Once I’ve made my way to the couch and sat down, Remy reappears with two aspirin and a bottle of water. “Down the hatch,” she says, waiting until I’ve swallowed both and had a long drink of water to follow it with: “Where were you?”
Much as I don’t want to get into it, I also don’t want to lie to her if I don’t have to. “Shelly called.”
Remy makes a face like she smells something bad. “Yikes.”
“Yeah,” I say quietly.
“Is she okay?”
“Shelly’s never okay,” I remind her. “She was stuck in this dump in Everett.”
“For God’s sake, the woman needs to get some help, Cam.”
“She’s been to rehab twice, didn’t take.”
“So what happened?”
“Went and picked her up, brought her home, told her to get some help and stop calling me whenever she’s in trouble. You know, typical Shelly outing.”
Remy leans in and kisses my forehead. “You’re a good man.”
“No, you’re a good woman.”
“Well, I’m patient and miraculously understanding,” she says, laughing lightly. “Let’s go with that.”
I take her waist in my hands and gaze up at her lovingly. “I’m sorry, Rem. I know it upsets you and you have every right to feel that way. I’m just going to ignore her calls from now on, all right? Maybe just block her number or something. This has to stop and—I should’ve put a stop to it a long time ago. I can’t keep rescuing her whenever she gets herself into these jams. She’s not my responsibility anymore.”
“Sit and rest,” she tells me with a loving gaze of her own. “I’ll go put the soup on and we’ll have a nice quiet evening, okay?”
“Sure.”
Once I’m alone in the great room, I see visions of the man’s face I battered in the bar, and wonder what Remy would think of me if she knew what I’d done. She’d be appalled, as I am—even more so—and wouldn’t understand why I’d needed to resort to violence. Truth is I didn’t have to. I wanted to. And that’s worse, because it’s even less like me. Or is it? I’m beginning to wonder if I even know myself as well as I think I do.
Tired but restless, I force myself from the couch and walk to the small bar on the far wall alongside the window. I pour myself a scotch and carefully bring it to my parched lips as I study the framed photographs arranged in neat rows on the wall above the bar. Our wedding picture catches my eye first, a great shot of us standing on the beach where we were married, beaming on the happiest day of our lives. Then I lock on the picture of my parents, both gone now but so alive in that photograph, sitting posed and holding hands, smiling for the camera. I reach out and lightly touch the smallest of the set, a black-and-white photo of myself as a little boy playing outside the apartment where I’d been raised. So many memories, so many—
Lies.
I spin around, searching the room behind me and trying to see beyond into the kitchen. No one’s there, only Remy moving about in the kitchen, preparing dinner and humming along with the radio, oblivious to the voices in my head and the horrors stalking me.
I throw back my drink in a single gulp and set the glass down on the bar.
As the liquor burns through me, calming me, I scrutinize the room, my eyes moving slowly from one corner to the next, sliding up one wall and down another. “Why are you doing this to me?” I whisper to nothing.
Silence answers.
Again, I look to the photo of me as a young boy. It seems so very long ago, my childhood.
That’s because it’s a lie.
“No,” I whisper to thin air, chest heaving with each breath, “you’re the lie.”
On shaky legs, I return to the couch and sink down onto it, afraid to close my eyes because I know all I’ll see are other faces staring back at me, an endless parade of bloody grimacing faces, growling and wailing in agony, their slimy jaws snapping like rabid dogs and set to a chorus of hideously diseased laughter. And fire. All around them, the most striking and depraved fire I have ever seen. And then it’s gone, slinking away in a wisp like a slow spiral of smoke coiling and snaking its way toward a ceiling.
As Remy calls to me from the kitchen, asking what I’d like to drink with my soup, I realize I’ve just seen these horrible things anyway.
And this time with my eyes wide open.
