When he reached the last pocket of his old coveralls, he could see the square outline of what he’d really been looking for. Carefully, he pulled from the pocket the odd parchment his mother had brought from the executive floor. Laying it aside, he tidied the drawer, and then went to compare his mother’s card to the index cards from Sammi.
They were flat and smooth, with blue lines crested by a red one, with sharp corners and crisp edges. Declan inspected everything he could think of. His mother’s strange parchment was, as Sammi had called it, an “index card.” But his mother’s had numbers, and he was certain that they were meant for the VAC Machine. Images of the executive floor came into his mind, and he saw the burly executive guards pushing around his father as they looked for his mother’s satchel. They had wanted the index card, the numbers. But how had it gotten there?
This last question slowed Declan. There was more to it; the story was bigger. He clenched his jaw, anxious about the path his mind was taking. How could the executive floor have index cards? But he already knew the answer. The executives must have been working with the VAC Machines. His mother’s face came to him, and he closed his eyes, trying to justify the betrayal that had begun to seed in his young mind. He shook his head; soon the seed would grow, branching to other floors in the Commune. How many knew of this place? He told himself that his mother must’ve had her reasons to keep the information hidden; he was sure of it.
His mother’s index card had five rows numbers; there were five VAC Machines. Frustration led to even more question. What were these clues in front of him, and all around him?
Turning to the door and the lights, he waited for what seemed an eternity, staring at them, letting them see him.
“Tell me something,” he demanded, but they remained dark, reflecting his image as a collection of small, warped figurines. He waved his hands at the glassy orbs, expecting to see a shimmer of light, anything, but they remained dark. Uninterested.
Those lights are eyes… and ears, he thought. Pulling his arms around his middle, he glanced to the bed and then back. This place knew everything; it saw everything.
“Well, you’re not in my head,” he yelled, stabbing a finger toward the dark orbs. But what of Sammi, and his mother and sister? What hold did this place have on them?
Declan pulled the index card up from the desk, slapping it across his hand. He decided that he would take it to his mother. After all, she would know what the numbers meant.
They’d all know about the city underneath the VAC Machine, wouldn’t they?
Pushing the stack of unused index cards away, Declan looked over the collection of pens and pencils and the tall stack of parchment. He picked up the writing stone that Sammi had given him, and touched her lock of hair.
Who was he to challenge what they had now? His thoughts heavy, he lowered his head and considered what he was about to do. On the desk was everything he’d ever need and want as a writer. He could write all day, every day. He could write the way he wanted to write. He felt a small pang of remorse in his gut when considering the thousands of words lost to the Commune’s waste recycler. In this place, though, he didn’t have to clean his parchment at the end of the day and wash away his words. He could write the way he wanted, leaving the pages as they were meant to be.
Declan pushed the air out of his chest, he could write, but he’d never be free of the questions that he’d come here with. The questions were his burden: shackling reminders of why he was here. He needed answers. Resigning, he buried his mother’s index card in his pocket and went to the door. He was going to find her, and with her help, they were going to find out the meaning of the numbers, and why the End of Gray Skies had failed.
Standing at the room’s entrance, same as he’d done so many times already, Declan waited for the illuminations to grow white around the door. But the door stayed closed, with no lighting, no animation. Shifting his feet, he shuffled a few hands to the left, and then forward and back. The glassy orbs reflected his awkward dance steps. The door stayed closed. And like before, he tried to remember if Sammi had touched anything, waved her hand anywhere, anything that would activate the door. He pushed his hands flat against the seams around the door, feeling for an opening, or maybe some kind of handle, but there was nothing. The door was flush with the wall, and, if not for having seen Sammi come and go, he would never even have known that there was a door there at all.
His patience was fading. Becoming upset, he poked his fingers at the lights, thinking that, if they were indeed watching, he didn’t want them to find any amusement.
“I’m locked in,” he exclaimed, and then quickly sensed a feeling of being trapped.
