by James Swain
“That’s simple. They want me.”
“But why? Still no clue? I would have thought they would have made their intentions known by now. The spirits aren’t ones to beat around the bush, you know.”
Peter shook his head. He had three days left to save Rachael from walking into Dr. Death’s trap. Right now, though, he needed to deal with his own issues, and uncover the truth, as ugly as it might be. “I want to talk to you about the night my parents perished. I learned today that I was roaming around the city for five hours, and that a kindly old man who bore a striking resemblance to you deposited me at the police station house at three o’clock in the morning.”
Max lowered his eyes. “Is that so,” he mumbled.
“Was it you? Please be honest with me about this.”
“I believe it was.”
“Thank you. So here’s the question I want to ask you, Max. When you found me that night, were my hands covered in blood?”
His teacher’s head snapped, and he locked eyes with his student. “Who told you that?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes, it most certainly does.”
“Will you tell me the truth?”
“Tell you the truth about what?”
“Me.”
“You want to know the truth about you?”
“Yes, Max. Something tells me you know exactly who I am.”
Max placed his arm around Peter’s shoulders, and pulled him close to his chest. With his other hand, he ran his knuckles across his hair. Max hadn’t done that to him in a long time, and it brought a long-forgotten smile to Peter’s face.
“I’ll tell you who you are,” Max said. “You are one of the most caring and generous people I have ever known. That’s who you are, and I’m proud to have helped raise you. Is that good enough for you?”
“No. I want to know if there was blood on my hands.”
Max scowled and released him. “How much do you remember from that night?”
“Nothing. It’s all a blank.”
“There’s your answer. There wasn’t any blood.”
“But that’s not true,” he said, hearing the fear in his voice. “I went on a rampage that night, and killed six men in the city. The police confirmed it. I saw the cold case file with photographs of my victims. It was awful.”
Max winced like he’d been kicked. A deck of cards appeared in his hands. He fanned and cut them one-handed without being disrespectful. “So you know.”
“Yes. Now tell me the rest.”
“If you insist. At the exact moment your mother and father were abducted, Milly Adams was taking a hot bath. Milly had a vision, and saw your parents being shoved into a car at gunpoint. She knew your parents were doomed, but held out hope for you.”
“Did Milly see me in her vision?”
“Yes. She said you changed.”
“Into a monster?”
“She said you turned into a little demon. Milly alerted her psychic friends, and asked us to look for you. I owned a car at the time, and was given an area to search. I looked for hours, and finally found you on Ninth Avenue.”
“What was I doing?”
At first, Max did not respond. The pools of black reappeared and Peter felt all the more ready to step into one. “Please, Max. Tell me.”
“You were in the act of interrupting a serious crime,” Max said solemnly. “A mugger was robbing an elderly man and kicking him. You jumped in, and got your hands around the mugger’s throat. You were four and a half feet tall and weighed seventy pounds. The mugger was a brute, and four times your size, yet he didn’t stand a chance.”
“Did I kill him?”
“You snapped his neck like it was a bread stick. But it was for a good cause. As were the others, I’m sure.”
Dag had made a similar comment, as if the six killings were justifiable. Peter didn’t believe there was ever a good reason to take a human life. The truth was, he’d gone berserk that night, and become a killing machine. How he was going to live with that, he had no idea.
“What happened then?”
“I took you home, where I cleaned you up, while Anna fixed you something to eat,” Max replied. “You remember how my wife always wanted to feed everyone. Anyway, you’d calmed down by then, and gone back to being a little boy. A very frightened little boy, I might add. It was Anna’s idea to take you to the police in the hopes you might identify the men who’d stolen your parents away. Which was exactly what I did.”
The cards were snapped in a fan. They had shrunk to half their size. Another fan, and they shrunk to the size of a matchbook. Then, like a puff of smoke, they were gone.
“But why did you do that, Max?” he asked pleadingly. “Didn’t the fact that I’d killed six men weigh on your decision? I was a dangerous little boy. Shouldn’t you have taken me to a hospital instead?”
Max opened his hands and the deck of cards miraculously reappeared. Seeing them made Peter swallow hard. The cards had been there all along, perhaps up Max’s sleeve, or someplace else, but hiding in plain sight nonetheless. So simple, yet it had fooled him.
“You had killed before, you do know that,” Max said.
“The burglar at our apartment. He died?”
“Of course he died. I mean, before that.”
Someone could have knocked him over with a feather.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he stammered.
“So you don’t know the truth, then.”
The truth. Peter had been waiting a long time to hear the truth. Max rose from the bench and motioned for Peter to rise as well.
“Let’s take a walk,” he said.
40
Down at street level they went to a hidden Italian eatery called Pepe Giallo, its motto, “Feeding the Starving Artists since 1997.” For a restaurant in New York to be Italian, it not only had to serve authentic Italian fare, but had to be run by Italians with accents and rude manners. Pepe Giallo had all those things. A host led them to a small courtyard in the back with rustic redbrick walls and a murky skylight. Tossing a pair of menus on the table, he walked away.