CHAPTER FIVE
While Remy does the dishes, I stand at the sliders and watch the night consume our backyard. As darkness falls over the fire pit and the empty chairs surrounding it, I wonder if the young man only comes to me in the morning. I have never seen him at any other time, but can’t be sure if that’s because he isn’t there or I haven’t been looking.
“By the way,” Remy says from the kitchen, “forgot to tell you, Cliff called again.”
The sound of her voice snaps me back. I join her, grab a dish towel and begin drying and putting the dishes away. “Did he leave a message?”
“No, I spoke with him. You really need to call him back. He asked if you were mad about something, said he’s been trying to reach you for more than a week and that the guys have been asking for you since you haven’t made it to poker night in awhile.”
My friends and I all get together once a week for poker night, and have for years, but I’ve missed the last few outings. “Just haven’t been into it lately,” I confess.
“I know, but that’s no reason not to return his calls or to duck him, sweetie. Cliff’s your best friend. He’s worried about you.”
“Just been busy with work, distracted, I guess.”
“Why don’t you give him a call now?” Remy suggests.
“Maybe once we finish the dishes.”
“Go ahead, sweetie, I can finish these up.”
“You sure?”
“Absolutely, go.”
“Okay, thanks.” I toss the dishrag on the counter and grab the cordless phone from the wall. With the warnings of being watched through it whispering in my head, I drift back into the great room. Cliff answers on the second ring. “Hey, man.”
“Hey,” Cliff says tentatively. “Jesus, been calling you for days, left you a butt load of messages, thanks for calling me back, dick-weed.”
“Sorry, I’ve just had a lot of crazy shit going on at work.”
“Everything all right?”
“I’m on paid leave, actually.”
“Something happen?”
I figure this is my chance to talk with him, to confide in someone about what’s going on. If I don’t do it now, I may not get another chance before…before what? But I can’t do it here, not with Remy home. “What are you doing right now?” I ask.
“Sitting on the couch watching Wheel of Fortune, bored out of my tits.”
“Up for a quick drink?”
“Where and when?”
Once we’ve made plans I disconnect, then inspect the phone, staring into it as if expecting to see some tiny creature watching me from inside the receiver. But nothing appears out of the ordinary, so I return it to its perch on the kitchen wall.
“Honey, I’m going to run out and have a drink with Cliff, okay?”
Remy puts the last glass from the sink in the drainer and wipes her soapy hands on the towel I left on the counter. “Are you sure that’s a good idea tonight?”
“We need to talk. It’ll just be a quick one.”
She comes closer, places her hand on my forehead. “You’re still a little warm.”
“I’ll be okay.”
“You should probably go to bed early and get some sleep, Cam.”
“I know.” I lean down and give her a quick kiss on the lips. “But you were right, Cliff’s worried about me, and talking on the phone isn’t going to cut it. Figured we’d go someplace quiet, have a quick drink and chat awhile, that’s all.”
“Okay, but please don’t be late. I have to work tomorrow.”
“Just go to bed if you need to. Don’t wait up, I’ll be fine.”
She smiles as if I should know b
etter. “I can never sleep when you’re out of the house.”
“I won’t be late. I promise.”
Remy hops up on her tiptoes and kisses me back. “Go, have fun then—but not too much fun—and tell Cliff I said hey.”
* * *
Night is in full swing as I venture toward Cliff’s home base of Braintree, a suburb located just south of Boston. Situated between I-93, which leads toward the greater Boston area, and Route 3, which follows the south shore and leads to Cape Cod, it’s not a long drive for me, but enough to clear my head.
Only a minute or so off the exit, O’Callahan’s Bar & Grill is a sports bar and restaurant we’ve frequented for years. I remember in our thirties, when Cliff and I played on the same team in a local softball league, we often went to O’Callahan’s after the games for beer and pizza, or their delicious assortment of appetizers. Those memories, pleasant and initially so vivid, fade then swirl away, swallowed by night, and though I desperately want to hold on to them awhile longer, they’re gone before I can stop them.
I pull into the lot, park, then go in through the bar entrance.
