Loved? Do I really love Bobby?
—It wasn’t your fault, girl. You should know that by now.
Luna closed her eyes. Shut out of the voice, tried to stop the rush of memory, but the storm was already at her door step. Images of her parents and the night the big rig crashed into them. Her vision giftwrapped inside a bad dream and how she made such a fuss her parents were called to come pick her up.
It was all my fault!
Her grandfather’s voice was a mouse fighting against the torrent.
It wasn’t your fault, girl. You were just a kid and you saw something terrible.
But if I hadn’t said something, they never would have been called to come get me. They never would have been on the road that night. They wouldn’t have died—and it was all because of me.
—Hush! You know it’s not true. Stop blaming yourself, lemon-drop. You have a gift. You can help people.
The storm and powerful blowing winds began to subside; dawn broke through in heavenly beams of light. Her grandfather’s handsome and strong face shone, pushing away the dark clouds.
But what if—I see something. Something that can hurt him? Or me?
—You’re worried about warning him?
Yes. What if it’s my warning that—?
—Trust yourself. Trust your intuition. Trust that spark.
He smiled at her. His image dissolved like mist on a warm summer breeze.
Luna could smell the late bloom of bluebonnets coming in from outside the kitchen window. She turned and watched a pair of cardinals dancing around the bone-colored pedestal birdbath in the garden.
“—anyways, I’ll never go back to Star of Hope again. You know, some of the guys I’ve run into call it ‘Star of Dope?’ Hilarious, right? Kinda sad actually. Supposed to be this Christian outreach shelter. But they run it like a prison and kick anyone who doesn’t confess back out on the street. Hell, I think I’d rather be on the street then listen to their hypocrisy. Heard a rumor that the Beacon and Way shelter was run by good people. Going to have a big Thanksgiving celebration. I don’t know. I just…I want to be alone, you know,” said Bobby.
Had Bobby been talking this entire time? Luna wondered. She blushed.
Bobby didn’t seem to notice. “But we’ll see, huh? I think I’m going to make my way toward St. John’s Church up in Houston. Heard they’re doing this ‘Blessed Friday’ thing. Jimmy, from the El Dorado underpass, will be there. Told him I’d met up with him if I was in the area. Share a bottle and our woes, as they say.” He grinned awkwardly into his mug.
“Bobby, do you trust me?” Luna asked, almost in a whisper.
“Huh?” he said.
“Do you trust me?” she enunciated.
Bobby looked at her. Searched her face. “Yeah, I guess so. I mean, you’ve helped me a lot with…you know. So yeah, I trust you.” He eyed her suspiciously.
Luna looked into the eyes of this man who had been nothing but a stranger only a few short months ago, naked in a field on the edge of her grandfather’s property, a man who carried an old faded photograph of a group of five kids and the words ‘Suicide Squad—1995’ written on the back, a man petrified to be around people, terrified he’d hurt them. The man with sad eyes, brown as earth and kind, but if you looked deeper with what those gypsy Cajun mystics called an inner eye, they turned yellow, yellow as the Devil’s eyes.
Luna looked away. “Bobby, I’m glad you trust me.” She fought back the sudden rush of tears and fear, the uncertainty of it all, the uncertainty of looking into him.
Bobby cocked an eye, confused.
“I want to try something, okay?” she said, mocking confidence.
“Try what?” he asked apprehensively.
Luna hesitated. What am I supposed to say? “Hey, Bobby, I’m going to take a little peek inside your head. What’s that? Yes, I said it right. I’ve got a gift. Didn’t I tell you?” But instead of saying that, Luna took his hand and led him into the living room. She pushed the mahogany coffee table that sat in front of the couch out of the way and gestured with her hands for Bobby to join her on the floor.
“So—what the hell are we doing?” asked Bobby, taking an uncomfortable seat.
Luna said nothing. They faced each other. She took both his hands into her own, resting them on her crossed legs, and closed her eyes.
“Luna?” Bobby injected again.
