“At least it beats snow,” he says. “Don’t have to shovel it.”
I throw back the obligatory, “True.”
As he goes to the refrigerator to grab a couple beers, I drift into the living room but remain standing. The wall-to-wall carpet is filthy, pitted with burn holes and covered with debris and trash. The couch is covered with old newspapers and dirty clothes, and a badly worn recliner is empty but surrounded by beer bottles. A freestanding ashtray is perched next to it, overflowed with cigar butts, ash and discarded stick matches. On a rack against the back wall are an old tube television, and a VCR. The walls are decorated with cheap art and photographs of him and Margaret. In most, Bruce is decked out in his full fireman’s regalia, and it’s hard to imagine that the virile and heroic firefighter pictured is the same person.
“It’s cheap shit but gets the job done,” he says, joining me in the living room and handing me a can of beer.
I glance at the label. It’s a brand I’ve never heard of. “Thanks.”
“Take a seat.” He pushes some newspapers from one section of couch onto the floor, then goes to his recliner and gracelessly flops down onto it with a grunt. “How’s the wife doing?”
“Good. She’s good.” I sit on the edge of the couch and try not to notice all the clutter and filth. A photograph of Margaret hung over the fireplace smiles down at me, and I remember when she was alive and what a sweet woman she was.
Bruce gives a quick nod and takes a pull on his beer. “You’re one lucky sonofabitch, Cam-o, one lucky sonofabitch. Remy’s a good woman, and a good woman is hard to find.”
“I’m sure most women would argue it’s even harder to find a good man,” I say in as pleasant a tone as I can muster.
He flashes me one of his cranky looks. “Yeah, except that women are crazy.”
“All of them?”
“Every last one, it’s just a matter of degrees. Some are crazier than others. The key is to find one that’s not too crazy, one you can live with and love and who’ll love you without driving you crazy too or putting you in an early grave.” He looks to one of the photos of his deceased wife and raises his beer can. “Like my Margie. Now that was a good woman.”
“That she was, Bruce.” I can’t even imagine outliving Remy, and my heart breaks for the old man when I think about what he’s been through.
“Cherish every minute you’ve got with her,” he tells me, “every second.”
“I try to.”
“Don’t try, do it.” He takes a long drink of beer, then belches under his breath. “How the hell did two scrubs like us ever land such good women?” He chuckles but there’s no joy in it, no real humor, just more pain.
I smile awkwardly and take a quick sip of beer so I don’t have to respond.
“Yeah…so anyway,” Bruce says through a sigh, “looks like the Bruins are going to have a good team this year, huh?”
“I haven’t been following the off-season stuff very closely, been so busy.”
“Got any interesting cases going at work?”
Bruce asks me this a lot, and I always have to give him the same answer. “I’m not really allowed to get into the particulars, sorry. I’ve been busy though.”
“Figures, with all the creeps and weirdoes walking the streets these days,” he says, shaking his head. “I’ll never know how you deal with that scum all day long.”
“I wonder that a lot myself.”
“Hell, I remember when I was just a kid coming out of school. I thought about being a cop, but I just didn’t have the right temperament for police work. Figured I’d wind up breaking my foot off in somebody’s ass, so I decided to go fight fires instead. That was before I really knew anything about the enemy, though.”
“The enemy?”
“Fire,” he says with a smile that seems genuine but evaporates in seconds. Still, whenever Bruce talks about his time as a fireman, he becomes more coherent and eloquent, as if some dormant section of his alcohol-soaked brain temporarily comes to life whenever he broaches the subject. “In my job I had to become intimately familiar with it, had to get to know fire and understand it as the enemy it was. The mistake most people make is that they underestimate it and treat it like an inanimate object. What they don’t realize is…fire’s alive.”
Flashes of flames fill my head, engulfing countless screaming and bloody souls, their bulging eyes and scorched faces and bodies melting like wax.
