Revelation

by Wilson, Carter;

“There’s no medical care down here,” Baby Face said. His voice sounded vaguely familiar, but Harden couldn’t place it. “So if I break your face open, it’s gonna stay that way. Probably get infected. That what you want?”

  “Tell me where I am,” Harden said. “Just tell me that, and I’ll get in the corner.”

  One step closer. Harden stood his ground.

  Baby Face tilted his head to the left, and Harden imagined a smile behind the plastic.

  “You’re in the last place you’ll ever be.”

  Harden waited no more. He pivoted and lifted the old typewriter with both hands, then swung in a tight arc upwards toward the shape of the round head. Baby Face began to reach toward him, which is the only reason the typewriter was close enough to connect squarely with the side of his skull. The heavy, ancient machine smashed into the mask, crunching plastic and, Harden hoped, the bones beneath it. Harden lost his grip, and the typewriter crashed into the ground. Baby Face collapsed alongside it, where he grabbed his head and gurgled though pooling blood.

  “I’m . . . fudding kill you . . .”

  Baby Face got to one knee and reached out to Harden, but Harden bolted around him and straight for the bright light on the other side of the room. Straight for the open door.

  A hallway. The wash of the overhead fluorescent bulbs momentarily disorientated him, but Harden shook it off, reached back into the room, then yanked the door closed. Sliding the gray-blue metal bolt into the slot on the wall filled him with the first amount of hope he’d felt since all of this began.

  He turned and looked in each direction, preparing for someone else to come. The hallway was wide and drab, reminding him of a platform area in a subway station. The walls were the same antiseptic concrete block, only these had a coat of gray glaze that reflected some of the fluorescent lighting from the ceiling. The floor was finished in a faded, vanilla linoleum, a smooth and welcome change from the dirt in Harden’s room. But if this was some basement underneath the School, he had never seen it before. The hallway was as unfamiliar to him as the cell.

  Looking to his right, the hallway extended another twenty feet or so and ended at a closed wall. No other doors. No windows. Just concrete.

  To his left, the hall stretched a bit longer, and he saw two doors. One at the end of the hallway, the other on the adjacent wall. Two ways out, Harden thought. Or maybe one way out and another cell. The door along the adjacent wall had a bolt on it, just like the door to Harden’s cell.

  There were no cameras on the walls or ceiling, at least that he could tell. Harden crept to the end of the hall and leaned up against the door. He paused and listened but heard nothing from the other side.

  The door was unlocked, and Harden cracked it open just enough to get the slightest idea of what was on the other side. What he saw was a short stretch of linoleum leading to a flight of wooden steps, leading up.

  That’s the way out, he thought.

  But what was up there? Or, rather, who?

  As he pulled the door open a bit more, he glanced back at the second door in the hallway. The one with the slat on it, just like his. He thought he heard something. A soft rapping?

  He waited for a moment and listened again.

  There. Again. Definitely a rapping, soft and faint, like footsteps in a dream.

  Someone’s in there.

  He shifted his weight as he decided what to do.

  Leave, Harden. Just get the hell out of here.

  He opened the door to the stairway an inch more and smelled the wood of the stairs. Freedom was close. But he couldn’t leave. Not yet. He had one more door to open, the one leading to the cell just like his. He walked back, pressed his ear against it, and listened. No more rapping from the inside.

  But he was certain someone was in there. Another prisoner.

  Taking a deep breath, Harden squatted in front of the door, slid the metal slat open, and peered in.

  The smell hit him immediately. The stale, dead air stench of sewage and rotting food.

  “I’m in the fucking corner already!” The scream from inside was horrible. Desperate. Female.

  “No, no,” Harden whispered through the rectangular slot. “I’m here to help you.” The light in the cell was on, but he couldn’t see her.

  Quick breaths from within.

  “Then open the goddamn door and get me out of here.”

  He slid the bolt back and pulled the door open. He took a halfstep inside before his focus shot to the back corner of the room.

