Four Crows

by Lily White

  Her eyes closed, her lips trembled, her entire body shook over the soil where she knelt. Opening her mouth to answer me, she was unable to speak out loud, not after one attempt, two attempts, or three.

  “Tell me what you know, or so help me God, I’ll –“

  “I know they didn’t touch your son because I was having a tea party with him the night he was brought to my house. My family didn’t hurt him. He wasn’t touched. He sat with me the entire night, but I can’t remember anything more than that. I was only four. It’s all a jumble of memory in my head.”

  “I suggest you think harder, Maggie. In fact, I suggest you think so hard right now to answer my questions that I don’t kill you right here before finding my way back to someone who might remember a little better.”

  “I was only four! It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t know any better. You have to believe me. Please!”

  “Please isn’t good enough.”

  The anger took hold of me. Like a demon, it found it’s way into my body and possessed me until I was powerless to fight it. I wasn’t Elliot any longer. I wasn’t the man who’d fallen in love at the age of thirteen, had a child at fifteen, and enlisted in the military at eighteen just to support the family I had when I was too young to take care of it. That man no longer existed.

  What existed now was a man hell-bent on retribution. A man that would hurt whoever it took just to find the truth that had been denied to him since the moment he stepped foot back on U.S. soil. Guilt couldn’t touch me any longer. And regret was so far off that I didn’t worry about the burden of it, regardless of what horrible things I did to achieve what I was seeking.

  Standing up, I shoved my hand against the back of Maggie’s head, knocking her down to the ground so hard that she had to spit dirt out from between her teeth. I paced away from her in an attempt to quell the rage that was a fire in my veins, but then circled back again to kick at the dirt, to force more of it up into Maggie’s face and into her eyes.

  My hands clenched into fists and I imagined myself beating her down into the ground without remorse or hesitation. I imagined doing everything to her that her family had done to my wife and then bragging about it when I returned to kill those three bastards I left tied up around a bonfire. I imagined throwing her lifeless body into the bed of the truck and delivering her to them as revenge for what they had done to me.

  But I didn’t.

  I couldn’t.

  I wasn’t that man.

  In a moment where I should have lost everything inside me that made me who I was as a person, a voice whispered up that reminded me there were two other spirits who’d shaped me. I could never lose them because I refused to let them go. Their memory held on to parts of me that kept me from becoming lost in the storm of pure rage that consumed me.

  Gentle and soothing, that voice started so softly that I’d barely been able to hear it. As it grew louder, I recognized it was female. A little louder and I remembered the woman to whom it belonged.

  My wife. The girl I met when I was just a boy. The heart and soul I’d fallen head over heels in love with once I knew what it was to love another. Her laughter was the wind across the clearing where I stood. Her heartbeat was the pulse that thundered in my head. The sunshine that always followed her warmed the places inside me that had grown cold since I’d lost her, and the happiness that was her entire being wrapped around me until I’d lost the ability to breathe.

  That’s the thing with the people you love. They start off as strangers who are separate and distinct. Through their beauty and kindness, they work their way inside you until you have no choice but to hold them close. Once your heart opens and accepts them inside, they become a part of you that is so indelible they are an essence of your soul that remains even after they die.

  Katelyn was a part of me, and so was our son, Michael.

  The parts of them that had become me wouldn’t hurt Maggie for something that happened when she was four. And it was those parts that kept me from hurting her now.

  But that didn’t mean I wouldn’t scare her.

  Rounding the truck, I dropped the tailgate of the bed and pulled one of the duffel bags to me. Maggie continued wailing where she laid in the dirt, the pain of her sobbing reaching into me and ripping what little bit of my heart I had left out of my chest. She was just a child when my family disappeared and no matter what the circumstances had been, she couldn’t be held accountable for their deaths.

  She would be held accountable for lying to me – not that I’d done much better. I’d been lying the entire time I’d known her. Using her to get close to the men who had done my family harm.

  Pulling a handgun from the bag, I zipped it closed and shook off the impulse to be a decent man. I needed answers and I was willing to walk the line between decent and monstrous in order to get what I was after.

  Dirt kicked up beneath my feet and I took a few long legged strides to stand in front of the bawling girl on the ground. Cursing myself for adding to the torment I knew she’d suffered over the past few days, I pressed the muzzle of the gun to her forehead.

  During my time in the military, I’d seen countless scenes of violence. I’d seen torture and pain. I’d seen destruction and pure hatred. I’d seen suicide and murder, rape and humiliation. I’d seen every horrible act one human could commit against another and I’d seen men break and surrender themselves to the pressure of carrying those images in their head.

  However, never in the time that I spent serving had I ever seen anything as heartbreaking as watching Maggie surrender her will, surrender her fight, surrender her young life if that’s what it took to save her family.

  For as heartbroken as I was, I still had a duty to seek the truth. And I still had an unrelenting need for vengeance.

  “We’re sitting at a crossroads, Maggie. One where nobody lives in the end, except for maybe you.”