“I’m not hungry. Let’s go someplace else,” Peter said.
“Nonsense, you’re always hungry, even though you manage to never gain weight,” Max said. “Food will make you feel better. Try the roasted eggplant. It’s wonderful.”
An indifferent waiter took their drink orders. When he was gone, Max glanced at a couple sitting nearby. Deciding they were not a threat, he leaned forward and said, “I once read a quote by Ernest Hemingway that stayed with me. Hemingway said that memoirs are fiction. People reinvent their pasts to suit them. We take out the things we don’t want repeated, and embellish the things we do. When it comes to the past, there is no such thing as the truth.”
“Is my past fiction?” Peter asked.
“Yes. Part of your family’s past is fiction.”
“So this includes my parents.”
“I’m afraid so.”
“How bad is it?”
“I never planned to tell you, if that’s what you mean.”
Peter removed a bread stick from the basket, broke off a piece. Did he really want to hear dark things about his family’s past? Milly’s accusation that he ran away from his problems didn’t seem such a bad idea right now.
“Go ahead,” he said.
Max wiped his hands with a cloth napkin. Bunching the napkin up, he extracted a full glass of water, complete with ice cubes and a slice of lemon, which he triumphantly placed in front of his bug-eyed student. Fooled again, Peter thought.
“You flashed. Do it again,” Peter said.
“I did no such thing,” Max thundered. “Admit you’re fooled!”
“All right, you fooled me. Bravo.”
A thin smile crossed Max’s face. “Listen carefully to what I have to say. This will be upsetting at first. Once I explain certain things, I think you’ll understand. Okay?”
“Sure, Max.”
“All right, here we go. You were raised to believe that your mother and father left London and came to New York because they were being threatened by the group of evil psychics called the Order of Astrum. Correct?”
“Correct.”
“That is not the actual reason your parents left England. The real reason they left is that their precious son killed a man in Hyde Park, and they were running from the law.”
“I did what?”
“Please let me tell my story without interruption.”
Peter could feel the blood draining from his head. “Sure, Max, whatever you say.”
“Thank you. Here’s what happened. Your parents lived in London and taught at a small college. Each Sunday when the weather was favorable, they packed a picnic and went to Hyde Park, where they allowed you to play while they read books. It was one of their favorite things to do. One Sunday in the early spring, your parents were going about their usual routine when your father realized you had disappeared. He grew alarmed, and went searching for you. Several minutes passed before he found you behind a thick hedge a hundred yards from where your parents had been sitting. You were in a daze, and barely speaking. Lying on the ground was a man with blood pouring out of his nose and mouth. The man’s neck was broken and he was dead. Your father gathered you in his arms, and asked you what had happened. And you said, ‘I killed him, Father. He was going to hurt us.’”
“Who was he?”
“Please, don’t make me get ahead of myself.”
“Sorry.”
“On the ground beside the dead man was a lead pipe. Your father couldn’t be sure if the man had been holding the pipe, or if it had been lying there. Your father rushed you home, where your mother gave you a bath, and wiped the blood away.”
“Why didn’t they call the police?”
“Your parents knew you were different in many ways, and did not always understand the things you did. That night, after you were put to bed, your parents talked it over. They couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to harm them. After all, they were college professors, and led dull, uneventful lives. If the man in the bushes had wanted to rob them, he wouldn’t have gotten much money. And if he’d wanted to hurt them, why?
“The next day, the story hit every newspaper in London. Scotland Yard was looking for you, and claimed to have a rather vague description of what you looked like provided by an old woman who’d been bird-watching in the park. Your father saw the newspapers and panicked. If the police found you, he was afraid they would have stuck you into a mental institution. He had to protect you, and convinced your mother that they needed to leave London, and quickly.”
“So they left because of me.”
“That’s right. Your father knew there was more to the story, and felt certain he’d figure out the rest eventually. Your parents came to New York, where they took jobs at Hunter College and went about their lives. Then the unthinkable happened.”
“I killed again.”
Max nodded gravely. “Six months to the day, to be exact. It happened at night. You were in bed, and your parents went to see a newborn in a neighbor’s apartment. When they returned, your mother went to check on you, and found you covered in blood.”
Peter stared at the table, thinking he might be sick.
Max squeezed his arm. “It gets better,” he said.
“How can this story possibly get better?” he half whispered.
“Because now you’re going to hear the truth.”
His head snapped. “Which is what?”
“While your mother tended to you, your father went onto the fire escape outside your bedroom. Finding more blood, he followed it down to an alley. It was there that he found your victim, who’d been beaten around the face and had died from loss of blood.”
“How awful.”
“Stop flogging yourself. I said it got better, didn’t I?”
“Sorry.”
“The man in the alley reminded your father of your victim in Hyde Park. Both men were physically large, in their early thirties, and rough looking. That bothered your father, yet he was still unable to make the connection. He decided to move the body before someone discovered it, and called me for help.”
“Because you had a car.”
Max nodded.
“Had he told you what I’d done in Hyde Park?”