“It’s a living thing,” Bruce continues. “And it’s a predator. Anything in its path is prey to be devoured. It has no remorse, no regret and no fear, and it’ll never stop unless someone or something kills it. It’s a perfect organism is what it is, a perfect killing machine.”
I drink more beer and the hellish visions fade.
“Thing is, it’s a sneaky sonofabitch too. Sometimes you think it’s dead and gone, but it isn’t. It’s just hiding, waiting for a better opportunity to strike, and just because you can’t see it or feel it or even smell it, doesn’t mean it’s not there. It can be inches away from you and you’ll never even know it. By the time you do, it’s too late. It wins.” He finishes his beer and drops the can to the floor with the others. “Once you’ve been in the fire—I mean really in it, surrounded by a burning sea of it—you never forget it, I can tell you that, Cam-o. You know its power, you feel it, because you’re in its midst. And you realize it’s there to kill you. It wants to kill you. So you either lay down and let it take your sorry ass, or fight and claw your way out. Either way, the fire’s there for one purpose and one purpose only, to consume you and everything else in its way.”
I look to him, wanting to know what he knows.
“I’ve seen the power of fire, been deep in the flames, lost friends to it. Came to know fire, and it came to know me. I’d say, after all those years in the department, me and fire can go ahead and call it a push, at least for now.” He struggles up to his feet. “That’s why I don’t fear Hell.”
“I don’t believe in Hell,” I tell him, though I’m not so sure anymore.
“Hell doesn’t want you to believe in it,” Bruce says, shuffling off to the kitchen for more beer. “And fire? Shit, it’s counting on it.”
I try to picture this frail and drunken old man breaking down doors with an ax and rushing into burning buildings, saving kittens and children and families trapped in the flames. None of it makes any sense. Bruce looks like he couldn’t lift an ax or run down a city block if his life depended on it. But there was a time when he could do those things, when he was young and heroic and strong. Time robbed him of it all, just as it will one day rob us all.
Not you…
Will there come a day when Remy and I are old and cling to each other like frightened children, hanging on to whatever scraps of life—of us—remain?
You will never be old…You have never been young…
But I was young once. I was a happy child with loving parents and a good home.
Lies…all of it, lies…
Bullshit.
Before I realize what I’ve done, I crush the empty beer can in my hand. It makes a horrible sound as it implodes.
“You crushed that thing like it said something about your mother,” Bruce cracks as he returns from the kitchen with two fresh beers.
“Sorry.”
“Like I give a shit,” he says, thrusting a new can at me. As I take it, he plucks the crushed one from my hand and tosses it over his shoulder. “Look around, son, the ship sailed on me giving a damn about much of anything a long time ago. Running a bunch of cans over to the redemption center isn’t exactly a priority these days.”
I give a halfhearted smile just so he’ll know I get it. “Can I ask you a question?”
Bruce returns to his recliner, and once there, pops opens his beer and takes a few gulps. “Free country, Cam-o. Well, used to be anyway.”
I open my beer. “Have you heard that car alarm going off every morning?”
He looks at me, bleary-eyed, but says no
thing.
“Off that way,” I say, pointing with my beer can toward the back of the house. “On the other side of the woods behind the house, it’s been going off every morning, waking me up. Have you heard it?”
“Nah,” he finally answers.
I don’t believe him. My eyes look to the kitchen and down the dark hallway adjacent the living room. Suddenly, I’m not so sure we’re alone here. Maybe we never were. “It’s been happening for days,” I tell him.
“I don’t go in those woods,” Bruce says, downing more beer, racing to become even drunker than he already is. “Don’t like them, something creepy about those trees out there. I got no reason to go out there, so I don’t. Some places, just like some people, you just need to stay clear of, know what I mean?”
“No, what do you mean?”
He fidgets in the recliner like a kid. He knows something. I can feel it, and if I listen closely enough, I can hear those terrible distant voices telling me so, whispering his secrets to me. But rather than speaking English, they’re whispering in another language I can’t identify and don’t understand, something ancient that brings forth even stranger visions into my head. Sands…deserts…blood…wooden crosses decorating the landscape, men nailed to them in the burning sun…their cries for mercy hidden in the winds of time.