  The woman was barefoot. Torn jeans. Dirty blue t-shirt, tight around her body. Thick strands of hair fell forward over her left eye like the branches of a weeping willow, and dirt and blood painted her face.

  Harden knew her.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  NOVEMBER 1989

  “Well, hello, Harden.”

  The comfort of the vaguely familiar voice settled into my ears before recognition did, and all I knew was whoever this voice belonged to, I would be happy to see. I lifted my gaze from my notebook and saw Emma, her hair catching wisps of sunlight from the dusty and filtered rays within the dining hall. I often ate lunch at the Moorhead Hall cafeteria alone to get work done, and any interruptions normally would bother me. Not now.

  “Emma,” I said.

  She carried a tray full of healthy-looking things, colored green, red, and yellow. Outside, the first snow of the year was falling. A collection of melted snowflakes sparkled Emma’s hair and her face was a dusty pink from the November wind.

  “You here alone?” I asked.

  She cocked her head and offered a thin-lipped smile—bordering on a smirk—that was beyond my ability to translate. “I am,” she said. “Can I sit with you?”

  “Of course.” I slid my notebook over but kept it open. I looked down and regretted most of my meal was done. I would sip the hell out of my water, making it last.

  “You done with classes for the day?”

  I shook my head. “I have a writing class at three.”

  “What kind of writing?”

  “Creative.”

  She smiled and reached for one of the few remaining fries on my plate. In my twenty-year-old mind, there was something almost sexual about her taking one of my fries without asking. My face got hot. “Are you an English major?” she asked.

  “Only because I had to declare a major. Not sure if it’s something I want to do with my life.”

  “Hmmm. Not like your roomies, then? Your life’s not already planned out for you?”

  I guess Coyote had been telling her about us, because Emma was dead-on with that statement. If Jacob didn’t drink his way to failure—liver and/or business—he’d inevitably end up at law school, and then straight to his father’s law firm. And all Derek ever wanted to do was teach, so it would be more academics for him—probably a PhD in European History—before settling in as a professor in some liberal arts college. Maybe even Wyland. Sometimes I envied the certainty of their futures. Other times I reveled in the fact I had no clue what I would do after school.

  “No,” I answered. “I’m currently without any kind of plan whatsoever.”

  “Kind of like Coyote.”

  I tried not to think too much about the night he confessed to me his need to consume people. I wanted to dismiss it as narcissistic babble, but I knew it was more than that.

  “It seems to me he could do just about anything he wanted,” I said.

  Emma picked at her food. “You know, he once told me there wasn’t a single concept ever explained to him that he didn’t fully grasp. Quite the ego.”

  “That’s such an arrogant statement I’m inclined to believe it’s true.”

  She considered this for a moment. “Sometimes I think Coyote might not be the brilliant man we all think he is. He just has to be a little smarter than us for it to appear that way.”

  I never thought about it that way. She could be absolutely right.

  “He’ll probably stay in academics,” she said. “He like
s the campus atmosphere. You ever think about grad school?”

  I shrugged. “Sometimes I think about getting a Master of Fine Arts. I like writing, and I’m not half-bad at it, at least according to my professors. Maybe there’s a future in it for me somewhere.”

  “Good for you,” she said. She popped a baby carrot in her mouth and spun my open notebook around so it faced her. “Working on something now?”

  She surprised me with the move, and my chest tightened as I realized she was about to read the essay I was working on. My instinct was to grab the notebook away from her, which I think is the natural reaction for most creative writing students. But I didn’t. I was powerless in front of this girl with three piercings in one ear and none in the other. “It’s . . . it’s nothing,” I finally mumbled.

  “Can I read it?”

  I hesitated and then nodded, willing the words on the page to rearrange themselves into something good. I had been writing short stories ever since high school, and I believe my college application essay played a big part in why Wyland accepted me. I was a good writer, but not a great one, and being only good made me want to set myself on fire as Emma started reading my essay.