The restaurant section is busy but the bar area (all garish TVs, pendants, signed memorabilia and framed photos of sports stars) is relatively empty. Cliff is already there and sitting in a booth along the wall. Dressed in jeans, sneakers and a Boston Bruins sweatshirt, he sees me, smiles and waves me over.
“Thanks for coming out,” I say, fist-bumping with him as I slide into the bench across from him.
“No problem. You okay?”
I have no idea how to answer that, but thankfully, a cheery waitress appears as if from nowhere. I order a beer and she scurries away. “I don’t know, I—I need to talk.”
He tries to play it cool, as Cliff always does, but his face registers concern. Running a hand up over his bald head and down across the side of his face, his fingers come to rest on his goatee. “Is everything all right with you and Remy?”
“Yeah, that’s—no—everything’s fine with us.” I lean forward, place my elbows on the table and rub my tired eyes. “It’s not that.”
“Okay,” he says with uncertainty. “What’s up then?”
“Lately things have been…crazy...”
“Been worried about you, man,” Cliff tells me, the irony of my statement lost on him, and why wouldn’t it be? “The guys too, you haven’t made a poker night in I can’t remember when, and no one’s heard from you.”
“Apologize to everybody for me, would you? I’ve been busy with work and—”
“Yeah, you said you were on paid leave? What the hell’s that all about?”
I give him the condensed version of Copeland’s complaint and the subsequent action taken by Roz. “So now they want me to have a psych evaluation and a general physical before they can clear me to go back to work.”
Cliff shakes his head and sits back. “Got to love our systems, don’t you? A guy that fucks little kids files a complaint and you have to have a psych evaluation. Classic.”
“It’s procedure.”
“Bullshit is what it is. What’s beyond me is why these pieces of garbage are even out on the streets in the first place. Call me nuts, but you fuck with—oh I don’t know—how about one child, and you go bye-bye forever. Problem solved.”
I don’t necessarily disagree, but this is not what I’ve come to discuss with him, so I let it go. Bar and restaurant sounds fill the void for a moment or two.
“Besides,” he says, “you’re a goddamn hero. That’s no way to treat you.”
A few years back, I had a registrant that was acting peculiarly, and I had a gut feeling that he was about to reoffend. I staked out his house, logged his behavior and discovered he’d begun following an eleven-year-old boy home from school with his friends. It was reported to the police, and they began surveillance. Two days later they were able to stop him as he attempted to abduct the little boy from his front yard.
“Just my job,” I tell him. “You do a lot of good yourself.”
As a social worker, Cliff regularly impacts the lives of many people on a regular and positive basis. Married for nineteen years, he and his wife Gloria, an RN, have an eighteen-year-old son and a thirteen-year-old daughter. Although he often bitches and complains about his family, Cliff would be lost without them. “Yeah, but if it weren’t for you, that kid probably wouldn’t even be alive today,” he reminds me.
Thankfully, the waitress arrives with my beer, another for Cliff and a plate of hot wings. After placing them all on the table, she bops away.
“I figured you might want to split some wings,” Cliff says.
“I’m all set, thanks, had dinner with Rem.” I take a long sip of beer.
He pulls a few napkins from a holder on the table. “Okay, more for me.”
“To be honest,” I tell him, “the way things are going lately, I think the psych evaluation might be a good idea.”
He looks at me as if I’ve spoken a language he doesn’t quite grasp. “Seriously?”
I nod. “There are a lot of things going on that…things that just don’t…they don’t make sense, Cliff.”
“Like what?”
Hesitant and still not certain how much I want to reveal to him, I ask, “Do you ever feel like…like maybe you’re not yourself?”
“Sure, everybody does from time to time.”
“That’s not what I mean.” I take another swig of beer. “Lately I...sometimes I feel like I’m not completely in…control.”
“Of yourself or…?”
“It’s as if someone else is there,” I say, already aware of how ridiculous I sound. “I know it’s me but…but it’s like someone else takes over.”