“Just shut up for a minute, will ya!” she barked and fell back into her meditative trance. There was only dark red light penetrating the folds of her eyelids. She could feel Bobby stirring uncomfortably, but his hands remained stationary, strong, and warm. They were surprisingly soft and gentle. Not so surprisingly hairy, but tender nonetheless. She pulled them closer into her palm. Felt his fingers brush at the center where the line of life is read by palm readers. The red light around her went dark. It had begun. She had the strangest recollection of sitting inside a red brick house in an upstairs room. Nirvana and NIN posters hung on the walls. Lavender incense burned on a dresser drawer. The Eurythmics were droning from a boom box in the background, something about sweet dreams and traveling the world on the seven seas.
And then the music faded into a distant echo and there was some white girl with long, wavy brown hair sitting in front of her on the floor, in front of a twin bed with Star Wars sheets. Luna found herself leaning over, kissing this other girl nervously on the lips.
“Seriously, Luna. What are we doing?” Bobby interjected into the dream. His voice came over her like a loudspeaker at a grocery store.
“Hush!” Luna fired back.
The adolescent picturesque romance vanished and was replaced with darkness. She moved beyond, to some other place deeper inside Bobby’s mind. It was warm here, even though she couldn’t see it, she felt the sun shining above her. The breeze smelled like pondweed. Suddenly water appeared. Lapping waves of a lake touched her toes. An older, balding man sat next to her.
He looked plump, but kind. A fishing pole in one hand, a beer in the other. He was smiling at the sky. She was smiling as well. And then dark clouds rolled in. The sun disappeared behind them. She looked at the man, who had dropped his beer and his fishing pole, grasping at his chest.
She was on her feet, coming beside him. She could feel the cold surge of panic setting up shop in her heart. She shook the old man, but he wouldn’t move. Why isn’t he moving? Why? Why? And then blackness came over her again like a blanket or bag tossed over her head, or a body bag, she thought on a river of cold that ran up her spine.
Whatever it was, she couldn’t breathe. She felt trapped, contained. She pushed against it but could not find her way out. The rattling of gunfire exploded into life around her, but all she saw was utter nothingness. Men were shouting words she couldn’t quite understand. More explosions. Screams of pain. Whimpering. This place smelled and tasted like sand. There were a few last crackles of gunfire and then nothing. But there was something, a growl and then silence once again.
It was suddenly cold. She was shivering all over. The bag dissolved and she was standing in some sort of cave. No—not entirely. The walls are too smooth and structured to be just a cave. This place was engineered by someone. Strange, alien drawings covered the walls around her. The light seemed dim, powered only by the small flashlight in her hand. In front, an enormous wall which her light could not entirely touch. A queer idea struck her that the wall could have very well been a door, though she had no clue how something of that size would open. But it did—the door was opening. Now, right before her eyes! Slowly coming apart. The jagged crunch of rock grinding against rock. There was something else, something from inside.
It was moving. Buzzing, chirping, whirring, and stridulating in a congruent dreadful chorus. Large, bulbous eyes glared back at her from inside the behemoth stone structure, thousands strong. Luna wanted to scream, to run, but she couldn’t, she was frozen with four other teenagers standing next to her. She recognized them without knowing them.
From the pict
ure! The one Bobby carried around with him. These are them! Then one of them shouted and they were running together, running fast away from those terrible eyes and nightmarish chattering. The noise reminded her of the cicadas in her backyard. They came in swarms during the spring and ate their weight in tree fluid. Luna ran. And then she was free and breathing in warm, summer air, panting and looking at the children around her, all sharing the same look of shock and joy and fear and excitement. And confusion. What had they been running from?