  I stared at my plate as I listened to her brain absorb my words. I had been on the twelfth page of my story, preferring to write longhand before putting the finished product on my Macintosh back at the apartment.

  Emma looped a strand of hair over her ear and looked up from the page after about a minute. Her irises were olive in the hazy sunlight filtering through the hundred-year-old cafeteria windows. “Harden, this is really good.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “I mean it. You’ve got talent.”

  If she was faking sincerity, I no longer cared. But I think she really meant it. “It’s for class,” I said. “Actually, Coyote inspired the idea.”

  “Really? What’s it about?”

  I thought back to the night with the two freshmen. The question Coyote asked the girl had such a malevolent overtone that it stuck in my head until it culminated with an idea for a story.

  “All the major world religions were started when people really didn’t know much about anything beyond their own land,” I said. “About other societies. About science. Technology. Medicine. I wondered what kind of person it would take in today’s culture for him to start a new movement. To get a real following. To get people to do whatever they say. With all the cynicism, doubt, and access to information in modern times, what would this person have to say or do to get people to start following him?”

  “Or her,” Emma added.

  “Or her.” I put a cold fry back on the tray. “My story explores a group of friends trying to figure out that problem.”

  “What does Coyote have to do with this?”

  “He . . . it seems he reads a lot of different religious texts, and it just got me thinking.” No need to tell her how he berated a drunk freshman about her religious beliefs in our apartment.

  “Yeah, he certainly does.” Her gaze went back to the pages. “In fact, it sounds like it’s him you’re writing about.”

  “That thought crossed my mind,” I said.

  “He’d be into this, you know? You should show it to him.”

  “I’m never sure what he’d be into.” A dark impulse hit me, an urge to paint Coyote in a bad light in the hope he and Emma might break up and she could be with me. Terrible things, these kinds of urges. I recognized it was wrong, but did nothing to stop myself. “I have a hard time figuring him out.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “Why don’t you two ever go out on the weekend?” I asked.

  Emma picked at her salad, setting aside a couple leaves of browned lettuce. “It gives us a chance to hang out with other people. We see each other all week.” She mulled these last words for a moment, then added, “It also gives us a break from one another.”

  “You need a break from each other?” This got my hopes up a little.

  “Everyone does, Harden.”

  “Not married people.”

  She laughed. “God, are you that naive? Especially married people. If my parents had taken more breaks, they’d probably still be together.”

  Mine, too, I considered.

  She slipped a slice of tomato into her mouth. “He’s a bit intense,” she said. “Having breaks definitely isn’t a bad thing.”

  “He does need to channel his energy into something.” Do I tell her his confession about needing to consume people? How much does he really share with her?

  We sat in silence for a few moments, and this is when I first noticed her scent. Fresh, like a meadow of flowers just washed by rain. It was faint but it was there, and she radiated spring on a dreary November day.

  She sipped her water and said, “Actually, Coyote’s been more intense than usual lately.”

  “In what way?”

  She hesitated. “Did he . . . did he ever mention anything about something he did when he was younger? A fight . . . with another boy? It happened on a camping trip with his dad.”

  “No,” I said. “Nothing like that. What happened?”

  She looked as if she wanted to answer, but she didn’t. “It’s nothing. It’s just a heavy story, and I’m not sure why he told me. He brought it up the other day, and it was just . . . intense.” She looked at me as if for reassurance. “Like sometimes I don’t know if he’s joking about something or not. You know?”

  “I know. He has been a bit on edge lately,” I said. “When he’s at the apartment, he seems to stay up almost all night. I don’t know what he does.”

  “He thinks.” Her tone was very certain. “He sits and thinks. Processes. It’s like he’s working through all the information he absorbed all day to see if he can do anything with it. It’s actually kind of creepy.”

  I couldn’t help myself. “You picture yourselves together for a long time?” I thought the question was casual, but, based on her reaction, it wasn’t. She smiled and gave me a wink.