Cliff furrows his brow. “Someone else.”
“Yeah.”
“Takes over.”
“Yes.”
He grabs a wing, but says nothing.
“Things have been happening that I can’t explain,” I say.
The chicken poised in front of his mouth, with a sigh he lowers it and says, “Dude, I’m doing my best here, but you’re going to have to be a little more specific.”
“Do you believe in God?”
He shrugs. “I guess.”
“No. Do you believe in God?”
He takes a bite of chicken. “I don’t believe in the old guy with the long white beard sitting in a giant chair up in the clouds, if that’s what you mean. But I believe in a higher power. I think there’s a design to the universe, a purpose, and a consciousness behind it, if you want to call it that. But who knows?”
“What about the Devil?”
A smile slowly breaks out across Cliff’s face, and then quickly fades as he realizes my question is a serious one. “No, man, I don’t believe in the Devil. Or the Easter Bunny or—”
“But if there’s a God, then doesn’t there have to be a Devil too?”
“No. Why do people always say that? Why can’t there just be a God?”
“Because everything has an opposite and—”
“Says who? Maybe God doesn’t have one. Maybe there’s just God, and the bad in the world is in us.”
“Not bad, evil.”
“Okay then, evil. So?”
“So you do believe in it then, regardless of source?”
“I suppose so. But what’s your point? I didn’t think you even believed in God.”
“I don’t,” I say quietly. “Or at least I never did. Not really.”
He drops his wing, wipes his mouth and sits back. “Then what the hell are we talking about?”
I sit back too. “I don’t know,” I sigh. “I’m not sure.”
“Look,” he says evenly, “just like you, I talk to and evaluate people and their situations for a living, all right? Just tell me what this is all about.”
I draw a deep breath, and speak as I exhale. “Either something is happening to me, something very real and very…evil…or I…I’m losing my mind, losing my grip on reality.” Even as the words fall from
my mouth, the emotion begins to throttle me and I feel my eyes growing moist. I look away and quickly wipe them with the heel of my palm. “Sorry, been under a lot of stress lately.”
“Hey, you don’t apologize to me, man. I’m your best friend.” He reaches across the table, awkwardly pats my hand, then slides the plate of chicken aside. “Just tell me what’s happening, Cam, straight up.”
I grab a napkin and angrily finish wiping my eyes. Why am I so emotional? “There’s something wrong with me…something wrong in me…something evil.”
Cliff stares at me as if he’s just then seeing me for the first time. His expression and demeanor indicate gravity. “Like The Exorcist type shit, is that where you’re going with this?”
I shrug. “I don’t know.”
“If you tell me my mother sucks cock in Hell and your head starts spinning around, I’m leaving, just so you know,” he says with a forced chuckle. “And don’t go vomiting pea soup all over the place, all right? I hate pea soup. At least make it minestrone or something good.”
I glare at him.
“You’re fucking serious?”
“You know I am.”
He sits forward, looks around conspiratorially, then lowers his voice and says, “You’re talking about demonic possession?”
“I’m seeing things, Cliff. Hearing things…voices…I’m doing things I wouldn’t normally do, I…” My voice trails off to nothing, leaving me feeling empty and insane.
“That shit’s not real.”
“Are you sure?”
“Aren’t you?”
“I was a couple weeks ago. Now, I don’t know.”
“You’re an educated man.” He nervously rubs his goatee, combing the hair with his fingers. “You’re one of the brightest people I know. You can’t believe that. You have to know that sort of thing isn’t real.”
“I’m not sure what’s real and what isn’t anymore,” I admit softly.
Cliff cranes his neck, looking for our waitress. Once he locates her, he signals for another round of beers, then returns his attention to me. “Okay, all right, we—I’ve got this, we—we’re going to discuss this rationally and intelligently like two grown men, and we’re going to figure this out. We’re going to line this all up and knock them down one at a time, okay?”
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