“What’s wrong with those woods?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” he whines, sipping more beer. “I’m just a lonely old man.”
Hurt him. Make him tell you. Snap something on the old fuck.
I take another drink. “What’s back there, Bruce?”
“How the hell should I know? Nothing, I’m just talking. Those woods make me uncomfortable. Don’t things make you uncomfortable sometimes? Not trying to make a federal case out of it.” He finishes his beer and throws it aside. “For Christ’s sake, I shouldn’t have to take this kind of shit in my own place, not—not in my own place. I know it’s a shithole but it’s all I got, okay? I invited you up here to shoot the shit and kill a few beers, that’s all, like a good neighbor should, right? Like I’m supposed to, I—I’m doing my part.”
“Your part?” I finish my beer, throw it at the floor with the others and rise to my feet. He’s frightened suddenly, but by far more than me. “What’s going on, Bruce?”
He puts his hands up like the victim of a robbery. “I don’t know.”
The fucker’s lying to you. Teach him a lesson.
“You’ve heard that alarm just like I have, haven’t you.”
It wasn’t a question but he answers anyway. “Yeah, okay? I have, I—I hear it but it’s none of my business so I don’t pay any attention.”
Make him tell you the truth.
“Have you seen the young guy in my yard?” I press, stepping closer to him. “Sitting out by the fire pit, have you seen him?”
“Yeah,” he says softly.
Can you smell that? It’s fear.
“Who is he?”
“Fuck if I know, he’s your friend, isn’t he?”
Can you hear his blood moving through him? Can you taste it?
“What does he want with me?” My hands tighten to fists. “What’s happening to me, Bruce?”
“I don’t know, I—I’m trying to tell you I don’t know.”
Rip the pathetic old fuck apart.
I move closer. “I can make you tell me.”
“Tell you what,” he says, scooting toward the edge of the recliner, “I’ll get us another couple beers and we’ll forget all about this and have some laughs, okay?”
Hurt him, Zeke. Hurt him.
Zeke…Shelly called me by that name and I’d chalked it up to her drunken state. But now… “Who’s Zeke?” I ask him.
Bruce squints, as if he’s losing sight of me. “Zeke?”
“My name is Cameron Horne!”
He nods helplessly. “Yeah, I…I know, Cam-o.”
Kill him, Zeke. Beat him to death with your bare hands.
“You’re going to tell me what I need to know.”
He stares at me, feigning confusion.
I lunge, grab hold of him by the front of his golf shirt and yank him to his feet. He is surprisingly light as I shake him like a rag doll. “Tell me, you fuck! Tell me or I swear to God I’ll kill you!”
“Cam-o, I—Christ—I don’t know what you want me to tell you!”
I backhand him across the mouth. He cries out as his head snaps to the side and his fishing hat slides off to reveal his bald, liver-spotted head. “What’s happening to me? Tell me what’s happening to me!”
“I don’t know, I—I’m just trying to be your friend, I—please, I don’t know what you want.” He begins to cry and his body goes limp in my hands, his head bowed as tears stream his flushed face. “Margie, help me, I—I don’t know what to do, I—I didn’t do anything, I just want my Margie, I—please, I…”
What have I done? Christ Almighty, what the hell have I done?
“Bruce, I…” I place him back in the recliner gently as I can. “I’m sorry. I—I’m so sorry. Are you all right?”
He slumps over, weeping openly. “Do it. Kill me. Put me out of my misery. I miss my Margie. I don’t want to be here anymore, I want to go home. I want to go home to my Margie. Don’t make me stay here. I want to go home.”
