At least Blake tried, while Leticia showed signs of post-partum depression.
Blake worked ten hour shifts and come home to the small apartment with his daughter stinking of unchanged diapers and his wife dozing on the sofa, a liquor bottle or three dead and drained on the brown carpet.
Confrontation led to no good. She was slipping, and hard. Blake tried to garner the sympathy to care, but he could not do that and take care of their daughter as well. It was not something he was good at, not a part of his history, no matter how hard he tried.
When he got home on a Wednesday evening in early January, three weeks from Claire’s first birthday, and found his daughter alone in the unlocked apartment, that was his breaking point.
How could Leticia leave this precious child alone. How could she not care?
It was the first time Blake ever remembered crying.
Shaking, he took the child in his arms, changed her diaper and gave her a bottle of milk while she muttered, “Dadda” and “Momma.” He could not let her mother ruin her life. As much as he loved Leticia, she was a product of a hard upbringing that was ingrained in her soul. The empty syringe on the floor next to a pacifier was evidence enough that he had to save his daughter from her negligence.
Uncertain of what to do, he knew at the very least he had to take Claire away. The weather had pushed below freezing, and light snow flurries had commenced a couple hours previous, the reason he was sent home early from work. Negotiating the icy stairs, he made way to the car, put Claire in the car seat without strapping her in as he meant to clear the parking lot before her mother might show up. As if that really was a possibility. That was a confrontation he did not want to have. He was afraid of where his anger might take it.
So he drove, no plan but to be away. Made it to Interstate 84 east, when he realized driving in this weather was not safe, no matter his haste to be away. Remembered a co-worker who lived in Stevenson, Washington, just across the Bridge of the Gods, and took the exit to go there. Chill for the night. Think.
He only experienced black ice this once in his life, as he approached the bridge…and the car swerved off the road…and into the Columbia Gorge. And the nightmare that haunts his every sleeping hour.
…as the current pulled the child away, he reached toward her with his damaged right hand. The current pushed back: it wanted its prize. He yelled and water filled his mouth. He tried again, desperate to save the child, his daughter. The frothing tide pushed against his fingers, intent on bending them all the way back to his wrist, flattened out as a stump sculpted from futility. “Daddy,” she said, not “Dadda,” or “Momma,” but “Daddy,” clear and crisp. Her first and last true word. His curse forever. He watched his daughter’s shocked expression as she lost the feeble grip on the car seat she should have been strapped into, the eyes moments ago full of joy, now nothing more than dull buttons on the rag doll that remained. He yelled again, a stream of bubbles flowing from the inside roof of the car and out the crack in the driver’s side window. He pushed against the stick-shift with strong legs, his shoulder shattering the window. The sound was a muffled explosion. He watched the rag doll fade to black beyond the car’s beams. He closed his eyes, fighting back tears as he swam up, or somewhere, this watery oblivion his personal hell…
—and held on for dear life, even as he fell to the hard concrete floor. Even as he slid toward the force, luckily hooking his foot on one of the blocks of stone.
A moment of peace shimmered through Blake, an impossible nod to a past he could never change, but here, now, he could. And did.
Nothing else mattered but the straining muscles in Blake’s arm, and the grip loosening at the force of the pull.
No!
Suddenly, he heard Burroughs exclaim, “Well, this is rather unexpected.” Burroughs skin started to tear. From within him, a cut and paste collage of insects and syringes filled with multi-colored substances darted out from beneath his skin, before the skin turned to dust and he was sucked into the ball of light.
“Please hold on,” Jane said, her voice tiny amid the tumultuous congregation of noises converging within the ball of light and the scream loud enough to shatter eardrums and the universe, Chernobyl’s final soliloquy, before tentacles of electricity, radiation—Blake was not sure, he could only watch in awe and fear—lashed out from the ball of light that was Rudolf riding the centipede.
Blake held on.
Held on…
Rudolf Chernobyl reached for Jane.
The tentacles tried to wrap around her ankle and she screamed, kicking at them.
“Blake…”
Blake concentrated all his strength to his arm, his forever damaged hand.
“Blake,” she cried.
The tentacles had taken a shoe.
Blake stared into Jane’s eyes as she pleaded with him, but beyond her face, he caught a glimpse of the shoe bursting into flame and melting. The tentacle, like a child throwing a fit, smashed the concrete floor. Blake felt the earth quake and watched as cracks dissected the floor beneath them.
Blake pulled his focus completely back to her eyes, holding her in his sight as his arm beaded profusely, sweat coating the floor for an instant before evaporating amid the escalating heat.
If it didn’t stop soon, it wouldn’t matter if he held on or not, they’d be barbecued alive. Blake pushed this thought away and continued to stare into Jane’s eyes and did the only thing he could do.
He held on.
Held on…
There was a moment when dozens of tentacles rose up from the churning ball of meat and light and death, for sure, and the white noise that filled the gaps between thoughts pierced with abandon, mutating into a howl, human and of such depth and agony Blake could not imagine. The tentacles arched as scorpion stingers ready to take them, now. Ready, but then the cry fell silent, momentarily erasing sound from the slate of present experience.
Rudolf Chernobyl was no more. He was a broadening throb of intensity…and gone.
Jane dropped leaden to the floor.