Not yet, he thought.
Declan searched the room, looking for anything that he could use. Had Sammi had anything? Questions and images bound together in his mind, confusing him. He stopped for a moment, and wondered if this was how the cats trapped by Harold and his gang must have felt.
Moving back to his desk, he considered breaking one of the table legs and using it to pry the door open. When he saw Sammi’s lock of hair siting on the table, he stopped. Again he’d forgotten it. Shaking his head, he picked it up, squeezing it.
Sammi, he thought.
“It can’t be that, can it?” he asked, turning to peek at the lights like he’d been cheating. He waited to see if he’d been caught, and then laughed at his emerging phobia.
“Maybe it is that simple,” he answered. Declan stepped to the door and waved his hand, gripping Sammi’s lock of hair. At once, the door’s edges glowed until the light became hot white, flashed twice; and then the door opened.
Startled, Declan stepped back, and his eyes widened. He waited for a moment to see if anything would happen, but nothing came. There were no bells, no alarms; no executive guards came running toward him. From his hand, he revealed Sammi’s lock of hair, and then smiled and pushed it into his pocket.
Should have been there all along, anyway.
Leaning toward the opening, Declan drew in a deep breath from the corridor, smelling strange scents and hearing odd sounds. Men and women walked right by him, staring aimlessly, without so much as a glance in his direction. He expected a subtle wave from someone, or maybe a quick nod, but he was met with nothing at all. He’d nod back, if it would help him, but the need wasn’t there. After all, how far could Sammi’s lock of hair get him? Could it open all the doors? Making friends could be useful. But the people in the corridor simply looked past him as though he didn’t exist.
Declan pushed his head through the door, seeing the other side for the first time since he’d been brought inside the VAC Machine. What he saw then turned his body rigid, and he clutched the sides of the door. Declan fixed his eyes down the corridor at the vastness of what was there. He swallowed hard, staring at a world that he didn’t recognize. Fear twisted his insides, causing a stir of nausea. The sweetness of the ice cream crept into the back of his throat as he tried to shake off his alarm at what he was seeing.
Declan shuffled his feet, eager to leave, but remained fixed in place, unable to move. Not since his near run-in with the Outsiders had his legs locked, leaving him unable to move.
I'm here to get answers, he told himself, and tried to move one leg toward the door’s opening. But he didn't move; he couldn’t move.
“Sammi, where are we?” he asked, and discovered he was afraid to leave the room.
9
It didn’t take long for Janice Gilly to find Declan’s father. As soon as she’d entered their building’s courtyard, she came upon an argument. She saw two men with their voices raised, fighting over a bag of potato juice. Standing high on his toes and leaning over a seller’s table, Richard Chambers yelled at a fevered pitch about customer loyalty.
As Janice approached the dispute, she recognized the merchant: it was Jason Toomey, a past student. He was the spitting image of his younger brother, Rick Toomey. From the unkempt locks of hair to the narrow chin and thin nose, she’d always rec
ognize a Toomey. When she reached the table, Jason gave her a quick look, recognizing his old teacher, and nodded with a smile that was fast to disappear as Richard Chambers yanked again on the bag of potato juice.
“I don’t have any vouchers to give today!” Richard spat. His words were slurred and fell limply.
“And you still owe me for last week!” Jason answered back, pulling on the bag of potato juice until Richard fell forward, landing clumsily on the market table separating the two men. The table legs screeched, turning heads—but fortunately not drawing the attention of the executive guards who monitored the merchant activities.
Janice reached in and pushed her hands beneath Richard’s arms, helping him until he could stand on his own. She was taken by his frailness; Declan’s father was a shell of the man she remembered. He was held together only loosely by taut skin over thinning bones, and he smelled. While standing close to him, she had to turn her head. She could smell the days—maybe weeks or more—of drinking. His drunkenness spewed from his pores, along with the sour smell of vomit and urine. Wrinkling her nose, she fought the urge to gag. Janice wondered how long it had been since he’d bathed, and as she nearly lifted him off the table, she couldn’t help but wonder how long it had been since he’d eaten.