  “Why? You want to ask me out?” She reached over and the tips of her long, unpainted nails brushed against my own fingertips. I felt hot all over, which meant my face would be about two shades darker than a stop sign.

  “No . . . I was just wondering . . .”

  “Relax, Harden. I’m just giving you a hard time.” She tilted her head and looked into my eyes. “Although I’m surprised you don’t have a girlfriend. You’re a good-looking guy.”

  I tried to keep a cool voice through my panic. I wasn’t used to receiving compliments from girls like Emma. “I wear my humble origins outwardly,” I said, dropping my gaze back to the scatterings of food on my tray. “Which makes me substantially less compelling on a campus like Wyland.” This is usually how I reacted to the rare compliment. By insulting myself.

  “Girls don’t just want money, Harden. But I think you know that. Look at me for a second.”

  I did, and in that moment I saw ourselves married, waking up wrapped in silky linen sheets late on a Sunday morning. The vision lasted about a second, and it was beautiful.

  She studied my face and said, “You’re just too shy. Girls like confidence—they want a guy who’s not afraid to go after what he wants.” She looked a bit longer. “Yes, I’d definitely go out with you.”

  Wow.

  “Likewise,” I said, proud of myself for saying it. After that I only offered a nervous laugh. As the moments drifted, I felt my cheeks cool and knew the ruddiness in them had dissipated to normal levels. I detached from myself a bit and looked down at this scene as if watching from the top of the cafeteria. Here was Harden Campbell, transplant from Owen, Pennsylvania, having lunch with a pretty girl, and that was cool. We spent the rest of the meal chatting idly about courses and our plans for winter break, the distant moments of flirting still faintly warm in my chest. She finally stood up and announced she had a dreaded bio class to go to, and as she gathered her purse and picked up her tray, I turned the notebook back toward me and started thinking about
the next paragraph.

  We exchanged good-byes, and she turned to walk away as I resumed scribbling on the pages. Emma took one step, then pivoted on her heel. I looked up and saw her suddenly leaning over me.

  “Your story,” she said. “How does it end?”

  I ran my fingers through my coarse stock of English-Irish hair, something I did when I didn’t have an answer. “I don’t know,” I finally said.

  But I kind of did, didn’t I? So I told her my sense of the whole thing.

  “But I’m pretty sure it doesn’t end well.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  JULY 1990

  “Oh, God. Harden. Oh, God.”

  Emma scampered across her cell toward Harden, hobbling like a dog just clipped by a car. Horror kept Harden frozen. It was her hand, his eyes told him. Something’s wrong with her hand. It was wrapped in a dirty, blood-soaked gauze.

  She grabbed Harden and pulled herself deep into his chest, burying her face in his neck. He could feel her sweat and tears on his skin. He could smell the musk of her captivity.

  “They . . .” Her words were muffled and choked. “They cut off my finger, Harden. They mutilated me . . . said it would get me to obey.”

  Oh, God. Oh, Jesus Christ.

  “It hurts so much!” She was on the edge of hysterical, and that was going to be a problem. “I don’t know why I’m here. Oh, God, Harden. I think they’re going to kill—”

  “Be quiet,” he said, pushing her out an arm’s length so he could look at her face. “Emma, we have to leave. Right now. Do you understand?”

  Tears streamed from her bloodshot eyes. She nodded.

  “They were keeping me, too, and I’m weak. I don’t know what’s waiting for us, but there’s a door just outside the hallway. If we—”

  Emma suddenly screamed and pointed to something behind Harden.

  He turned.

  Another baby-faced man. Not the same one. This one was larger. Same mask, but in the light of Emma’s cell, it almost looked Asian. Face of a contorted Buddha. Emma kept screaming as Harden watched Baby Face race toward him and swing at him. A sharp, piecing pain in his side. Stabbed, he thought. He stabbed me. But when Baby Face pulled his arm back, Harden saw the syringe in his hand.