to her. Perhaps because she was one of the few left who was more broken than he was, kind of a comrade in arms. She was like a poisonous snake, not to be trusted, broken, but she made him feel less lonely. She helped keep the voices at bay. When he was with her, he felt less insane. Maybe it was simply by comparison. If one associates with seriously insane people, he does end up looking like the sane one, if he is, in fact, at least marginally less insane. He did ponder, though, how broken he must be if he had to stand near someone like her to feel whole. These were things that ran through Frankie’s mind, at 3:00 a.m., drunk on bum wine.

  The demon he saw occasionally out of the corner of his eye was becoming very real. He often sat with Frankie, silent, yet demanding. Frankie started to wake up vomiting more often. He was pretty sure it wasn’t a bug, since it started in July and it was now well into September. The sickness seemed to please the demon. When the demon spoke, it was in a deep, hollow, gravelly voice. Every word seemed to end with a hiss. At first, he thought the demon was a relic from the acid, but it had been weeks since he last took microdot, yet the demon was still there, getting stronger and more prominent.

  Frankie could see him, feel him, touch, smell him, and talk to him. He smelled foul and full of decay. At first they would talk in the darkness of the motel room, sitting among the garbage cans that overflowed with empty booze bottles, the unmade bed, the dirty clothes piled up high in the corner, and the ever-present TV blaring unwatchable noise. The demon seemed very at-home here. Whenever Frankie entertained any thought that could resemble good judgment or wisdom or self-control, the demon would turn his greasy, dark, scaly head and stare him down, call him a gutless pussy, and hand him a drink. The demon was less visible during the day, but at night he was in his full raging fury and glory.

  Frankie would sit back and let the demon run everything. He assured Frankie that they were together for all eternity from here on in. Frankie shrugged this news off, seemingly not caring one way or the other. At the time, Frankie had no idea what the demon had in store for him. The demon wears us down; like water on a stone, it’s unnoticeable, imperceptible, just a perpetual abrasion. I remember looking at stones in a river one time, marveling at how smooth they were, and thinking that I could come back in ten years or a hundred years and the stone would look almost the same; the changes were there, but subtle, constant, relentless.

  That’s how the demon takes over. It’s not a big event, or some epic shocking declaration; it’s slow and subtle and unperceivable. A person could never name the moment or day, or even the year he took ownership. It slowly happened over time. In all honesty, he owned that person from the first day, but he let the person think he was still in control.

  Frankie lived with the illusion of control until this time in the motel, while he waited to be set free to go, waited for arrest, waited to die. After meeting Katrina, he knew things were no longer in his hands. It was an ordinary day, a reckoning. And again, it was not the day anyone said, “Demon, take control now.” It was just that day, that moment, when he no longer cared. When he realized he was incapable of any form of control, he simply surrendered the illusion and let someone, something else drive.

  He stayed in the hotel three more days. Finally, a knock came on the door, from two cops and a detective. One cop was the same one who tried to help him the night of the killings. Frankie let them in and all three looked around the room in amazement, almost as if the state of the room itself might actually be a crime. There must have been a dozen empty vodka bottles on the floor. Empty Night Train, Mad Dog 20/20 bottles, bottles from all the top-shelf bum wines, and beer cans carpeted the room. Dirty clothes were strewn all over, almost hiding a lone empty pizza box. The one cop asked if he, in fact, had bothered to eat at all this week.

  Frankie cleared off a spot on the bed and offered them a place to sit; they politely declined. The detective started to speak. “The investigation is winding down. We found a small amount of illegal substances and an illegal handgun in the sleeper of your truck. We found the same in the horror chamber. I’m sure you are going to say they were the girl’s, so we’ve taken them and marked them as evidence. You are free to go, but I really hope you plan to sober up before you get in that truck to drive.”

  Frankie heard none of this. He looked at the demon sitting on the corner of the bed, stared in his eyes, and silently begged him to be quiet and go unnoticed. At one point, Frankie actually said aloud, “Please be fucking quiet until these guys leave.” The cops looked at each other but ignored the comment. They handed Frankie back his keys and turned and left. Now Frankie needed to get cleaned up, do some laundry, and get the hell out of this ugly little town.

  He decided to spend one last night in the dirty, moldy room with the demon. Frankie laid in bed and thought about home. He missed everyone: Cora, the bar, Alexandrine. He missed Betty a little too. He thought about Pam and Billy. He wished he wasn’t such a train wreck. He wished he could go home, get a job in the factory, marry a nice girl, sit it Turf’s and get drunk every day and spend his days as fast as he could, like a fool and his money, and die a peaceful, meaningless death; just run out this story and be done with it. He tried to rest, but the demon wanted a drink. He drank. He drank the rest of the night. Thoughts of going home were replaced quickly by an unidentified fear. The fear was always there, right with him; the fear had been there longer than the demon.