“Mr. Toomey,” she started to say, catching Declan’s father as he leaned back. “I’m going to get that, okay?”
“Well, yes, Ms. Gilly. I suppose that’d be fine,” her former student answered. Jason turned a cautious eye in the direction of Declan’s father, who’d started to wave his hands, objecting to her offer. Janice could see the rise of pride in Richard’s bleary eyes—readying an objection—and hurried the payment, rushing to grab her food vouchers.
“You don’t have to do that,” Richard belted out. His words were firmer as he tried to sound more sober than he actually was. “Really… really, I don’t want you to.” Janice pressed her hand onto his arm, helping to steady him.
She’d seen this before. As the Community teacher, she had gotten to see a lot of things. Some of it was good, but too much of it was bad. She was often counselor to the students and the parents. And several years before, one of her students had become addicted to the juice. Janice had been there the night that that student had almost died. Withdrawals from the potato juice were violent, causing terrific convulsions. But what she remembered most were the tremors: little twitches in the boy’s fingers that fed into shallow waves. Declan’s father was already halfway there, at least. He’d need a drink soon, or it’d get worse. He was past the point of wanting to drink the potato juice; he needed the juice to survive.
“You didn’t have to do that,” Richard struggled to say. She saw resentment, born from an embarrassment that she hadn’t expected. She’d bruised his pride. “You didn't have to do that,” he repeated. His voice was sterner this time, as his eyes leveled with hers. Janice was stumped for words.
“But I wanted to,” she answered quickly. His expression changed to one of uncertainty; caution still lurked in his tilted face. He cocked his head to listen. “I wanted to, so that we could talk. But you’ll have to pay me back. That’s okay, isn’t it?” He relaxed, and his lips curled into a musing smile. The anger in his eyes softened, and then was gone.
“I always pay my way,” he answered, and then offered a lazy wink that seemed to get stuck with his eye half-closed. “Always will. Ain’t that right, ya cocksucker!”
Janice stepped back, as though someone had slapped her across the face. Then she realized that Richard’s words hadn’t been intended for her, but for Jason Toomey. To her relief, Jason continued with the transaction, putting the potato juice in a fresh bag and counting the food vouchers on the table.
“Yeah, that’s right,” Jason answered. His voice sounded edgy and rough; not at all like the student she remembered from her classroom. “And take your business elsewhere. Eff off, Dick!” Another slap came then, but this time Janice was more prepared, and immediately put on her best scolding expression for misbehaving students. Jason caught her look, and before she could even say a word, he was already shaking and nodding his head at the same time, making small circles, apologizing.
As she walked away from the table, Janice firmed up her grip under one of Richard’s arms, steering him with each step. “I stopped by your dwelling earlier, but another family was moved in,” she said. “I wasn’t sure where you’d moved to. Are you close?”
Without looking up, Richard studied the bag of potato juice. Gripping his hand around the neck, he mumbled, “That floor of dwellings is for families only.” He tightened his grip until the bag strained, as though it were alive and trying to breathe.
“Families?” she replied, but then she realized that he was alone. In a little over a year, the man had gone from a family of four to no family at all. Richard narrowed his eyes at her, annoyed by her question.
“I’m by myself. Got no family anymore. No right to take the space of a dwelling meant for a family,” he answered, his words broken and shaky. He drank then—deep and long—encouraged by the salt she’d unintentionally poured on his open wounds.
“I didn't understand,” Janice answered, hating that her tone sounded like an apology, but knowing that she’d spurred hurt in him with her question. Watching him pour the juice into his mouth, she saw that it didn’t matter what she’d said; he was going to drink anyway. When he’d finished the heavy swig, and saw her staring at him, he pulled the bag away from his lips, coughing out the remainder in his mouth. She saw shame in his eyes and watched humiliation fill his face, like the fog that sometimes stole the hands in front of you.