“Yes, he had. Like him, I believed there was more to the story than met the eye. Mind you, Peter, I’d gotten to know you during my visits to your family’s apartment, and you impressed me as a fine fellow and not some little serial killer in waiting. Anyway, I rushed over with my car, and your father and I loaded the dead man in the trunk. We hauled him to a vacant lot in Brooklyn, where we planned to dump him.”
Peter found himself shaking his head. Max and his father were the two most important men in his life. The idea that they’d dumped a dead man in a lot in order to save him from the police brought out an emotion that he could not describe. He took a deep breath.
“Wow.”
“Wow is right. And that was when I had a eureka moment,” Max said triumphantly.
“Your victim was wearing a turtleneck sweater. As we dragged him out of the trunk, it got pulled down, and I spied a shimmering silver tattoo on his neck.”
Peter gasped. “He was a member of the Order of Astrum.”
“Indeed he was. He wasn’t a burglar, as your parents originally thought, but an assassin who had been sent to kill them.” Max paused again. “And you stopped him.”
“You think I knew who he was?”
“Of course you did—why else would you have killed him?”
Peter wrestled with what Max was telling him. Why couldn’t a few memories of these events have remained? It would have made it so much easier for him to deal with this. But the memories had been erased along with the violent emotions that had gone with them.
“So these killings weren’t random acts of violence, but served a purpose,” Peter said.
“That was the conclusion your father and I came to,” Max replied. “As you know, your parents were founding members of the Order. They left the organization in their teens, got married, and moved to London. One day, the three remaining members of the Order paid them a visit, and asked them to rejoin. Your parents said no, and they threatened them. Your father said he hadn’t taken the threats seriously. Now he did.”
“What about the man in Hyde Park? Was he an assassin as well?”
“Excellent deduction. Yes, he was.”
“How can you be certain?”
“I have a friend in London whose brother is with Scotland Yard. I called my friend, and asked him to ask his brother to check the autopsy report of the dead man to see if he had a shimmering tattoo on his neck. Not surprisingly, the man did.”
“So the man in Hyde Park was sent to kill my parents. When he failed, a second assassin was sent to New York, and he failed as well. Is that what you’re telling me?”
“You’re stealing my thunder.”
“Finally, the Order got fed up, and the other members came to New York to do the job themselves,” Peter said. “Only this time, I wasn’t able to protect my parents, and they were stolen out from under me. I went into a rage, and ran around New York killing bad men in retaliation. Is that the deal?”
“You make it sound like you were a monster,” Max said. “That was not the case.”
“From what you’ve just told me, I killed eight men before I turned eight years old. What would you call it?”
“They were bad men, and got the fate they deserved.”
“I was a child. Children are not supposed to kill. It was wrong. Please don’t justify it.”
“But they were trying to kill your parents.”
“Why didn’t my parents stop them? They were both psychic. How could they have been so blind to the danger they were in?”
Max shook his head, clearly frustrated. “Your mother and father left the Order of Astrum because they wanted to lead normal lives. They wer
e psychics, but it was a small part of who they were. They kept their powers turned off most of the time, so to speak. That was why they didn’t see the danger.”
But their seven-year-old son had seen the danger. Unlike his loving parents, Peter had not turned off his psychic powers, and when danger had come calling, the demon inside of him responded in a way that was so horrible that the memories had been repressed.
His chair made a harsh scraping sound. Standing, Peter tossed his napkin onto his plate. Why couldn’t Max’s story have been different? Something easy for him to digest and come to grips with? He could have accepted just about anything, except this.
Max looked into his student’s face, and saw his pain. “What’s wrong?”
“I want to have a normal life, too,” Peter said, and walked out of the restaurant.
41
Peter got out of the cab at the Centre Street entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge.
“Keep the change.”
The driver smiled at his good fortune and pulled away. It was not every day that a passenger gave him a hundred bucks for a twelve-dollar fare.
Peter zipped up his leather jacket and climbed the stairway to the elevated pedestrian walkway that ran the length of the bridge. Day or night, rain or shine, freezing cold or unbearably hot, there was always a mob of people walking and jogging and enjoying the sights from the bridge. And then there were poor souls like him, who needed to clear dark thoughts from their heads.
It was a half mile to the bridge’s center. Upon reaching it, he gazed up at the main tower, which was as tall as a skyscraper. Many times, he’d imagined climbing over the railing, crawling on a beam to the tower, taking the stairs to the top, ripping off his clothes, and diving into murky depths of the East River. Not to kill himself, but simply as a way to change, believing that the Peter who came out of the water would be different from the Peter who’d jumped in.
But he hadn’t done it. In the end, something had always held him back. He gripped the railing with both hands and gazed at the water. He’d read once that everyone desired to be someone else. For him, that person was someone totally ordinary. He yearned for a morning when he’d wake up and not have had a vision the night before which foretold the future, or step into an old building and not be confronted by a ghost. He wanted a life with the normal daily ups and downs, happiness and pain. Was that too much to ask for?