by David Beers
“So they went missing apart from each other, right?”
“That’s right,” Mrs. Chambers continued. “He left a few days before her. They had scheduled a meeting with Alex’s psychiatrist, but Alex left the day of. Brittany told us she knew where he was going and that she had to go too.”
“Did she say where?” James knew the answer; there was no doubt where Alex ended up. James had traced that line already. Apparently, a parallel line ran beside it, only a few days behind.
Mr. Chambers took the question. “Alex went to Mexico. I don’t know his history completely, but I know his parents took him there as a child; somehow that’s where all these problems began. Whatever happened there, it ended with his parents killing each other twenty years later. Brittany couldn’t explain to us why he left, or either we just couldn’t understand. She said she was going to Mexico City because that’s where he was going.”
She followed him to Mexico and never came back. The psychiatrist couldn’t be found either. Did Valdez kill Nayek before he left and then his wife when she came after him? Or did she go down with the ship when the hotel fell?
“That was the last you heard from her? When she left?”
“No, no. She called again,” Mrs. Chambers said. “I’m sorry—I was going chronologically in my head. She called a day later and Alex’s psychiatrist was with her. I spoke with him briefly.”
“Go on. What was said?” James typed in his computer, trying to keep up and keep his own theories to a minimum.
“I asked her to come back,” Mr. Chambers interjected. “I told her she had to.” There were tears, just under the surface of his words, ready to spill.
“She sounded bad,” Mrs. Chambers said. Her own voice tempered from her beginning optimism. “I mean, it had only been twenty-four hours or so, and they had been driving the entire time—she shouldn’t have sounded like she did. She was scared but trying to sound strong the day before. All that was gone; there was no acting courageous. She was terrified, on the verge of tears the entire conversation. It wasn’t just about Alex either; she was scared for herself.”
No one spoke, lending the last sentence weight in everyone’s mind.
“Do you know what frightened her?” James asked after a few seconds.
“The psychiatrist, he said his name was Daniel, he took the phone. He said Brittany was having delusions, that they were going to leave and go back to Georgia,” Mr. Chambers answered, ignoring the question.
“Where were they?”
“He said a hotel just outside of Mexico City. I told him over and over they had to come back, I mean Jesus, I was scared. He kept saying they were, then—“ His voice finally cracked.
James swallowed though his mouth was dry. He didn’t want to go on, didn’t want to ask any more questions—even though that made no sense. He shouldn’t be scared here, not even nervous. This was his job and he had asked the next question innumerable times in his career—so why the fear now? The absolute worst possibility involved murder, maybe rape. James had seen both before, but that didn’t matter now; the fear still gripped him.
“Mr. Chambers, what happened?”
“She started screaming. Brittany started screaming in the background, and she didn’t stop until the phone went dead.”
15
Days Past
Daniel & Brittany
Would he still have decided to come? Sitting on the edge of a hotel bed, with another man’s wife sleeping on top of the blankets, Daniel Nayek didn’t know. To be even more honest, regardless of what he told Brittany’s parents, he didn’t understand what was happening here. Delusions were a possibility, but did that explain what he had seen as well? Brittany’s paranoia could have influenced him—sure—but he would not deny he had still seen it, lying there in the corner.
He turned, looking at her sleeping on the bed. Such a very different person than the one who stood screaming a few hours ago. The clock on the nightstand said it was two in the morning, meaning she could wake up from this drug induced sleep at any time. He fed her a sleeping pill from a bottle he traveled with and she’d been out twenty minutes later.
How had it gotten this bad?
Slowly, like anything else.
Daniel opened up in the car ride. He spoke, for the first time in years, on his own past. He told Brittany about his parents’ death, about what he saw. He opened up and she kept quiet, letting him. There were differences, stark ones, between his story and Alex’s—but it felt good to tell her, to let her understand that this was more personal than the two of them thought. It felt good just to talk about it, to someone other than his own psychiatrist that had walked him through the years of fear and doubt and drug abuse. Hell, it felt good to talk about the drug abuse in itself—the cliff walking he had done from the age of sixteen to twenty-five. Brittany listened, and she commented some, but in the end he thought she understood.
Her silence progressed. After his story was done, her responses became less and less; Daniel had thought it must be the sheer volume of hours in their drive at first. Brittany kept her silence for the last three hours of the ride, even when Daniel asked questions. She just looked forward at the road, not glancing at him. He had thought her only upset then.
Now, he thought whatever was going on in this hotel room had begun perhaps the moment their car’s wheels started rolling towards Mexico City. He didn’t even consider getting a separate hotel room with the way Brittany was acting; he needed to be able to observe her in case she tried to hurt herself
If you go on, will it get worse?
What did she tell you?
“God, what if Alex was right?” She sat staring at a blank TV screen—the first words she’d spoken in hours.
“What?” he asked, brushing his teeth in the bathroom.
Brittany only looked forward, her refection in the screen looking back at her.
“What did you say?” he asked through a mouth full of toothpaste.