And then nothing. Luna watched the children walk toward some dirt gravel road, leaving her behind. She looked around and found a house, a two-story white house with a poorly made porch and bones, thousands of bones piled high in mounds surrounding the landscape, circling the house. Suddenly, the house grew and stretched upward unnaturally before her. With monstrous mandibles it snarled and gnashed and lunged toward her. It was hungry—hungry! Granddaddy, it’s hungry! It’s so hungry! It wants…it wants…
***
Bobby
Bobby wasn’t sure what to think. Luna dragged him in the living room, holding his hand like some grade-school crush. But then all she did was sit and close her eyes. Still holding his hand. He watched her silently, especially after she shh-ed him. He could see her eyes moving around behind her lids. But now they seemed to be dancing franticly. REM in fast-forward, he thought nervously. And then she started making sounds. Whimpering at first. Now, crying.
“Luna,” called Bobby. Still holding her hands.
She remained in her trance, breathing like some rabid dying dog.
“Luna!”
Luna’s eyes shot wide, but Bobby could only see the milky white of her sclera. She was looking at him, but not looking at him—through him, in some other place and time.
“Kay la se lanmò—kay la se lanmò—kay la se lanmò—kay la se lanmò—kay la se lanmò,” she chanted in a gurgled voice.
“Luna? Wake up!” shouted Bobby, yanking his hands away, taking her by the shoulders.
Luna began to tremble something fierce, her voice moaning in a deep bass Bobby had never heard before. Jesus, what is this? What’s happening to her?
And then she stopped. The quaking ceased. Her eyes shut and when they opened again her green irises returned. Sweat rolled down her dark arms.
“Jesus, Luna! What the hell was that all about?” Bobby asked, feeling a bit relieved it was over.
Luna said nothing, at first. She looked down at her hands and then back at Bobby, as if struggling to find words for her thoughts.
“Bobby—I saw something,” she started.
“What do you mean you saw something?”
“A house. A white, two-story house with a ruined porch and glass and bones everywhere,” she said.
“What house? What are you talking about? You saw something, what does that even mean?”
“I saw. I—I have a gift. I can see things, if I want. I can see people in a way no one else can, well…at least in a way no normal person can.”
“What are you saying? You’re—psychic or something?” Bobby knew he sounded ridiculous. “Look—Luna, I know your New Age and all, but come on.”
“You don’t have to believe me, Bobby, but give me the benefit of the doubt,” Luna said, desperation leaked past the pain and fear in her voice.
“Look—” Bobby started to say.
“Just promise me something,” Luna interrupted.
“What?”
“Don’t go inside that house.”
“What house?”
“Just don’t go! You’ll know it when you see it, Bobby. Do not go inside.”
“Okay—I have no clue what your babbling about, but sure, okay, I will not go inside the house.”
Luna slumped. She looked tired and still obviously upset about something, something she supposedly saw. Sweat glistened off her dark skin. The two sat together on the floor in a strange silence.
“Hey, Luna?” Bobby said.
“Yes.”
“What does ‘Kay la se lanmò’ mean?” he asked. “You were jabbering about it before you woke up.”
She looked at him without saying a word. Pain and fear stained her face like watercolor.
“Seriously, what does it mean?” he prodded again, curiosity taking hold.
Luna looked at him, really looked at him, and then turned away. “Kay la se lanmò is Haitian,” she said.
“For?”
“The house is death.”
CHAPTER 14
FREAKS
Johnathan
When there is no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth.
Johnathan wasn’t quite sure why he was thinking about Ricky’s second-favorite horror movie, but the thought was with him all the same as he pushed through the front glass doors of the Washington D.C. Veterans Affairs Medical Center. In front of him, a sea of service hats, pins, and rainbow and purple badges glowed in the strangely dimmed lights of the large hospital lobby. Navy, Army, Marine Corps, Air Force, even a few Coast Guard service ribbons could be counted among the rank and file. The older among them, the WWII veterans wore embroidered hats radiating with a sense of approaching death. Vietnam patches were in the majority, a rainbow of duty etched across the brim, obscuring faces marked by prolonged suffering. And the youngest among these aging rabble-rousers wore OIF and OEF patched hats, the Afghanistan and Iraq War veterans, in which he placed membership. Of these Gen-Xs and Millennials a fair share matched mutilated scars with dark juvenile eyes. It was a familiar image, one he had seen countless times at the VA hospital in Houston.