  He first met the demon at fourteen. He robbed a gas station, just him and Sammy messing around. Sammy stole a case of beer while Frankie pulled a fake gun on the guy at the cash register, who could not have cared less what they took. To Frankie and Sammy, it was the stuff of an epic heist. To the guy at the register, it didn’t matter; he got paid by the hour. They took the money and ran out of the store, screaming in victory. Frankie wanted to rob a liquor store. Sammy talked him out of it somewhat, but Frankie insisted. They walked to a small store, fairly isolated, where an old man sat behind a counter. The old man looked at Frankie and knew he wasn’t legal age. Frankie sensed he was going to be told to leave. He grabbed the first thing he could and ran out the door.

  He met Sammy, who had waited outside, and they ran like hell down the street. Sammy said, “Let’s go see the duck,” and
they ran off in that direction, heading to their favorite spot to hide out from the world, Hillside Cemetery. They opened the ancient, heavy, rusted, creaking steel gates, then closed the gates behind them, slowly and carefully, almost ceremoniously. Sammy firmly believed that was the only way to keep the spirits inside. He always opened and closed the gates with great intent and importance. Sammy always said the ghosts congregated by the gates, waiting for them to open so they could escape.

  The cemetery was perfect. Huge old maple and oak trees lined the perimeter and continued way up on the hill. In the moonlight, the place looked truly haunted. The wind always felt colder in this place, especially as it blew in from the north. On this chilly autumn night, it blew dead leaves all around; swirling in circles and back and forth, the leaves made a frightening noise as they skittered across the gravel road that circled the headstones and the now dry grass, almost like cold and confused locusts. The young robbers made their way up the hill to sit and party with “The Duck,” a Mr. Royal H. Duck. Frankie found The Duck years ago on a day when he skipped school. The cops were looking for him, the school had reported him missing and he went there to hide.

  He didn’t know about Sammy’s open and closed gate rule at the time. Frankie was sure he’d allowed a few ghosts to escape that day. He looked down at the headstone and read the name. He imagined how much crap the guy must have taken for that name and decided he needed to befriend him, alive or dead. Later that day after school, as soon as he saw him, he immediately told Sammy about his find. Frankie and Sammy spent their moments in need of escape: from parents, other gangs of kids who wanted to beat them up, cops, school officers—the list was quite long and impressive. Sitting with Royal, Frankie really believed Royal appreciated the company. That night, as he and Sammy got drunk on the stolen bottle of Scotch and beer, Frankie felt, for the first time, an awesome and surrounding peace.

  The demon walked up to him that night. Silently; he walked right past Sammy and, without Frankie’s knowledge, wrapped his arms around the boy. Frankie would spend a lot of time and money and energy and years trying to get back to that magical moment. He never found it again. His life changed at exactly that moment. Everything that hurt or made no sense or confused or angered him disappeared that night, almost like magic. Frankie almost instinctively knew he had to be drunk, or somehow impaired, all day, every day, from that day forward. The demon smiled. In those early days, he took away all Frankie’s fears and judgment, all his inability to not measure up.

  Frankie’s father had died young. His death helped to perpetuate the myth of the father, the legend that seemed to grow with each passing day, each passing story. Somehow a nice and decent guy was relegated to near sainthood.

  Frankie was born a problem, a situation to deal with, an angry child who grew into an angry young man in a world where he could not reconcile his time or place. At the end of the day, he was just happy to have most of his activities and crimes go undetected. He spent his life, from early on, simply trying to live unnoticed, under everyone’s radar. He needed to be on the outside of every situation, an amused observer, never ever connected directly.

  Life to Frankie was a confusing play that he watched in silence, always trying to figure out his next move, his next angle. His inability to never live up to the legend of the father caused him to come to an early and logical conclusion: if you cannot live up to the legend, take your own path in the opposite direction.

  Frankie took a blood oath with Sammy that night, cut fingers joined at the slice and blood shared. He was going to be everything his father could not be, the dark angel the father often dreamed of being but was never allowed to explore. The demon smiled that night in the cemetery. Today, less than ten years later, in a hell-hole motel, drunk and dirty, sitting in a chair, probably infested with bedbugs, in three-day-old underwear, the alliance with the demon had lost some of its luster. A rare self-inventory: failed relationships, rapidly failing health, dwindling sanity, murders, a life on the run; these were sources of great joy to the demon and things Frankie fought hard to ignore. Tomorrow, he would clean up, eat something, pack up, and head south.

  Chapter Twenty-seven:

  Running With

  The Demon

  Frankie woke up early, reached for the vodka bottle, took a long drink, sat there and lit a cigarette, then immediately ran to the bathroom and vomited. His nose began to bleed. He shoved some toilet paper into the hemorrhaging nostril, went back to the bed, lit another cigarette, found a can of Coke in his cooler, cracked it open, drank about half, then filled the can with vodka. He sat there medicating for about 20 minutes as he watched the morning news on the TV.