“You don’t see anything?” she asked, still looking at the TV. “You haven’t felt anything?”
Daniel spit and rinsed his mouth. He walked out of the bathroom, but Brittany didn’t look up.
“What do you mean?” he said, standing next to her.
She turned then, her eyes finding his. “The things Alex talked about.” She stood and stepped forward, their faces six inches apart. “I’m seeing that fucking God.”
He didn’t step back though he wanted to; he wanted to walk out of the room, get in the car, and drive back to Georgia—but he stood still. “Where?”
“Look inside the TV.” She moved aside, allowing him the spot she had sat in.
He lowered himself to the bed, slightly scared even though he knew what he would see—his own reflection, just as he had seen hers.
He looked and the screen showed the room around him. “There’s nothing here, Brittany.”
“What about the sky, outside? What does that look like?” she whispered.
“It’s dark outside.” He was alone with this woman and she was breaking from reality. She was, for whatever reason, falling into her husband’s world.
“No, it’s not.”
“Then what is it?”
“Red,” she whispered. “With stars twinkling in it, like diamonds in an ocean of blood.”
Daniel walked to the window and pulled back the curtains. A poorly lit parking lot stood in front of them with cars scattered about. A black sky looking down upon everything.
Brittany sucked in air. Her mouth hung open and her eyes gazed through the window at the sky.
“Close it,” she said. “Please close it.”
“What’s there?” Daniel asked, not moving.
“CLOSE IT!” she shrieked, shutting her eyes and stretching her vocal cords to nearly the point of breaking.
“Okay, okay,” Daniel said, quickly turning and closing the curtains. He looked back at Brittany—she had stopped screaming. “Why don’t you sit down on the bed?”
She s
tared at the curtains, as if making certain he wouldn’t open them again. Finally she went to the bed.
“What’s going on out there?” Daniel asked.
“We’re going to die.” She didn’t look up as she spoke.
He walked a few steps closer to her, wary of another outburst. “I need you to talk to me, to calm down just a bit. What’s outside?”
“It’s red, like it has been for hours,” she paused. “It’s dripping, bleeding, and that’s our blood out there. Our blood is running across the sky.” She lay backwards on the bed, her feet still touching the floor.
You need to get her out of here. Daniel knew it to be true. To keep her here would be, at the least, medical malpractice. The woman was having a breakdown and Daniel couldn’t anticipate what would happen next.
“I want you to call your parents—you need to talk to them about this.” He grabbed the phone, pulling the entire set over to her, and handing her the receiver. “I’ll pay the long distance, just call.”
Their eyes met for a second, and in that second, Daniel believed. They would die from this. The tears welling in her eyes and the fear beaming off her like light from the sun all said that life was over for them.
He broke his gaze. “Go ahead,” he whispered, staring into the bathroom.
She called and Daniel moved to a chair in the corner of the room. He didn’t listen to the conversation, didn’t really care about the specifics. Once her parents understood what was happening, they would plead for her to come back. Right now, getting out of this country and returning to their own was all important. Returning Brittany to a sense of normalcy was all that mattered.
Now, Daniel sat on the bed, doing a poor job of remembering everything that happened from the phone call onward. There had been screaming, him dropping the phone, and somewhere in it all: he had seen something.
He thought he saw something.
Come on, it wouldn’t be the first time, would it?
He had tried to grab Brittany, to get ahold of her and stop the goddamn screaming. Daniel had dropped the phone, forgetting about her parents on the line. He couldn’t be sure, not then in the midst of his struggle—but now, thinking back, he was almost positive it happened. The corners of the room darkened as if the light had simply been forced from the area, being pushed to the center. He released her when he looked into the corner though; the struggle ceasing and Daniel focusing on the only thing possible—the decapitated head lying there. Dried blood covered its nose and mouth; one eye stared forward and the other gazed up to the ceiling, surely a disconnect of nerves when the head was severed. Daniel’s hands dropped to his side as he looked.
Brittany ran, her shoulder knocking Daniel to the side as she raced to the door. He didn’t care. He looked back to the corner, the darkened piece of the room—but nothing was there. No shaded floor, no lifeless head.
He wasn’t going to deny it, not now in the clear silence of this hotel room. He had seen what he had seen. He needed to know why. Was he becoming delusional as well or…
Was Alex right?
They had to leave. As soon as Brittany woke, they needed to head back to America. To Georgia. To safety.
Daniel looked at her, lying on her back, her head slightly turned on the pillow and her mouth open. Whatever was happening relented as she slept now. She was at peace and that clarified the answer for Daniel. He should never have come, should have done his best to keep her from coming too. Her husband was catching now, like a cold—maybe he had always been catching. Maybe the black out in the car had only been that, a mental sneeze from Alex to Daniel. Whatever it was, he had to run now—to get her away from it because skies shouldn’t drip human blood.
Daniel lay down at the edge of the bed, careful not to let their bodies touch.
He closed his eyes. When they woke up, this would be over.