Quickly, Johnathan found the information desk and made his way to where he needed to be. Peering inside the room, he had no idea so many people would already be waiting in Auditorium C, waiting to hear him speak, to yarn about their grotesque commonality. He watched from behind the curtain as a gang of wheel chair bound veterans squeaked by on newly rubbered tires, parking in front in the section designated for handicapped parking. Others shuffled in with the assistance of orderlies or on sturdy crutches. A mass of gorged eye sockets, mortar chewed cheek bones, and amputees taking their seats beside one another. Arms, legs, nuggets of discolored purple and bluish-bruised meat torn away by IED’s or RPG’s or perhaps the always Hollywood-popular small arms fire.
Those from the burn unit at Walter Reed were in attendance as well, their cooked and shriveled faces took up most of the center row, as if at the very heart of the audience, the fires that had consumed their flesh cauterized into ash and soot rained down from the overhead sprinklers in grey flakes. They were skeletal watchers, black bones with the eyes of children. It all seemed too surreal to him, like some Otto Dix painting come to life, slithering into reality. Behind the curtain, he gazed at his own deformity, the pain of loss and the rejection of normalcy was ever so prevalent, the pain every so close to his heart. He wondered if perhaps they were all really dead, living out some make-believe existence in some bloody trench gouged out in the fiery pits of hell, a brimstone hearth filled with the rotting disgusting hearts of humanity.
How many have wet the bed? God knows I have.
Could they admit?
Would they?
How does that old bible verse go? Jake would know it. From Ecclesiastes, right? ‘Rejoice, O young man in thy youth…walk (walk!) in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes; but know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgement…’ or something to that effect.
Yet, despite all the suffering, there were no languished sobs or bitter reunions from the crowd. Not a soul wailed or gnashed their teeth. There was nothing but the dull buildup of excitement, whispers in the dark places of the auditorium. Most were young, but there were older veterans in attendance as well. None from the Greatest Generation though. There were so few of them left in the world. Watching the assembly, Johnathan felt as if he was watching himself, or maybe half expecting to see Ricky out there somewhere in the crowd, but Ricky was dead. Wasn’t he?
Johnny
-Boy recalled, as memories often came when triggered by some wandering thought, of his dad during a Fourth of July celebration, years ago. Kids were chasing each other around with plastic nerf guns, the ones with the large plastic balls, not like today, today they’re made of foam and don’t leave a sting when you get hit. He pictured how the parents segregated in groups of gender. Fathers near the grill, drinking beer and belching laughter. The mamas circled a picnic table and gossiped about odd folks they met at the store. Occasionally, the roar of high altitude jets would deafen the merry conversations.
By nightfall, the darkness was consumed by artificial explosions and Americans craning their necks upward with amassed jubilation. Oh, to be an American! And Johnathan remembered how bright the colored flowers bloomed in the night’s sky, and how when he happened to look his dad’s face was wet with tears.
Why was that?
Johnathan could taste sulfur from those fireworks on his lips as he stood on the stage, behind the curtain, waiting to be called. He could hear the crackle of gunfire overlaid with the roar of engines from some far unseen place. He shut his eyes tight, fighting off the memory. You’re not wanted here. Not now. Go away. And then, as if by will, the terrible remembrance retreated, blessedly.
Breathing deep, he checked himself over as the Veterans Affairs liaison walked onto the stage to introduce him. It was a nervous habit, making sure the lower button on his polo tee shirt was buttoned. A gold tattooed pair of boots and a cross bearing the name ‘Ricky, brothers forever’ made itself visible just underneath the cuff of his sleeve. He knocked lint to the floor, adjusting his dark grey khaki pants. Hidden beneath, a tattooed hand pointed to Johnathan’s severed leg with the words etched in flesh: ‘One foot in the grave.’ He smiled, remembering how Karen had reacted. She’d understood the memorial ink for Ricky, but when he had come home one evening with the one on his leg freshly done, she had rolled her eyes, but said nothing. “What? Karen? Don’t you think it’s funny?”
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