But this? I never imagined I would have to let go of my son while standing outside in a storm with a loaded shotgun in my hands. I never would have guessed it.
“I’ll come back, Dad,” Owen said again, and he went back into the house.
I reached for him, and I felt droplets of rain fall onto my outstretched fingers. I thought of Owen, and then I thought of my little brother and almost fell to my knees right there. This storm had taken too much from me. Now it was taking my son.
Klutch walked outside and strode toward me. His hands were buried in the pockets of his leather biking jacket, and his boots clicked on the pavement as he walked. He stopped a few feet in front of me and looked me up and down. I wondered if he had a gun in one of those pockets; he could clearly see the shotgun I was holding.
“You got a bright kid in there,” Klutch said. He looked nervous and fidgety, as always. “Very bright kid. Just told me you’re really gonna try to cross the water tomorrow night, huh?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Not a good idea.” He had little pupils with lots of white around the periphery of his eyes, which made him look a little paranoid. “You go to the other side, and you’re gonna be walking into a battlefield, my friend. You’re also gonna advertise the fact that we’re here.”
“Look,” I said. ‘I don’t care what you do. Stay here, for all I care. Don’t come with us. But I want my son back. When he’s heard enough, you send him right back.”
Klutch shrugged and shifted his weight back and forth a few times. He had the nervous demeanor of a chain smoker, only without the cigarettes. “He’s old enough to make his own decision, don’t you think?”
“No, he’s not. He’s not old enough.”
“Could have fooled me,” he said.
I turned and walked away. I felt so defeated and crushed, I had nothing more to say. I would go home, break the news to my wife, and try to make sense of it. I didn’t know if that was possible, of course. I wasn’t convinced there was a way to make sense of all of this.
I had only taken a few steps when Klutch spoke up again. What he said troubled me, and I wouldn’t understand it until later.
“You mobilize people to cross over, and you endanger all of us. You know that, right?” he said.
“I don’t agree with you. Someone could look across the water and tell there’s no war happening. Have you seen anything?”
“Looks can be deceiving,” Klutch said. “The reason there might be emergency crews on the other side of the water isn’t because they’re waiting to help us. They might be waiting to cross over and get away from what’s behind them. You ever think of that? And even if there are crews on the other side supposedly trying to help us, how do you know what side they’re really on? Nobody can be trusted, especially someone on the other side of that water.”
“I don’t agree.”
“I don’t care whether you agree with me or not,” he said. “What I care about is all of the civilians here on this island. I never lost a man when I was a platoon leader.”
“Yeah, yeah, I heard that part. Why do you care about everyone here so much?” I asked. “Weren’t you insulting all of us in the park the other day? What happened to you?”
“This is my public service,” he said. “This is what I’ve been trained to do. You all need me, and that’s the truth. The reason I didn’t lose a man is because I was careful and strategic in everything I did. I would hate to have to take steps to make sure you guys don’t cross over, so you need to think real carefully before you attempt it, my friend.”
“Tell my son I’ll be waiting for him,” I said, and went home.
What else did I have to say? I certainly wasn’t going to stand there in the darkness and debate weaponized weather with some paranoid biker, and I assumed Klutch was much more bark than bite. I didn’t see how one guy and a few middle-aged Naples residents who were under his spell could possibly be successful in stopping us.
When I got home and walked inside, I didn’t want to talk to anyone. The gravity of the situation fully set in. Everyone was in the living room, chatting by candlelight, but I stormed right past them and into my bedroom.
I collapsed onto the floor by the window and looked up at the dark clouds overhead, and I hated them. I hated them with everything I had in me, even more than I hated Drake.
“You took my son,” I said.
My wife came in to see what the matter was, but by then I was crying hysterically. I completely lost control.
“You took my son!” I screamed at the clouds. “You took my son! You took him! You murderer! You took him!”
I pounded my fists on the floor, and saliva flew from my mouth. I was a raging animal. Madison joined in my suffering as I explained through tears and muddled sentences what had happened. We held onto each other beside the window and wept endlessly, but the whole time I held her in my arms and stroked my hands through her hair, I looked disdainfully at the swirling mass of darkness above the rooftops.
Oh, how I loathed that storm!
I don’t know how long we knelt there on the floor, but eventually, as I was starting to feel fatigued from my grief and anger, I heard something outside the window. It sounded like a bike with a playing card stuck in its wheel spokes. Then a dog barked. It sounded like─
No. It just wasn’t possible.
I crawled over to the window, wiped the tears and saliva from my face, and looked down.
I was right.
It was a golden retriever. Bessie! She ran toward my house, barking, and I saw a little boy ride up on a BMX bike behind her. Hot-rodder!
He stopped his bike right out front on the lawn, cupped his hands around his mouth, and yelled, “Word of the day!”
It was real. They were here.
“Word of the day!” he yelled again.
“What the—” I whispered.
Those were two words, but it was all I could think to say.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Hot-rodder, whose real name was Bryan McMichael, told us exactly what had happened to him after Drake kidnapped him. We brought him into the living room, sat him down on the couch, and eagerly hovered over him to hear every last detail of how he came back. I soaked up every last word.