“I need it,” he said flatly, looking once more at her before dropping his chin to fix his sight on the floor. “At first, I didn’t need it. I just drank because I liked the way it made me feel. It was my friend, helping me forget about what happened to Sandra and Hadley. But now, I need it. I get sick when I don’t drink.”
The rustling sound of Richard squeezing the bag told Janice that he was ready to drink again. He’d said his piece, and she was glad. For selfishly, she hadn’t sought him out to help him; it was she who wanted his help. Needed his help. And if he was going to drink while helping, then that would have to be okay.
“Richard, I didn’t come to you about this,” she said, motioning her hand to the bag of potato juice. “I need your help.”
They walked along as he seemed to consider what she’d said and lifted the bag for another long swig. Janice could tell that he was trying to get more juice in him, probably knowing that a convulsion was coming. As he swallowed, she watched the pink flush of his skin shrink away; the blue arteries in his neck spiderwebbed into broken red capillaries that mapped upward onto his face. Declan’s father was far worse off than she’d ever have imagined possible.
“What kind of help could I possibly give you?” he asked, with his eyes pegged to the side while he kept his head forward. “I can’t be of help to anyone.”
But before Janice could answer, Richard dipped his head, grunted unintelligible words, then dropped to his knees. The bag of potato juice fell from his fingers and sprayed across the ground, spilling what remained. Richard threw his hand forward, clutching at the air, trying to get to the bag before it was all gone. Janice knew what was coming. Richard hadn’t drunk enough juice in time. Had he missed it by minutes? Hours? He was going to seize.
And before Janice could do anything about it, Richard Chambers tumbled onto his back, body arching upward, as a seizure stole every bit of his dignity.
******
Hours. It had been hours since Janice had brought Richard to her dwelling. The heavy breathing and snoring of a man in her home sounded strange, foreign. While the sound was odd, she was relieved that his seizing had stopped. For five minutes he’d seized, arresting every muscle in his body in a contorted manner that she was sure would shatter his bones and tear apart his feeble muscles.
Before, when it had happened to one of her students, the poor boy was small en
ough that they’d needed only a few hands to hold him down to protect him. But Declan’s father was a fully grown man, and his condition—his frailty—was lost during the convulsions. She’d tried to hold him on her own, then begged the empty faces that passed them by to help her, but nobody did. They only furrowed a concerned brow—some with disgust, some with morbid curiosity—but none of them had offered to help.
When the seizing had stopped, she’d brought him to his feet and half-carried him the remainder of the way. Sitting at her table now, she listened to the sound of his breathing. It slowed, and then stopped altogether. She turned her cup of root tea, circling her finger around the brim, and waited. This wasn’t the first time: his breathing had stopped twice before. Each time she feared that his heart had finally given out, like his mind had long ago. But once again, as it had before, his back bellowed against a sudden push of his lungs, and he was breathing again. A few phlegmy coughs followed, daring to wake him, but they didn’t. The snoring came next, and then softened as he fell deeper into what she hoped would be a healing sleep.
There were moments during his slumber in which she didn’t know what to do. There were moments when the broken man pulled himself into her arms, calling out the names of a dead woman and child. There were moments when he insisted that he wanted to die, begging Janice to help him put an end to the man he’d become.
Janice honestly wondered if that might not be the most humane thing to do.
Instead, though, she held onto him as he dug deeply into the pain and spilled it out like a bucket of stained water, cleansing what she knew couldn’t be cleansed with just tearful bouts. Janice couldn’t help but feel angst too, wondering if James would have felt the same grief. Would anyone have mourned for her the way that Richard mourned? The hole in her heart—the one that she’d never been able to fill—was suddenly bigger, and it tormented her, echoing Richard’s pain as she tried to help him.
Blinded By Sight (Gray Series Book 3) Page 7