  Blinking away the tears in her eyes, she stared up at me without the light behind her eyes I was so used to seeing. “Take me instead, Elliot.” A few more sobs rattled her chest, but she rolled her shoulders back regardless. This beautiful girl was going to walk into the afterlife with her head held high as she fought for the only thing she knew: her love of the father who’d raised her.

  “I’m the one who made friends with your son. And I’m the reason your wife drove us home that night. I can’t give you all the details, but I can give you that small bit. And if my family has to die because of what they’ve done, then I need to die right beside them. Because the death of your wife and son was my fault, too.”

  My hand holding the gun to her head trembled, the blood rushing from the tip of my finger where it was pressed to the side so I wouldn’t accidentally pull the trigger. None of this was her fault. None of it. But she was willing to lay down her life to appease me.

  Pulling the gun from her head, I dropped to my knees in front of her. Surprise flashed behind her eyes as the tears continued falling. And tears welled in mine to join hers. We stared at each other for several minutes before finally succumbing to the grief that trapped us both in it’s cold, cruel hold.

  Creeping forward, I tucked my finger beneath her chin and tipped her head up until her eyes met mine. My body trembled as much as hers. My heart pounded behind my ribs as my need for violence died.

  Changing tactics, I calmed my booming voice.

  “I’m not going to kill you, Maggie. What happened wasn’t your fault. But I have to stop your family from killing again. And I need your help to do so.”

  “He’s my father,” she whispered.

  “I know, Darlin’. I know. But that’s neither here nor there when it comes to doing what’s right.”

  A few tense seconds flew past until she swallowed down the grief that consumed her and nodded her head in agreement.

  “Fine, Elliot. I’ll lead you back home. I’m not sure where we are because I took different roads than my family normally drives when we’re leaving town, but I’m sure we can stop and ask for di
rections. I don’t mind you stopping Finn and Brody from killing again. I don’t care if the two of them die. But I need you to promise me one thing – just one – and I’ll help you finish what you came to my house to accomplish.”

  The tears in my eyes burned until I had no choice but to blink them away and drop into the dirt beneath me. “What do you need, Maggie? What will make you help me finish this?”

  A shiver ran across her body. Drawing a deep breath into her lungs, she held it for a second before releasing it. And after rolling her shoulders back once more, she stared into my eyes.

  “I want to be the one who kills my father.”

  Desperation is a terrible entity. Unlike the emotions that creep in gradually and seduce you to love, to cry, to laugh or to tremble, desperation is a bully that charges you head on. Selfish and intractable, desperation consumes every part of you when it takes control. It bites down and shakes the life out of you, paralyzing you in its unrelenting hold until you’re nothing but a puppet bowing and dancing according to the strings it has tied to its malevolent, skeletal fingers.

  It wasn’t simply despair or fear that I felt as I knelt before a crazed man holding a gun to my head, it was pure and undiluted desperation, the kind that left me without will, without choice, without anything but the instinct to submit to the dominant, immoveable force that stood above me.

  I was desperate to survive. Desperate to save my father. Desperate to repair all the agony and chaos my family had created in the man who now held my life in his hands.

  Only two nights had passed since Elliot told me there were always choices in life. The choice to live. The choice to die. The choice to fight against insurmountable odds, even if that meant you chose to give up breathing rather than succumb to the torture of being enslaved.

  Elliot never mentioned you had to be strong to make that choice. And if he had, I wouldn’t have believed him when he’d told me that choice had been my right.

  The desperation had excised my strength. It had left me a shell devoid of hope, optimism or courage. A dog that had found its bone, desperation had gnawed me down to fragments of what I’d once believed I could have been. It left me covered in dirt, my eyes burning and my body trembling beneath an impossibly dark and moonless night.

  Only when Elliot had removed the hard surface of the gun from my head had I been able to take a breath, but it wasn’t enough to clear my head of the panic, to pull me from the arms of the desperation that crippled me while laughing at how easy I’d been made its victim.

  Forcing myself to continue breathing, I listened to the words Elliot spoke, I reached out with that part inside myself that could feel the emotions of others, only to be burned by the desperation I recognized in him as well.

  We were both slaves to the outcomes we wanted. Elliot wanted to destroy it all; and I wanted to discover a way to keep death from devastating my soul.

  “Why would you want to kill your father, Maggie?”

  Despite the way my eyes still burned from the dirt that continued to clog them, I stared unblinking at a man too beautiful to be real. It wasn’t simply the sharp angles of his face or his square, strong jaw. It wasn’t just the golden glow of his skin, or the hard muscles that were perfectly developed into defined planes that moved with a feline grace. It was the loyalty that consumed him. The love that destroyed him. The focus in his eyes that was so acute, it stole the breath from my lungs. His spirit was larger than life and I regretted not having known him when happiness infected his being, for not having known him before agony replaced the warmth and light inside him with turmoil and bitter cold.

  “I don’t want you becoming a killer,” he whispered, his voice cradled softly by the cool night air. “You don’t need that stain on your soul.”