It was amazing to see him sitting there, all in one piece, looking happy and chipper as ever. Marsha even found a Coca-Cola in the fridge, which was no longer cold with the electricity out, but he happily took it, thanked her with a nod of his scruffy head, and gulped half of the can down in a matter of seconds. I could hear Toby and Mia playing in the other room with Bessie. I think Toby was so excited that his dog was back, he had forgotten about the storm entirely.
We listened as Hot-rodder explained what had happened to him, and Jesse and I, exchanging glances as we listened to the story, both realized that his account perfectly matched Drake’s version of events.
Hot-rodder broke free from the crazy man’s grip not long after leaving the park, ran like crazy as lightning forked down from everywhere, and then suddenly, he felt like he was trapped in a big, sizzling bubble of electricity. He tried to break out of it but couldn’t. The shell of the lightning ball was flexible in a weird way, and when he pushed and wriggled and fought to break out, it simply stretched and contorted with his movements. He hovered up toward the clouds while he screamed, cried, and pushed against the inner-wall of his prison, until─
“Until what?” Marsha asked. She was completely engrossed in the little boy’s story. “Oh dear, please tell me it didn’t hurt.”
“Not really,” Hot-rodder said, grinning. I think the little rug rat thought his story was cool. He didn’t seem nearly as afraid as he should have been. “It just felt kind of staticky, if that makes sense.”
“Oh yes, electrostatic!” Dominic said. He said it with such enthusiasm, I could only assume that it somehow correlated with one of his theories regarding the lightning. “Like when you touch the screen of a television, right? Felt kind of like that?”
There wasn’t much more to tell. He unwillingly rode the lightning bubble toward the clouds, where he was suddenly blinded by a massive white light. He covered his face, screamed, and assumed he was going to die, but suddenly there was a very loud noise. Louder than the thunder, even. He felt the static cocoon instantly evaporate, and then he was falling—but he didn’t fall far. Maybe just a few feet.
He landed with a thud in a back alley. There was a bunch of junk lying in the alley. He saw some tools, a couple paintings, keys, wallets, and clothing, all scattered about. He got his bearings and was trying to make sense of what had happened to him when he felt something racing toward him.
Scared that Drake had followed him, Hot-rodder said he put his hands over his eyes, screamed, and prepared for the very worst as he lay on the asphalt, anticipating what would happen next. Maybe the crazy guy would pick him up and run away with him again, or worse, maybe he would just kill him right there on the spot. Who knew?
But all his fears were alleviated when he experienced what was, in his own words, assault by a slobbery weapon: Bessie’s tongue. He was a witty little kid to come up with that phrase on the spot, and the writer in me was impressed.
He recognized Bessie the moment he saw her, and her nametag only substantiated it. Hot-rodder was a dog lover, and he had stopped outside my house on more than one occasion to give her attention while I was taking her for a walk.
He knew exactly where to go. He crossed through the park on the way over, and even though he was freaked out when he saw the dead bodies lying in the grass, he grabbed his bike anyway. His own home wasn’t far, so he stopped by home on the way over, but nobody was there. Perhaps his parents had taken refuge in another home.
“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Dominic said, intrigued. “You’re saying you just came over right now? As in you just fell onto the asphalt?”
“Yep.” Hot-rodder finished off his soda. “That’s what I’m saying. Pretty much came right over.”
“Strange,” Dominic said, considering this. “You were taken days ago, on the Fourth. And you just got free? Right now?”
Hot-rodder, who probably thought Dominic was some old guy who was hard of hearing, spoke much louder than necessary: “Yes, I just got free and came right over!”
“How strange,” Dominic said. He put his hand to his white-bearded chin and looked off in deep, contemplative thought. “You skipped ahead in time somehow. It only lasted a little while for you, but to us, it’s been days.”
“So everything dropped in that alley, huh?” I asked. I wasn’t sure if I was actually asking Hot-Rodder or just making the point out loud. “You saw clothes, wallets, that kind of stuff? So the storm just held all of it and then dropped it right in that alley?”
“I saw a lot of junk.”
“How much?” Dominic asked.
“Dunno. A pile of it, I guess.”
“It’s probably one of many drops,” Dominic said. “It would probably be a massive mountain of junk if it was really everything that’s been taken from everyone on the island.”
“I don’t get it though,” I said. “Why would the storm drop everything right now? What would be the point of that?
“Probably no need in holding on to ‘em, when it’s about to wipe us all out,” Jesse said. “It makes sense if the storm’s going to wipe out this island, don’t you think? It’s dropping all the things it’s been holding onto and winding up for a last round or two.”
“So it really has been taking things?” Marsha said. “How strange. Did you see a short story there? Pages all stapled together?”
Hot-rodder shrugged, and we all took that as a “no.”
“Can we be the first to leave?” Samantha said despondently. “Can we get there early and be in the front lines? There are so many people. What if we don’t have enough time to get across? What if something happens to me? I can’t die out there, I just can’t.”