I place a hand flat on Bruce’s back and rub it. Overwhelmed with grief and guilt, I try to think of something to say, some way to comfort him. But there’s nothing I can do. I can’t make this right and we both know it. “Take it easy,” I say anyway. “It’s going to be all right. I’m so sorry. I…please forgive me, I don’t know what the hell’s wrong with me, I…please…”
The old man cries, his face buried in his hands and his body bucking as he sobs.
I back away, trembling and overcome with guilt.
Slowly, Bruce raises his head from his hands and looks at me. “I could die tonight and this world wouldn’t miss a beat. It’d be like I was never even here.”
“You said that before,” I tell him.
“There is no before.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I know.” He nods; his face a combination of torment and sorrow. “Me either.”
CHAPTER NINE
After the rain, the world smells like wet leaves. I stand in the backyard watching the woods, staring at the trees and the darkness between them, seeing nothing but knowing there is more there than I realize or understand. Something is looking back, I’m sure of it. Part of me wants to leave the self-imposed boundary of my yard and walk into these woods, but I can’t bring myself to do it. My feet remain anchored to the moist ground, as somewhere behind me, in his lonely slipshod house, poor Bruce Deacon sits, a helpless pile of wrinkled flesh and decaying bone, weeping for a past he will never again possess, a present that eludes him like whispers and a future he will never know.
Now I know he weeps for us both.
Afraid to explore the woods but hesitant to go in the house, I look back over my shoulder at the deck and sliders and watch for signs of intruders or dark blotches moving by the windows. There is nothing but an empty house. Was there ever anything more? Does it matter? Does it really make a difference at this point?
I cross the yard to the deck, unlock the sliders and slip inside stealthily, a thief burglarizing my own home.
The house is cemetery-quiet, the rooms empty. I am alone.
Standing in the kitchen over the sink, I light a cigarette and smoke it in silence.
Mind and heart racing, hands shaking, I try to decide what to do next. Maybe rather than waiting to hear from work I should make my confession to Remy, tell her what’s been happening and check myself in somewhere before…
Before what, I hurt someone else or maybe even myself? Before what’s left of my mind shuts down or shatters and renders me one of those lost and forgotten souls locked away in some dingy institution babbling about devils and hellfire? Before—
Before we come for you…
I flick m
y cigarette into the sink, run the water, then move toward the great room, approaching it with caution, as if negotiating a dark alley rather than the familiar vicinity of my home. But it really isn’t my home anymore, is it? Whatever is stalking me—be it insanity or something else—it’s taken it, stolen it from me, if not literally, then certainly in the sense that it no longer represents the comfort and safety it should, the personal sanctuary from an often mad world it once was.
At the bar, I pour myself a drink and scan the photographs on the wall. Everyone I’ve ever loved and cared about looks back, imprisoned in frames and frozen in time beneath glass.
Lies…
“Shut up,” I growl, my eyes scanning the walls, the ceiling, the corners. “Shut the fuck up.”
Use that anger, embrace it—
“Shut up, goddamn you!”
I power the drink down like a shot, feel it burn through me as I rub my temples and assure myself these voices are my own. I’m making them happen, they’re my creations, and if I created them, then I can destroy them as well, I can control them, restrain and cage them like the dangerous and unpredictable feral animals they are.
We’re here for you, Zeke.
“Stop calling me that!” I slam a fist down onto the bar, rattling the glasses on the shelves inside.
We’re here to help you, Zeke.
“My name is Cameron Horne,” I say, pacing about furiously, a tiger walking his cage. “I know who I am. I know who I am!”
We know who you are too.
“I’m Cameron Horne.” I return to the bar, pour myself another drink. “Cam—Cameron Horne, that’s who I am.”
It’s almost time, Zeke.
I swallow it down, then push away from the bar with such force I stagger back and nearly lose my balance. “I’m sick. I—I’m sick, this isn’t real.”
The phone rings, startling me.
I grab the cordless from its cradle on an end table.
The ID reads: UNKNOWN CALLER. I punch the answer button, and gripping the phone tight, raise it to my ear. “Hello?”
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