  He finally stood up, walked to the bathroom, pulled the plug from his nose, and looked in the mirror. He looked like hell. His body was skinny; his skin was pale; his hair was a long stringy, greasy mess; he hadn’t shaved since long before the massacre. He needed to find some clean clothes, shower, get some food, and get out of this hole. The demon sat silently by the door, waiting and smiling through his stinking teeth. Frankie found some clean clothes and cleaned himself up. He considered taking his dirty laundry with him, but decided to leave it and buy new clothes instead. The effort seemed too great. He went to the office, paid his bill, left some extra cash for the poor slob that had to clean up that room, and called a taxi for a ride back to his truck.

  Frankie climbed into the cab, started the tractor, and let it warm up. He pulled away from the unhooked trailer. There was a bizarre and inexplicable feeling of sadness as he pulled away. Not so much sadness for the loss of life; it was more about Katrina. He looked over at the demon riding in the passenger seat; the demon smiled. He drove into town and found a clothing store. He ran in and grabbed some jeans and shirts and things. Everything denim: shirts, pants, like it was a code; he had no other choice. Next door was a barber shop. Frankie didn’t understand why, but he felt this need to be clean, to shake off the shackles of this town. He walked in and found there was no one ahead of him. He told the barber to shave it all off: hair, beard, everything. The entire process took about ten minutes and Frankie was out the door. The demon smiled and said, “You’ll never be clean. It’s going to take more than a haircut.”

  He drove up to a diner. He realized he’d been living on alcohol for probably the past four days. He walked in and sat at the counter. He ordered a massive breakfast of eggs and bacon and grits and a second plate with a cheeseburger and fries. The waitress commented, “A skinny guy like you is going to eat all that?”

  Frankie smiled and said, “Yes.” While he waited, he called a broker he knew in Atlanta. The conversation was quick. There was a load he could take: a partial load into Montgomery and drop the trailer in Mobile. That would get him pretty close to New Orleans.

  He returned to his booth just as his plate of eggs was coming out from the kitchen. After he finished, Frankie decided to make one more call, this time to Alexandrine. He walked again to the back of the diner to the pay phone, slid in some change, and dialed her number. She answered on the first ring. Frankie laughed. “Were you waiting for me?”

  Alex sounded happy to hear from him. He said he had a long story to tell her, but now was not the time for that. He told her he was headed to New Orleans; he was okay; he’d been drinking way too much and had to get a handle on it. She kind of laughed and said, “Wait, you think you are drinking too much? That’s bad; you always say you can handle it.”

  Frankie replied, “I need to cut back. Some bad shit went down here; I’ll explain it when we can talk longer.” The demon was becoming him, or he was becoming the demon; he wasn’t quite sure which the case was.

  Alex said she would keep him in her prayers and told him thank you for keeping his promise to stay in touch. They both said “I love you” at the same moment. Frankie said he would call her from New Orleans and he hung up the phone. He walked outside to the tractor, found his nearly empty bottle, and took a long drag.

>   The demon offered him another drink; Frankie took it, and the demon smiled. He fired up the tractor and headed out of town, down the road toward Route 85 south into Atlanta. Frankie left with his now constant companion, the demon, in the passenger seat of his tractor. The demon was fairly silent during those days, more visual to him, but far more pronounced than in the early years, when he just lingered in the background waiting. Frankie found himself talking to him more now. At one time, early on, Frankie would argue with him, but now they simply coexisted.

  As the days of drinking or drinking with large quantities of pills progressed, the demon had moved more into the spotlight. Frankie called out on the radio for white crosses: “need to locate some pocket rockets.” He really needed Seconal, but he hoped some whites would lead him to Seconal. He was also dangerously low on alcohol. He pulled into the parking lot of the liquor store, he muttered to himself it was time to say goodbye here, once and for all, and he went inside. The girl was there. She commented on his bald head and clean-shaven face. It seemed to Frankie she might be okay with him again, strangely, but it really didn’t matter. He carried what would be today’s supplies up to the counter, smiled at the girl as she rang him up, paid for his purchase and left. She called after him, “Stop by when you come back this way!”

  Frankie said he would, but once out the door, he said to himself under his breath, “When Hell freezes over.”

  He climbed back in the tractor, filled the cooler with booze and ice, took one last look around this hellhole of a town, put the truck in gear, and headed out, southbound. He heard on the radio of a guy selling crosses at a truck stop about sixty miles ahead. Hopefully, the guy had other stuff, too.

  About an hour later, he pulled into the parking area of the truck stop; it was late afternoon. He pulled up for fuel and asked if anyone knew the guy he was told about. The guy working the fuel pumps did and directed Frankie where to go. At the checkout counter, Frankie told the attendant he was looking for “Rocket Fuel.” An older white guy with a huge belly, who breathed through his mouth and, to Frankie, appeared on the verge of collapse, motioned toward the shower and locker area and said he’d meet him there in ten minutes. The locker room was steamy and clean, with a few naked truckers walking around. Frankie felt a little strange standing in there fully clothed. He was not in the mood or any shape physically for a fight with any big, ugly, brother truckers today. He just kept his hands in his pockets, his head down, and his eyes on the floor.