  I couldn’t tell him that desperation was the reason behind my sudden request. Explaining that I was buying time would only enrage him more. Despite the futility of the dividing line that had been drawn, I forced myself to believe that there was a possibility we could come together and see eye to eye.

  Buying time had never been more important. Buying time was the only way I could ensure my father would survive.

  Even though lying had never been my strong suit, it was the only option I had at that particularly difficult moment.

  “Because you’re right,” I explained, hoping and praying that his own turmoil would keep him from seeing my own. “It’s wrong what they’ve done. The kidnapping and killing. The parties they hold before we run away from the pain they’ve caused.”

  At first I’d been merely repeating back all the words he’d just said to me, but as I continued prattling on, a sickening realization hit me: The words he’d said hadn’t been wrong.

  I didn’t approve of what my family had done, and if it had just been Finn and Brody’s crimes, I would have turned my back on them a long time ago. My father was the challenging factor. It had been wrong of him to take part in the acts that had destroyed so many. And if he’d been any other man, I would have condemned him as fervently as any person standing on the outside of our family. I would have hated him for the victims he’d created. And I would have wanted to destroy him as thoroughly as Elliot planned to do.

  To me, my father was a different man. He was the knight who’d chased away the dragons, the man who’d protected me against all the monsters that went bump in the night. He’d been the balm that chased away my childhood tears and the playmate that sat with me for tea parties, who’d danced with me and brought a smile to my youthful face. He’d given me everything I’d ever wanted or needed, and he’d used a soft hand in disciplining me when I’d gone astray.

  Whereas other people looked at my father and saw him for the evil he’d committed, I’d looked at him and saw a protector, a parent and a friend.

  I never doubted his loyalty to me, and even when he’d made decisions that hurt me, I knew he believed he was doing what was right.

  It never occurred to me to question why he hurt others while placing me on a pedestal. Women were objects and money – all of them, except for me.

  Buying time wouldn’t just give me the opportunity to save the man who’d looked after me since I was a baby, it would give me the chance to ask the hard questions that, until now, I’d never had the strength to consider.

  Staring down at me with curiosity and hesitation behind his cold, grey eyes, Elliot waited patiently for me to continue explaining the request I’d made. His hand still held the gun he’d used to threaten me. His body was still tight with lack of trust. But I had to forgive him for not readily believing a word I had to say. All I’d done is betray him in the worst possible ways.

  “I want to know why he did the things he did,” I admitted. “I want to know why I’m so special he would move the Earth and stars if that’s what it took to protect me, yet he killed so many others without a single drop of remorse. I’ve never had the chance to ask him those questions. I don’t know, Elliot. I just don’t see him as the same monster that you see. If he has to die, I want to be the person that is there when he takes his final breath, if for nothing else but to say goodbye.”

  Shaking his head, Elliot finally broke the focused stare he’d held on me. Tilting his head up into the night sky, his throat moved to swallow down whatever lump of emotion choked him. His jaw twitched as he ground his teeth and his fingers tightened over the cold steel of the gun in his hand.

  “You don’t know what it is like to kill someone. It seems easy until it’s time to pull the trigger. And it might seem easy to walk away and leave that decision behind you because you believed you had no choice, but the life you destroyed follows you. It tracks you day after day, constantly on the edge of your thoughts until it finds those moments of weakness to step in and haunt you.”

  Angling his head back down, he opened his eyes and blinded me with the despair that had settled behind them. A sob threatened to crawl up my throat, the pain in him so palpable I would have sworn it was my own.

  “He’s your fath
er, Maggie. You love him and he loves you. I have no doubt about that.”

  “It’s why I want to be the one to do it,” I admitted, that damn desperation tackling me again and making itself known in my voice. “I know you don’t think he deserves to leave this world with compassion. I get that. But I don’t agree. At least not for the part of him that I know.”

  Indecision was obvious in the strict lines of his face. He wanted revenge, he wanted retribution and he wanted blood. Watching him closely, I realized there was a battle raging inside.

  “We should get on the road and drive back to your house,” he finally said, exhaustion evident in the way his shoulders withered. A cloud of dust kicked up when he settled his body onto the ground. Blowing out a breath filled with all the hate, anger and pain he’d been feeling, he shook his head again.

  “For the last fourteen years, there has been nothing left of me,” he confessed, his voice so calm and soft that it scared me more than the screaming had. “I didn’t know who’d taken my family, not for the first several years at least. Each day of not knowing tore another piece of me away. I was afraid I would eventually die without the answers I needed to make sense of what had stolen away my life.”

  His eyes closed and opened again, waves of debilitating emotion crashing behind the glint of steel in his gaze. “You can’t possibly understand what it feels like – how not knowing is the worst fate you can be given. But then one day there was a light that shone down and illuminated the void of not knowing. It wasn’t an answer that screamed in my face. It wasn’t the proof I needed to make everything right. It was more of a whisper, a trail of breadcrumbs left out that dared me to follow. But follow them, I did. Directly to your front door.”

  Settling myself on the ground facing Elliot, I toyed with an errant twig that sat on the ground at my knees. “You knew, didn’t you? On the first day we met, you knew what my family had done.”