Blake’s damaged hand refused to let go of her. He pulled her toward him.
“Jane. Jane.” He ran his other hand through her hair, along the ridge of her cheekbone.
All he could do was hold her. It seemed the right thing.
After a time, the adrenaline settling into a bearable pace, Jane looked up at him and said, “He’s gone?”
“Yes. Gone forever, I’m sure.”
“Where?”
“Just gone.”
Made as much sense as anything else, under the circumstances. As if answers were to be had right now. Exhaustion, perhaps, but no heavy thinking.
Minutes in silence. A sanctuary of sorts.
Jane started to sob, shaking her head as she gently hit Blake’s chest.
Blake took her fist and broke open the fingers, wrapped her hand in his.
And held on some more.
Chapter 33 Blake
Terrance Blake did not know that when he was seventy-nine years-old he would die in his sleep from a broken heart. A life lived. If someone had told him that would be how he would die, he would have laughed and said they were crazy.
He did not know that between this moment and then, he would build a true friendship with Jane Teagarden. He would end up heading security for her sprawling home in the hills outside of Los Angeles, as if she really needed security. But it was what they both needed.
He would perform the duties of a surrogate father and give Jane Teagarden away at her wedding twelve years after her brother and father had died.
He would meet an ageing actress, Miranda Salander, famous for being a Scream Queen, at the wedding. They would connect, much to Jane Teagarden’s joy. “I’ve been trying to find you a woman for years,” she would say afterwards.
Terrance Blake and Miranda Salander would be married less than a year later.
Jane Teagarden would have her only child a year and a half after her wedding. Her husband, Robert Weather
s, an investment banker, would insist they give the boy his father’s first name, William. Jane agreed, as long as she got to give him his middle name.
William Terrance Weathers.
When she told Blake this, he cried for only the second time in his life that he could remember, then smiled.
So this was happiness?
The moments big and small would all matter, because he had changed. He was not the same man he was before. That man was buried underneath a house in Lawrence, Kansas.
The night he knew he was leaving this earthly realm, he would call Jane and tell her as much.
“I just wanted to say knowing you has been the brightest joy of this man’s journey, but it’s time for me to go. I love you!”
“I love you, too, Terrance.” She sniffled. She understood. “Without you, my life would never have made sense.”
“Funny how it all works out, isn’t it? Meeting as we did. Tracking a lost boy, losing the lost boy…and finding what we both needed to make sense of our lives. And finding out what he wanted was always within reach.”
“What do you mean?”
“The ultimate experience.”
“But what do you mean?” Jane asked, her voice cracking. Blake could tell she was sobbing, though she hid it pretty well.
“You know exactly what I mean.” He smiled. He knew she could sense it in her heart.
“Yes,” she said, the sobbing louder, but still contained.
“I’m going now. Time to sleep, sweet angel.”
“Safe journey, my friend,” Jane said, now crying.
“No tears, sweet angel. Time for me to hook up with my wonderful Miranda, and another sweet angel who I haven’t seen for too long.” Claire… “Or time for me to become a worm buffet,” he said, and even through their tears—yes, he would be crying at this point, too—they would both laugh.
No matter the destination, it would not matter.
Because here, now, two months after watching a man who was not a man turn into a ball of soul-extinguishing light, and watching a man who was still a boy strive for something he could never understand, and holding on to a woman for dear life while reality took a vacation, he was standing at the vast bay window of Jane Teagarden’s large house in the Los Angeles hills, looking out over the valley as the sun started to break through the cloud cover, uncertain of what she wanted from him. What more could she want from him?
When she said in an offhand way, dodging around the subject, finally getting to the point, she’d like him to head her security for the house, which really didn’t need security, but came with an adjacent cottage—room and board and considerable wages—he surprised himself and blurted, “Yes,” before she’d even laid out all the details.
It wasn’t security either of them needed. It was friendship with one who understood as no other would, what they had gone through.
Perhaps it was the view that inspired his immediate reaction, taking in the most astonishing rainbow he had ever seen. Red and orange and yellowgreenblueindigoviolet, more brilliant than any painting, than anything imagination could create. This was the world before him, nature sending him signs. A pot at the end of the rainbow…
He would move in the following day, to the apartment next to the house.
They would celebrate Thanksgiving for the first time together a little over a month later, the two of them eating pizza delivery—sausage, artichoke hearts, green olives; damn good—and talking about everything but what they experienced. Bonding.
It was, in a way, the beginning of something neither of them had truly embraced until now, dealing with their demons for so long.
All Terrance Blake knew right now was this: The ultimate experience awaited their participation.
The ultimate experience was always there, it just depended on both of them to come around and join in, please.
The ultimate experience, every second precious, no matter the pain of loss, the participation of chaos, or the passion of love, all part of the deal. No longer a drifter, he was now a participant in the grand scheme of things called Life.
Either that or he was a fool to be taken on this ride any longer, but his instincts were keen on the possibilities otherwise…
About the Author
John Claude Smith writes dark fiction. He had had two collections published: The Dark is Light Enough For Me & Autumn in the Abyss. He has also had two limited edition chapbooks published: “Dandelions” & “Vox Terrae.” He splits his time between the East Bay of northern California, across from San Francisco, and Rome, Italy, where his heart resides. Riding the Centipede is his debut novel.
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