Brittany watched her blood hit the carpeted floor. She hadn’t thought she would bleed so much.
She had cut a large gash down the top of her left forearm, and two deep ones across her right. The blood seemed to have no end, pooling in the ravines of carved flesh, and then spilling over, flowing across her skin until gravity pulled it to the floor. The knife lay at her feet, blood splashing it periodically.
She barely made a sound when slicing her skin up.
Brittany hoped she wouldn’t die from this. If suicide had been the point, she would have cut the undersides of her arms instead.
The sky outside still wept red; she didn’t doubt that. Alex had been right all this time and she never believed him. She couldn’t. Now that she had seen though, she couldn’t close her eyes again. Whatever reason Alex had for coming down here, those red skies were behind it. Now they were behind her ruined flesh as well. That was okay; she had to be sure she believed this. She had to know she wasn’t crazy, and the knife showed her the truth. She hadn’t been completely sure of the blood outside—but now, with hers staining the carpet, she knew outside and inside were the same. She knew this was reality and that her husband had lived in it for some time.
Now the man lying on the bed in front of her didn’t believe—couldn’t. He wouldn’t go forward, which was fine with Brittany. Her husband waited for her and they were finally together in a way she had fought their entire marriage. That was enough. Even if they died, as she was sure they would—that was enough.
Daniel slept comfortably, unaware of the horror taking place right next to him. When he woke, this part of his life would be over. He would have that blessing in the morning because Alex and her no longer needed him. If she could help Alex succeed in what he was doing, Daniel Nayek could go on living his life thinking them beyond insane. If they didn’t succeed, well, maybe he would discover there wasn’t much sanity in a sky that could bleed.
She walked from the room, closing the door with barely a sound. She was going to meet her husband, perhaps for the first time.
This is a problem.
No doubt about it, a definite problem.
That’s a lot of blood.
It soaked the carpet. It smeared both the handle and the blade of the knife. Like someone had stood at the foot of the bed and simply bled out. The problem with the scenario was that someone wasn’t someone, it was Brittany Valdez—she hadn’t bled out either because no body lay in the room. No, she had bled all over the fucking place and then drove off in the only car they had.
“Who the hell knows where,” he said.
This was fucked. No other word could accurately describe the entirety of the situation. His patient had disappeared, now the patient’s wife had disappeared out of the hotel room they shared as they chased her husband. Before that though, she had practiced severe self-mutilation. The worst part was that Daniel had no transportation out of this foreign country.
“Goddamnit.”
He walked from the room, leaving the door open behind him. Car, bus, or train—he was going back to America. He’d traveled far enough on this ride, and regardless of his accident or any decapitated head he may have seen, he was done with it.
He took a pamphlet from the front office; a bus would arrive in an hour, on its way to the border. Easy peasy. For him, this was over—whatever happened with Brittany and Alex was between the two of them. He wasn’t really even angry about being left in a near desert alone; he thought he had wanted to see the end of this but last night and this morning made him realize he shouldn’t follow this path any further. A clean break was best.
He fixed up the room as best he could and then turned on the television. He watched Mexican actors speak Spanish to each other, keeping his mind from the blood stain on the floor.
The bus came on time and Daniel was on it.
Sure that this part of his life was over.
16
Days Past
Daniel
Daniel sat down, feeling half his worries dissipate as soon as his ass touched the seat. Valdezes be damned, he was heading home.
Another fifteen or twenty people traveled on
the bus, a few together and the rest scattered about. The bus driver might have driven the first bus to ever roll off an assembly line. Strands of hair circled his dome, leaving the top portion bald. White, shaggy eyebrows dwarfed his eyes, and his skin was the color and texture of a sunburnt rock. Daniel didn’t even garner a look from the man; he only waited until the pesos were paid and then pressed the gas pedal.
In two hours, Daniel would cross the border—then he would take a taxi to the nearest airport and fly the fastest route home he could. Once his cellphone had service again, he would call his secretary and let her know what was happening.
He looked out the window and watched the desert roll by.
“Where are you headed?” The voice came from the seat behind Daniel and he turned his head to meet it. A thin, well-dressed man sat in the seat. Perhaps even more than thin—the man wasn’t dying from starvation but a weak ocean wave could probably topple him. Even so, the suit didn’t hang from his body, but seemed tailored to it. Pin stripes ran down the pants and jacket, and he wore a crisp white shirt with the top two buttons undone, revealing tan skin. He was older, but still a young man when compared to the bus driver—probably in his fifties.
“Heading to America,” Daniel answered, his head still half turned.
“Only stop left on the route. Where in America?” The man was of Hispanic origin, but he spoke with only a slight hint of an accent.
“Hoping to get to Georgia. You?” Daniel turned a bit more, pushing his back against the bus wall so that he could face the man. “Daniel Nayek,” he said, extending his hand.
The man took it. “Keith Rome. Heading to the border to finish a business deal.”
“Nice to meet you.”
“Likewise.”
Daniel was in the process of turning around to look back out his window when the man spoke again.