Jesse shot me a knowing grin; it might be a little difficult escorting Mrs. High Maintenance to the Promised Land.
I was genuinely happy that Bessie and Hot-rodder had returned, but in some strange way, it made it that much more evident to me that Owen was gone. I slapped Hot-rodder on the back, told him he was welcome to eat anything he could find in the house, and excused myself from the room. Madison alone understood why I had to leave; sometimes, when things get overwhelming like that, I just need to be alone. It’s the way I’m wired.
It drove my wife crazy our first couple years of marriage. She misinterpreted my “needing some space” as somehow being angry or giving her the cold shoulder, but it wasn’t that at all. She’d follow me around the house, yapping away like a wiener dog in her effort to make things better. It took her years to figure out that she just needed to leave me alone for a while.
So I knew she wouldn’t follow me outside when I walked out the front door and took a seat on our front patio furniture. The rain had let up. It was dark outside, but I didn’t mind all that much. I wanted the solitude. I sat back in my chair, looked at the flickering lightning clouds above me, and realized I hadn’t written in days. Maybe that was another reason I was having such a difficult time thinking straight. For several days now, I hadn’t written a word, and my mind hadn’t been able to process.
The front door opened and someone came outside. Maybe I was wrong; maybe Madison was going to try to yap at me to make things better. I almost told her to go back inside, to make the others comfortable, because I really just wanted to be alone for a little bit, but then I realized it wasn’t her. It was Jesse.
He took a seat in the chair across from me. “You doing okay out here, buddy?”
I understood why he’d come; he didn’t know me as well as my wife and didn’t understand that I was like a boomerang in my grief. I may retreat into myself, but I always returned.
“Doing alright,” I said.
He nodded. It was hard to see him fully in the darkness, but I heard him scratching his beard. He didn’t say anything more, just sat there listening, and it had a strange effect on me, because it actually made me want to talk. My wife, in those early days of marriage, came at me with too many words and questions. It only made me want to retreat more. But Jesse, who was naturally silent, had the opposite effect on me.
“I’m just so angry at him,” I said, after a very long but not uncomfortable silence. “He’s only sixteen. I’ve done so much for him. His mom has done so much for him. And he wouldn’t come back with me. I’m gonna have to restrain myself from killing him even if he does come back.”
“You won’t kill him,” Jesse said, matter-of-factly. “In fact, you won’t even be upset at him.”
“Really?” I said. “And why’s that?”
“Because you’re too good a man for that, that’s why. When Owen comes home, you’ll run to him, embrace him, and it’ll be like he never left. Because that’s what daddies do. Good daddies, at least.”
“Not sure about that,” I said.
“Well then, you must have forgotten the whole point of parenting. Don’t forget what you signed up for.”
“And what’d I sign up for?”
“An unspoken agreement to get kicked in the groin for years on end, day after day, and still reach out and love the person doing it. Don’t you forget it. If you wanted someone to love you perfectly every day and worship the ground you walked on, you should have just gotten yourself a dog.”
I laughed. Jesse had a funny way of putting things.
“I’m still not sure I’ll be able to restrain myself when I see him,” I said.
“You just wait and see,” Jesse said, “and I’ll bet you a beer that everything I’m telling you will make sense then. You’ve never really had your kids rebel against you yet, have you?”
“Well, not really. Owen’s only sixteen—and a pretty good kid,
all things considered—and Toby’s only eight.”
“I didn’t tell you about my daughter, did I?”
“No,” I said.
Jesse was silent for so long I began to wonder if he was going to tell me the story. Maybe it was painful for him. I wasn’t entirely sure.
“You’ve met my son at the Captain’s Room,” he finally said, “but I have a daughter who’s a few years older than him, and I . . . well . . . I wasn’t a very good man when I was younger. There are lots of things I wish I could take back, and I didn’t blame their mom when she left me. I would have left myself if it was physically possible.”
We laughed, but when the laughter faded, I sensed that Jesse was reaching into some deep, painful place.
“The divorce really hurt both kids, but it took the biggest toll on my daughter, Virginia,” he said. “She eventually got involved in the wrong crowd—you know, drugs, that kind of stuff. Once I got my own life in order, I reached out to help her and staged an intervention with some others, but she walked away. But before she did, she spat in my face, cursed me, and told me that I was a loser of a father and wished me dead.”
“Wow,” I said. A few streaks of lightning lit the sky, and I saw Jesse in those brief, momentary flashes, looking down at his boots. I couldn’t imagine what that would be like.
“Yeah,” he said, “it was a hard thing to go through as a parent.”
“When did you reconnect with her?”
“I haven’t. But I wait every day for that phone to ring. Every day, Eddie. So when Owen comes back soon, you make sure you pick him up in your arms and thank God you haven’t had to wait as long as others. And don’t forget, you’ll owe me a beer.”
We might have said more, but we were interrupted when Dominic opened the door and stepped onto the front patio. He cradled the little handheld radio in his hands, and he had a troubled, bewildered look on his face.
Storm Taken: A Supernatural Thriller Page 20